The urge to hang up and call Patrick feels like trying to hold back a cough: to hear his side of the story and make sure everything’s okay with him. I try to think quickly. “You want me to call Imogen? We’ll do a girls’ night tomorrow? We’ll go to Crow Bar or something. I’ll try really hard not to get anything thrown on me this time.”
“Yeah?” Tess says, sounding hopeful. “You want to? I mean, you don’t have plans with Gabe or something?”
The sound of Gabe’s name is startling: For a second I forgot he existed entirely, let alone that we’re together. God, what’s wrong with me? My heart is rattling away inside my chest like a shopping cart with a bum wheel. “No,” I tell Tess, trying to keep my voice even. “No, he’s in Boston for an interview. We’ll go just the three of us; it’ll be fun.”
“Okay,” Tess says, sounding a little less wobbly than she did at the start of this conversation. I feel wobbly in the freaking extreme. “Crow Bar, then. Nineish?”
I promise her I’ll be there and plunge two more glasses into the soapy water. I leave my phone in the freezer for the rest of the day.
Day 52
I don’t think I’ve ever done a proper girls’ night, but Imogen’s an old pro, the smell of steam and burning as she flatirons my hair and a bottle of Apple Pucker she pulled from her purse like Mary Poppins, witchy green and syrupy like melted-down lollipops. Her mom’s away at a women’s retreat in Hudson. Nobody dresses up to go to Crow Bar, but Imogen insists we should anyway, pulling dress upon lacy dress from the depths of her walk-in closet while Tess and I watch from the bed, calling out our myriad opinions like something out of a chick flick montage. It feels like the kind of pregame Emily Green would have with her girlfriends, not me with my cat-lady tendencies and long queue full of documentaries about baseball and the history of salt. It’s nice.
“Okay,” Imogen says, shimmying into a black halter that makes her look even more like a pinup girl than normal. I’ve got a stretchy skirt and a silky tank top, the closest I’ve gotten to a dress since seventh grade—I wasn’t exactly in a position to go to prom. “Thoughts?”
“Do it,” Tess says cheerfully. She’s all smiles and spice tonight, brassy, but her alabaster face was a little puffy when she got here, her already short fingernails bitten down to painful-looking stubs. She still hasn’t said what the fight was about, if there even was a fight to begin with. I haven’t asked. “Your ass looks great in it. And I wanna go out.”
“Well, you best chug that delicious beverage, then,” I tell her, nodding at her mostly full juice glass of Apple Pucker with a grimace. I like sweet things, but three sips of this stuff and my teeth feel like they’re wearing sweaters. “Bottoms up. Go on, it’s right up your alley, it’s made of produce and everything.”
“Basically a health food.” Tess nods resolutely. “To getting dumped by Patrick Donnelly,” she says, holding it up for a toast.
“To getting dumped by Patrick Donnelly,” I echo, clinking. My laugh sounds strange and hollow, though: The truth is I feel dishonest, this pestering nag at the back of my brain like I’m telling whopper after whopper just by showing up here and being with them. I haven’t heard from Patrick since our run the other morning, but suddenly he’s closer than he’s been in a year and a half.
Tess downs her schnapps and makes a truly hilarious gross-out face, like she just took a swig of human vomit chased with kerosene. “Let’s do this,” she orders as she hops off Imogen’s bed, teetering a little as she lands. She yanks at the short hem of her emerald-green dress, frowning. “I always feel like a drag queen in heels,” she mutters.
“You realize we’re gonna look like hookers at Crow Bar,” I point out, then: “Drag queen hookers,” we say at the same time.
“Oh, you’re very funny,” Imogen says, rolling her eyes at both of us. “Shut up for a second; I’ll call a cab.”
*
At Crow Bar we order shots of fireball whiskey and drop them in glasses of hard cider, a trick Gabe taught me that tastes like apple pie: “Apples are the theme of the night,” Imogen observes. “Abraham Lincoln would be so pleased.” Then, off our blank stares: “You know, cause of the apple tree?” she asks, looking back and forth between us. “He couldn’t cut it down? Or he cut it down and couldn’t lie about it?”
“It was a cherry tree,” I say at the same time Tess points out, “It was George Washington.”
All three of us find this hysterical, for some reason, clustered around a table in the far back near the jukebox, doubled over giggling. “Are we dancing?” Tess asks when the music changes over to the Whitney Houston we plugged in with our fistfuls of quarters. “I’m pretty sure I was promised dancing in my time of need.”
“Oh, we’re dancing.” Imogen grabs me by my wrist and pulls me into the crowd.
I laugh as I thread through the crush along with them, shaking my hair and letting Tess twirl me around, Imogen singing along like we’re still in her room and not technically underage in a bar full of people. I feel like I’m having two separate nights, though, like I’m only half-present: The urge to check in with Patrick is constant and physical, like an itch on the bottom of your foot when you can’t take your shoes off, or a tickle at the back of your throat.
We head to the bathroom after another round, snaking through the crowd one after another. “How you doing?” Imogen asks Tess, bumping their shoulders together as we wait in the long line. It smells like a sewer. “You hanging in?”