Oh, yeah. You can’t have it.
When we arrived at the launch the following night, Nick and Melissa were there already. They were standing together talking to some other people we knew: Derek, and a few others. Nick saw us coming in, but he didn’t hold my gaze when I tried to look at him. He noticed me and looked away, that was all. Bobbi and I flicked through the book and didn’t buy it. We said hello to the other people we knew, Bobbi texted Philip to ask where he was, and I pretended to read the author bios. Then the readings started.
Throughout Melissa’s reading, Nick watched her face very attentively and laughed in the right places. My discovery that I was in love with Nick, not just infatuated but deeply personally attached to him in a way that would have lasting consequences for my happiness, had prompted me to feel a new kind of jealousy toward Melissa. I couldn’t believe that he went home to her every evening, or that they ate dinner together and sometimes watched films on their TV. What did they talk about? Did they amuse each other? Did they discuss their emotional lives, did they confide in one another? Did he respect Melissa more than me? Did he like her more? If we were both going to die in a burning building and he could only save one of us, wouldn’t he certainly save Melissa and not me? It seemed practically evil to have so much sex with someone who you would later allow to burn to death.
After her reading, Melissa beamed while we all applauded. When she sat back down Nick said something in her ear and her smile changed, a real smile now, with her teeth and the sides of her eyes. He was always calling her ‘my wife’ in front of me. At the beginning I thought it was playful, maybe kind of sarcastic, like she wasn’t his real wife at all. Now I saw it differently. He didn’t mind me knowing that he loved someone else, he wanted me to know, but he was horrified by the idea that Melissa would find out about our relationship. It was something he was ashamed of, something he wanted to protect her from. I was sealed up in a certain part of his life that he didn’t like to look at or think about when he was with other people.
Once all the readings were finished, I went to get a glass of wine. Evelyn and Melissa were standing nearby holding glasses of sparkling water, and Evelyn waved me over. I congratulated Melissa on her reading. Behind her shoulder I saw Nick coming toward us, and then he spotted me and hesitated. Evelyn was talking about the editor of the book. Nick arrived at her shoulder and they embraced, so warmly that it knocked Evelyn’s glasses sideways and she had to fix them. Nick and I nodded at each other politely. This time he held my eyes for a second longer than he had to, like he was sorry we were meeting this way.
You’re looking so well, Evelyn said to him. You really are.
He’s been practically living in the gym, said Melissa.
I took a huge mouthful of white wine and washed it around my teeth. Is that what he tells you, I thought.
Well, it’s working, said Evelyn. You have a look of radiant good health about you.
Thanks, he said. I’m feeling well.
Melissa was watching Nick with a kind of pride, like she had nursed him back to health after a long illness. I wondered what he meant by ‘I’m feeling well’, or what he meant for me to hear in it.
And how about you, Frances? said Evelyn. How are you keeping?
Fine, thanks, I said.
You’re looking a little glum tonight, said Melissa.
Cheerfully Evelyn said: I’d be glum if I were you, spending all your time around ancient people like us. Where’s Bobbi?
Oh, she’s here, I said. I gestured toward the cash register, though I didn’t actually know where she was.
Are you getting tired of ancient people? said Melissa.
No, not at all, I said. If anything I could go more ancient.
Nick stared into his glass.
We’ll have to find you a nice older girlfriend, Melissa said. Someone with a lot of money.
I didn’t have the nerve to look at Nick. Around the stem of my wine glass I sank my thumbnail into the side of my finger to feel it sting.
I’m not sure what my role would be in that relationship, I said.
You could write her love sonnets, said Evelyn.
Melissa grinned. Don’t underestimate the effect of youth and beauty, she said.
That sounds like a recipe for disastrous unhappiness, I said.
You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.
I’m working on it, I said.
Someone else joined the conversation then to talk to Melissa, and I took the opportunity to go and find Bobbi. She was talking to the cashier near the front door. Bobbi had never had a job and she loved to talk to people about what they did at work. Even mundane details interested her, though she often forgot them quickly. The cashier was a lanky young man with acne, who was telling Bobbi enthusiastically about his band. The bookshop manager came over then and started to talk about the book, which none of us had read or bought. I stood beside them, watching Melissa from across the room as she put her arm absently on Nick’s back.
When I saw Nick look over at us, I turned to Bobbi, smiling, and moved her hair aside to whisper something in her ear. She looked at Nick and then suddenly grabbed my wrist, hard, harder than she had ever touched me in my life before. It hurt me, it drew a little gasp from my throat, and then she dropped my arm again. I cradled it against my ribs. In a deathly calm voice, staring directly into my face, Bobbi said: don’t fucking use me. She held my eyes for a second, with a terrifying seriousness, and then she turned back to the cashier.
I went to get my jacket. I knew that no one was watching me, that no one cared what I thought or did, and I seemed to feel myself almost vibrating with the power of this perverse new freedom. I could scream or take my clothes off if I wanted, I could walk in front of a bus on my way home, who would know? Bobbi wouldn’t follow me. Nick wouldn’t even be seen speaking to me in public.
I walked home on my own without telling anyone I was leaving. My feet were throbbing by the time I unlocked the front door. That night in bed I sat up and downloaded a dating app on my phone. I even put up a picture of myself, one of Melissa’s pictures, where my lips were parted and my eyes looked big and spooky. I heard Bobbi come home, I heard her drop her bag in the hall instead of hanging it up. She was singing ‘Green Rocky Road’ to herself, loudly enough that I knew she was drunk. I sat in the dark scrolling through a series of strangers in my area. I tried to think about them, to think about letting them kiss me, but instead I kept thinking of Nick, his face looking up at me from my pillow, reaching to touch my breast like he owned it.
*