“Maybe it’s not that New York sucks. Maybe everything feels impossible after a while, and we get tired of everything. And everyone,” I say. I try to figure out what percentage of me is drunk, what percentage is sober, what percentage is reeling from Karissa’s lies, and what percentage is in love.
“Well, I’ll never get tired of you,” Bernardo says.
“Me too,” I say.
I light another cigarette. I don’t usually chain-smoke, and it goes down rough. Everything’s spinning, and I feel like crap. I feel like I’m in someone else’s body. I’m saying words that one part of me means but another part of me is scared of.
“Okay,” I say, because I want to make out, not fight. “We’ll go far away.”
“We’ll get married on a mountain,” he says. “Romantic and just us.”
“Right,” I say. “Sounds great.”
We make out. It should be gross, the sweat and the queasiness and our smoky mouths and boozy lips, but it’s not. I feel less vomit-y, less like death, more like myself.
That must be love too.
After we head up to my room, Bernardo falls asleep, but I can’t. Everything’s spinning and Karissa is scaring me. I don’t like her sleeping down the hall, a stranger.
I call Roxanne, missing her voice and the way we planned to spend the whole summer together but didn’t. Won’t. I need to tell her everything, immediately.
I’m choking on all my new decisions and the things I miss.
She answers the phone all sleepy and strange.
“I’m going to get married,” I say, and she wakes right up. “I’m going away,” I say.
Roxanne doesn’t say too much, but she’s there and that feels right, at least.
Nothing else feels right.
forty-two
I fall asleep eventually and wake up a few hours later. Bernardo’s passed out cold. He’s beautiful and fretful in sleep. I could wake up with him every day. I could do that. I will.
I shake him a little, wanting to talk or hook up or something since I’m awake and the rest of the world is asleep. But he doesn’t even grunt in response. I get out of bed, and as soon as I’m upright I realize how seriously fucked up I still am. The room’s at a solid forty-five-degree angle, and my mouth is dry even though the rest of me is damp and sweaty. I can’t totally keep my head up. Or I could, but I don’t really want to.
I take out my gratitude journal and try to choose three things from the day that make me feel lucky. Champagne. Bernardo. Potted plants on the stoop. The idea of palm trees being a part of my everyday life. Being engaged. My new tattoo. Roxanne. There’s sort of a lot to be grateful for, even when I’m drunk without wanting to be and overwhelmed.
But writing it down doesn’t give me any kind of certainty.
I’m looking for certainty.
I still can’t stomach telling Arizona all the epic ways I’ve changed and ruined our family by letting Karissa in and the ways I’m ditching her to be in love. But there’s Natasha, and the fact that she exists makes the day feel more manageable. I text and ask if I can come over.
Natasha is the kind of person who responds to late-night and early-morning texts. She’s the kind of person who gives a shit, all the time, even when she’s not mine anymore. Even when I’ve disappointed her.
Come on over! her text back reads. I’ll put on the coffee.
I leave a note on Bernardo’s chest that I’m heading over to Natasha’s. It feels illicit, traveling the city at five in the morning with boozy breath and unchanged partying clothes, and I love it until I realize how much Natasha is going to hate it.
I’m right. She does.
“Oh, come on, honey,” she says. “Is this because of the new girlfriend? Is she lending you stripper clothes? What happened to your T-shirts and your pretty fresh face?”
“Don’t start with me,” I say. “I didn’t come over for a lecture.”
Natasha recoils a little, and I do too, from myself and my obnoxiousness, but actually I sound the way Roxanne talks to her mother. Normal teenage girl. I sound like a girl with a mother.
“The girls have been asking about you,” she says. I’m sobering up fast.
“I’m going to get away from the girlfriend. Dad’s fiancée. The whole situation,” I say.
I tell her everything.
We have an entire pot of coffee.
She doesn’t say anything any other mother wouldn’t, and that’s nice. Almost nicer than the congratulations we’d been looking for. She tells me I’m too young. I have only known him for five minutes. Love and lust are different things. I don’t know what I want. I have to tell everyone about Karissa. This is all dangerous. I can’t leave town.
“We’re in love,” I say.
“Been there,” she says, and it’s like a sunrise, something coming to life in front of my eyes. She tucks some hair behind my ear. Part of me wants to stay here with Natasha, be some other kind of seventeen, the kind that comes with a mother who tells you what to do.