33
After
Fighting with Shelby makes me totally miserable. I keep going to text her—for all kinds of different reasons, stupid regular stuff, to let her know that Center Stage is on cable or to complain about the new Taylor Swift song lodging itself deep inside my brain—before realizing we aren’t speaking and flinging my phone back onto the couch. I sulk. I remember this feeling from the year before Allie died, the weird emptiness of not having a best friend to tell things to. How it’s lonelier than any breakup could ever be.
We work the same busy dinner shift at Antonia’s one night, two big eight-tops and a party back in the banquet room. I catch her by the wrist by the bar during what’s as close to a lull as we’re going to get, my fingers curling around the half dozen bracelets she’s wearing. “Shelby,” I start, then completely fail to follow it up in any kind of meaningful way.
Shelby raises her eyebrows, an armful of napkins and a look on her face like whatever I have to say, it better be good. “What?” she asks shortly.
I hesitate. I want to ask her how her week’s going; I want to get the latest Hipster Cara updates. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I feel like one of those horrible girls who can’t make friendships work with other girls, that I miss her a crap ton and I didn’t mean to screw with her brother and I’ll do anything she wants to make it up to her. I want to fix this in the worst, stupidest way, but I don’t know how to do it, and in the end I just shake my head. “Forget it,” I say, chickening out at the last possible second. “Never mind.”
“Okay.” Shelby rolls her eyes at me like she both expected this and finds it colossally lame. “Have it your way, Reena,” she says finally, and after a second I let go of her arm.
*
The week creeps along. I’m restless and edgy; Hannah and I cruise the highway for hours every night. “You’re wasting gas,” Cade points out, but I just shrug, handing my credit card over to the pale, skinny attendant like a crack addict looking for a fix. The road rumbles under my feet: keep going, keep going, keep going.
I drive.
Five o’clock on Sunday and Soledad is cooking; the kitchen smells delicious, a big pot of yellow rice simmering on the stove and the counter strewn with ingredients I know she pulled from memory. Soledad never makes anything from a book. “Are you going to be around for dinner?” she asks as I pull a bottle of water from the fridge. “The LeGrandes are coming over.”
I tense. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” she asks, looking at me oddly. “To eat.”
“No, I know.” It was an idiotic question. Roger and Lydia still come to dinner from time to time, though usually Hannah and I do our best to scoot out the back door before they get here—it’s always seemed cleaner to do it that way, and it’s not as if anyone’s ever encouraged us to stay. I have no earthly clue what they talk about.
“Are you not seeing Aaron this weekend?” Soledad asks me now, her expression all practiced-casual as she pulls a covered dish out of the oven, and I do my best to match it in return. He’s left a couple of messages on my cell phone since I broke up with him. So far, I haven’t called him back.
“Um, nope,” I say, fussing a little with the magnetic letters on the fridge. REENA, I spell, red and green and yellow. HOME. “We’re taking kind of a breather. Can I help?”
“Here, keep stirring this. It’s sticking.” She moves so I can have the stove to myself, a whiff of lilacs and vanilla as she passes by. “What do you mean, ‘a breather’?”
“Hmm?” I ask, stalling, banging the wooden spoon around in the pot with more force than is strictly called for. “I don’t know. Just, like, some time apart.”
“Really? That’s too bad.” Soledad throws some cherry tomatoes into her wooden salad bowl, then sticks one in her mouth and one into mine for good measure. “I like Aaron,” she says, swallowing. “I think he’s good for you.”
“No shit,” I say, then, “Shit. Sorry. Just, you know, you and everybody else.”
“Ah.” She doesn’t say anything after that. The silence hangs suspended, a drop of blood in a bowl of milk. I wait, though, patient, and finally Soledad sighs. “Reena, about Sawyer.”
Right away I don’t like where we’re heading. “Sol, please, I don’t want to—”
“I know there is a certain kind of … romance in him being here. Like a movie. But I just need you to remember what the last few years have been like, all right?” Soledad has moved on to onions now. Her thin, graceful hands chop and dice. “For everyone. For your father.”
“For my father?” I blink at her.
Soledad works steadily, the efficient sound of steel on wood. “It’s been hard on everyone, is what I’m saying. And we all might have done things differently, and—” Her face softens and she is looking at me with compassion, which is why I am so surprised when she says, “Please just think this time, sweetheart.”
I just stand there for a moment, dumb like an ox. Then my eyes widen. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask quietly, and I am sure she’s going to scold me for my dirty mouth, but instead she just puts the knife down on the counter and shakes her dark, beautiful head.
“No, Serena,” she answers calmly. “I’m fucking not.”
*
I’ve gotta go.
I don’t know where—Shelby’s, maybe, if she’ll even talk to me, or the highway, or in my car right off a cliff—but out of this house is the first step. I pluck Hannah from her playpen and am rooting around in the couch cushions for my keys when the doorbell rings, and when Roger and Lydia come inside, Sawyer is right behind them.
Wearing a tie.
I stare for a minute, like the baby does when she’s trying to make sense of something she’s never seen before. I laugh one short, hysterical laugh.
“What happened?” he asks, before hello.
“Nothing.” I lie as a reflex. “Hi.”
Sawyer isn’t satisfied. He nods at the keys in my hand. “Where are you going?”
Roger and Lydia are looking at me expectantly; Soledad is coming through the kitchen door. “Nowhere,” I say, and it’s final, like the sound of something slamming. I put the keys back down and follow them inside.