Lauren remembers: Hannah Cho’s apartment, on Park, in the Nineties, just below where the train escapes from underground, a big bed in an unused bedroom, she and Sarah curled up just like this, after drinking a bottle of the Chos’ red wine out of little porcelain teacups from the china cabinet in the dining room. Hannah was in her bedroom with Tyler Oakes, the rest of the party had drifted away hours before, and Sarah and Lauren were drunk enough that standing was risking vomiting.
Then, freshman year of college, a house party so crowded they spent the night on the porch, drinking the beers they’d brought themselves to avoid having to stand in line, show stamped hands to one of the guys who lived in the house. They left the party after two beers each, drank their thirds on the walk home, their breath misting in the October air, sat on Lauren’s bed in the outside room of their shared double, windows opened wide, blowing cigarette smoke into the darkness.
In London, that liberating season in another country, another city, another life, a preview of adulthood, sipping whiskey on ice as a gentleman at a pub—a gentleman, he seemed impossibly old at the time but was probably in his forties—had shown them. He was taken with the two young American girls, had treated them to the good stuff. Falling into bed, laughing hysterically at something, at nothing, at being alive, at drinking like a grown-up, at being wanted by a grown-up, the way that man, that night, had commanded the publican, the way he produced the beautifully colored pound note from his fat wallet, then went home to jerk off to the memory of the two of them, picturing four breasts, two mouths, one tongue timidly meeting an unfamiliar clitoris. Lauren thinks of that guy, sometimes, when she orders a whiskey in a bar.
“I feel a little better, actually.” Sarah sits up. She yawns. “Are you glad we’re here?”
“I’m glad,” Lauren says. She is.
“I knew it.” Sarah, triumphant. “You had your doubts. You were reluctant. But you came, and I was right, and it’s amazing.”
“I never said I didn’t want to come,” Lauren says. “But yes, it’s amazing here.”
“I can see what’s on your face, you don’t have to say it.” Sarah laughs.
“It’s just that.” Lauren sits up now, too. “I was just worried about money. And work. And stuff. I don’t know. I’m not a bachelorette party kind of girl. But it’s not about me. You’re getting married. This is your party!”
“It wouldn’t have been a party without you here, so I’m glad you came.”
Lauren’s quiet. She never knows what to say when people say nice things to her. There’s never any response that seems to make sense. “So. Meredith.”
“I know.” Sarah shakes her head. “She doesn’t mean to be like that, she just . . . is.”
Meredith had steered the conversation, at the beach, and then over dinner, back to the long, complex saga of her breakup with her boyfriend, Ilan. Her face had grown dark but also more animated, as she gestured wildly with her hands, the pitch of her voice rising as she detailed some slight, the fervor of her words betraying that her feelings for him linger.
“They broke up, like, a year ago, am I right? I mean, she was explaining something, I was barely listening, and then it was, like—wait, we’re talking about ancient history.”
“I know.” Sarah shakes her head sadly, then bursts out laughing. “It’s ridiculous, I’m sorry, oh God, I’m a terrible person.”
“I mean. Months.” Lauren is laughing now, too. “And she’s still, like—talking about the intricacies of some e-mail he sent her in response to some e-mail she sent him in response to, oh my God, I was, like, please shut up.”
Sarah shushes her, starts laughing more loudly, almost choking.
“The whole time she’s talking about this, and just going over and over every detail, and I said, and I know I’m such an asshole, I said, ‘Gosh, Meredith, it’s hard to believe he could do this to you,’ and she says ‘I know!’ She’s so deep in herself she can’t even detect sarcasm.”
“That’s nothing.” Sarah composes herself, suddenly serious. “You know, I wouldn’t even know Dan if not for Meredith. Remember, her brother, blah blah blah.”
“Right.” Lauren nods.
“So, like two months ago, we’re talking, about the wedding, about me and Dan and how she and her brother are the ones who introduced us in the first place, and she goes off on this tangent about how her brother loves Dan so much and how he’d always kind of wanted her and Dan to end up together.”
“No.”
“It gets better! And how like, in an alternate universe, it should have been her and Dan who ended up together, like even that night, the night we first met, how he was so nice and she felt such an instant connection to him but then of course I did, too, and she saw that and didn’t want to interfere.”
“Please tell me you’re making this up. How can you be friends with this person?” Lauren is aghast.
Sarah shakes her head. “She means well. I know, it’s ridiculous, but she’s just like—she’s obsessed with being single. It’s her thing right now.”
“No man in his right mind would be able to go on a date with her. Maybe we should chip in and get her a hooker while we’re down here. I hear that’s a thing.”