I want to sing and dance and bounce around my apartment cheering at the top of my lungs, chivvying them all out so I can finally have my space back and get some normality back in my life.
The apartment has been chaotic all week—between the wedding stuff, the air bed, all the extra blankets and pillows where Lucy and I were staying in the living room, everyone’s things, and the fact that there are, in case I hadn’t mentioned it enough yet, four people in my little apartment, it would’ve been impossible to keep it under control, hard as we all tried.
But right now, it’s like a bomb went off in here. The place is a wreck. The clean lines, the modern minimalism I cultivated so carefully on moving in, is a thing of the past. It makes that Tracey Emin bed look like something out of the John Lewis catalog.
It looks even messier than after Kim had ripped up the wedding favors and centerpieces and smashed the prosecco bottle—which is really saying something.
The air bed is half-deflated, standing propped up and sagging against one wall. My laundry basket is in the middle of the room, overflowing with this week’s sheets and blankets. As I watch, Lucy starts rummaging through it, looking for her other bra and muttering to herself. There’s a cluster of mugs on the coffee table—some of them empty, one of them still steaming hot, others half-drunk and forgotten. The boxes of wedding favors and centerpieces are pushed underneath the dining table, although Kim has promised to take them with her, now that Jeremy’s coming to pick her up.
It shouldn’t be this difficult for three girls to pack their bags.
And yet.
Here we are, having all been awake for hours, and they’re still packing.
Addison was convinced she couldn’t find her phone anywhere, and it was only after we all went deathly silent and called it, listening carefully for the tel tale buzz, that we found it had somehow ended up in the bottom of Lucy’s immaculately packed bag, which Addison promptly upended onto the sofa (hence the currently missing bra). Kim has been running back and forth, suddenly remembering something else of hers that either she brought, or that Jeremy packed and dropped off for her, that is now floating around my apartment somewhere.
The entire morning has been punctuated with shouts of:
“Liv, is this yours? I don’t remember mine having this mark on it.”
“Ads, will you move? You can’t possibly need all this space. I’m trying to pack here.”
“Has anybody seen my other slipper?”
“Luce, where did you say you saw my skirt? Yes, I’m sure I didn’t pack it already, I . . . Oh, no, I did. Never mind.”
I’ve been trying to hang at the edge of the room, surveying the carnage. There’s not a lot I can do to help, after all. This is absolutely one of those “too many cooks” situations.
But God, if I could help, I would. If I could shove all their things into a bin bag and toss them out onto the curb to restore the sanctuary of my apartment, I absolutely would.
Which I know is completely overdramatic, but I never realized what an introvert I really was until this week—and not just because Lucy suggested one night that we all do the Myers-Briggs test. It’s been exhausting, in every way possible.
It was bad enough before the fight with Kim, but since we cleared the air, I’ve spent the last two days hyperaware of my every interaction with Addison.
I’m still not totally convinced she is flirting with me.
Or that if she is, it’s just because she’s simply a flirty sort of person.
Either way, I’ve had the great joy of spending the last two days overanalyzing everything she does, and everything I’ve said to her, which has been just delightful.
I hate everything.
I hate Kim for pointing it out, and I hate Lucy for agreeing with her.
Friday night, once we’d all gone to bed, I’d whispered through the dark to Lucy, “Kim reckons Addison’s been flirting with me all week.
Which is ridiculous, right?”
“Ridiculous that it took her pointing it out to you for you to realize,” Lucy said, which was the most aggressive stance she’d taken on anything all week. “She’s been trying to make you laugh all week.
Anytime she cracks a joke, she looks at you to see if you’re going to laugh. Why do you think she kept doing her impression of Trump?”
I propped myself up on one elbow to peer through the darkness at Lucy, whose face was illuminated slightly by the glow of her phone.
“You’re telling me that her talking like Trump is her way of flirting with me?”
“She wanted to get your attention. It’s all she’s been doing all week.”
“I still think that’s just because she’s—”
“American?”
“I was going to say exuberant.”
“That too.”
It didn’t help that Lucy and Kim started to give me a pointed look or nudge whenever Addison said or did something that they counted as flirtatious; it was completely cringeworthy, because neither of them was exactly subtle about it, and I was also pretty sure that Kim had mentioned our conversation to Addison, to encourage her not to be put off by my lack of responsiveness. (“It’s not that she doesn’t like you,” I could imagine her saying, “it’s just her resting bitch face.”) Even without the complication of Addison flirting (or not) with me—I can’t wait for them to leave. I can’t wait to scrub the apartment clean and get the laundry done. I can’t wait to take out the overflowing recycling bin. I can’t wait to sit down on the sofa in absolute peace and quiet, and not have to worry about playing hostess, or being conscious of anybody else, or have to hold a conversation or discuss what to watch on TV.
Oh God, I have never been so excited to be alone again.
At this point, I don’t care if the whole bloody country’s in lockdown and I might not be able to hang out with anybody again for a couple of months. This past week has been more than enough socializing to see me through the next year.
*
I see them all to the main door of the building, one at a time.
Lucy is the first to leave—the most organized, her bags are packed first, and though she offers to stay after the others are gone to help me clean up, I tell her not to be silly and to get herself off home.
Neither of us are big huggers, but we stand outside the building awkwardly, smiling at each other, before she clicks her tongue and sighs, smiling, stepping forward to give me a light, one-armed hug, which I return.
“Thanks so much for the last week,” she says, for the billionth time.
“I really appreciate it. I know I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if it was the other way around. It’s been really nice, though.”
“Apart from the whole fight and Kim losing her shit?”
Lucy laughs, biting her lip, as if to try to stop herself. “Yeah. Yeah, apart from that.”
“Well—drive safe.”
We do the awkward dithering thing again, but don’t hug this time.