I told her that the guy Arizona liked didn’t call her back after they hooked up at some party. I told her all the terrible things Arizona had said about her roommate. I told her that Arizona got crappy grades this last semester and lied about it to Dad. I told her about Dad’s other wives. I told her way too much.
“My family dying is the last terrible thing that happened to me. The thing I’m still trying to survive. What about you? A breakup maybe? Or something with school?” I can’t quite tell if Karissa remembers everything I told her about Arizona, or if this is coincidence. I can’t seem to interpret any part of this moment.
“I’m pretty much fine,” Arizona says.
The kitchen fills with a cinnamony smell. Bliss.
“I wish I was that kind of strong,” Karissa says, and Arizona rolls her eyes. Karissa catches the tail end of it, and her face breaks a little. Her eyes well up, and I want this to be going more smoothly. I want Arizona to see what I love about Karissa and for Karissa to see why she should not be in our kitchen cooking breakfast. I want everything to reset.
“So, I kissed Bernardo,” I say. I wait for it to fix everything, to make us all friends or something. Arizona clears her throat and drinks more coffee and touches more things on the counter: a glass of water, Dad’s business cards, the set of knives in their wooden stand.
“You kissed him or he kissed you?” Karissa says. Arizona’s run out of random objects to touch, so she starts picking at the French toast chocolate croissant Karissa drops in front of her and is doing this rabbit thing with her mouth and nose.
If I concentrate, I can pretend Karissa is here because I invited her over to meet my sister. I try to telepathically communicate that plan to my sister, but it doesn’t go through.
“Both?” I say. I will Karissa to leave my father. If she left him today or this week, it would still be soon enough to salvage our friendship. If she left him this summer, even, we could maybe someday go back to the way things were and the way they were going to someday be.
“He’s one of those . . . big gesture people,” Arizona says. She sounds exhausted, but I love her staying here when I know she wants to run out the door. A part of me wants to run out the door too, or fight with Karissa, but I think I don’t know how. “He’s like sappy, sort of. Stylish and sappy and intense.”
“I’m gonna count those all as positive qualities,” Karissa says. She’s fried up two halves of a muffin, a doughnut, and a half a bagel in this round. The kitchen reeks of nearly burned egg and powdered sugar and simmering butter. Sort of delicious and foreign and a little bit awful. It’s not the way our home has ever smelled. “I want to meet him!”
“Montana’s barely met him,” Arizona says. “I’ve barely met him. I don’t think you’ll be top of the list.” It comes out calm and cruel. Karissa jangles her bracelets around her wrists, like silver and gold hula hoops, and my heart jingles and jangles too.
“Everyone needs to meet him! But, like, after I’ve kissed him more,” I say, and it’s a thing I would have said at Dirty Versailles with Karissa before, so it almost sounds right.
“We could do a start-of-the-summer party!” Karissa says. “Next weekend! Bet I could convince your dad—”
“No. No, thank you,” Arizona says with a sour look on her face. “I don’t think we need that, right, Montana?” She wants me to choose her, strongly and positively in this moment, and I do. Of course I do. But I also can’t. Because even if Karissa is with my dad, Karissa is still Karissa.
“Maybe for the, like, the Fourth of July or something. Maybe later,” I say. In my head, in the stupid part of my head, I think maybe it will be over by the Fourth of July. Maybe on the Fourth we can have wine and pickles and fireworks and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Karissa’s cozy apartment and laugh about how she used to have a thing for my dad.
But for now I’m here and it’s June and my sister hates me and Karissa has house keys and knows where our spatulas are kept.
“Even better!” Karissa says, not catching the moment. Or catching it and dismissing it and trying to make it something new. “Fourth of July was my parents’ favorite holiday. It was a whole thing. With sparklers and flags and booze and tiny hot dogs.”
Arizona and I go silent. We nod and look serious, because apparently we both deal with someone else’s grief the same way. Solemn muteness.
I try some fried muffin. It’s buttery and beautiful. I love it.
Arizona scratches her nose, which I’m sure isn’t itchy, and starts playing with the magnets on the fridge. Most of them are from medical conferences or pharmaceutical reps.