“God, we’d be doing her a favor.”
“Fuck, that is such an insane thing to say. And she’s your friend. Your good friend.” Why were they so mean to their friends?
“I know.” Sarah nods.
“And it’s like—obviously, Dan and you belong together. You’re crazy about each other. I mean, I can’t see Dan dealing with her, not even in her bizarre alternate reality.”
“You think so? You know that.” She pauses. “Yeah. He’s good, Dan.”
“I know that,” Lauren says simply.
“Sometimes I’m not sure.” Sarah pauses. “I mean, I know you’re not crazy about Dan.”
“When did I ever say that?” Lauren takes the bottle of water from Sarah.
“Come on, Lauren.”
“What come on?”
“I’m not stupid. It’s okay.”
Lauren doesn’t say anything.
“I’m just excited that it’s finally happening, we’re getting married, and my friends are going to be there, even if they’re secretly wishing they were the ones in the ridiculous white dress with everyone looking at them.”
“Do you want me to be in charge of Meredith? I’ll get her trashed, make sure she doesn’t say a word to you the whole night.”
“She’s harmless,” Sarah says. “She’s so deep in the pit of her own despair she has no idea what else is going on.”
“You won’t know what’s going on either. Isn’t that what people are always saying? Like their wedding is just a blur of kissing relatives and posing for pictures and eating terrible cake? That’s what I always hear it’ll feel like.”
“Posing for pictures.” Sarah’s face darkens. “We need a photographer. I need to add that to the list.”
“Forget about the list for a minute.” Lauren knows all about Sarah and her lists. “They call them mandingoes. A mandingo?”
“Who does what?” Sarah is confused.
“Guys from the islands who fuck old white ladies? Get their groove back.”
“Christ, is that a thing? That’s terrible. And that word sounds suspiciously racist to me. I wouldn’t mention that in mixed company.”
“Mixed company is genders, not races,” Lauren says. “Like if we were talking about asshole waxing or something, that’s a non-mixed-company conversation. As in, you can only talk about that with ladies. Boys can’t handle waxed assholes.”
Sarah doubles over with laughter, or would if she were standing. She bends her body, almost fetal. Her laugh is loud; it’s always loud but louder, significantly, when she’s been drinking. “Fuck,” she says. Catching her breath. “Let’s have another drink.”
Lauren opens the minibar, weighs the options. “Brown or clear?”
“Brown, I think? Nightcap. Is there ice?”
“There is ice.” Lauren fills two of the glasses, which are fitted with little paper sleeves so you know no one’s sipped from them. She drops the emptied miniature bottles onto the table, their tiny metal caps into the trash can, where they land with a ping.
“Thanks.” Sarah sits up and accepts the tumbler, a half inch of amber inside. “After-party.”
They clink their glasses together. Lauren gestures over her shoulder at the terrace. “Should we go outside or something? I mean, since we’re in a tropical paradise, et cetera?”
“Fuck the tropics,” Sarah says. “I’m so comfortable.”
Lauren shrugs, steps up onto the bed, and sits, legs crossed, in what was once called Indian style but she knows, because of a friend who teaches middle school, is now referred to as crisscross applesauce. Settling down, this feels familiar, that stab of déjà vu. It’s elusive, it slips away. Something then, about this: a room this temperature, a bed once freshly made, a glass of something to drink, even the suggestion of the ocean just beyond because when you are near the ocean it’s always present.
“Are you tired?” Sarah asks.
“No.” Lauren shakes her head. “Actually, I feel weirdly, bizarrely awake.”
“So do I.” Sarah stares up at her. “This feels familiar. I remember this, somehow, the two of us, doing nothing, just sitting somewhere in the middle of the night and the night didn’t seem to matter and we were just wide awake. Do you know what I mean?”
“Sleep is wasted on the young.” It’s uncanny how this happens, sometimes: how Sarah can seem to see what Lauren is thinking, then give voice to it, then look to Lauren to hear her confirm it, to acknowledge that she’s—what, read her mind? Impossible, but it seems to happen. Lauren resists admitting that they are thinking the same thing. She prefers to think of them as wholly separate people.
“We were never tired,” Sarah says. A trace of awe.
“You make it sound like we’re in our fifties,” Lauren says, chiding.
“Tell me you don’t feel a little bit old these days. Just a little bit. Ever so slightly.” Sarah’s tone is confessional.
“Maybe.” Lauren considers this for a moment. “Like, if you’re thirty-two and you haven’t yet bought a sofa, a real sofa, there’s something vaguely sad about you.”