“I’m just confused. And I feel a little stupid, to be perfectly honest. Like, where was I when you were spending twenty thousand dollars on…what? What did you spend it on?”
“Stuff,” she said. She knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn’t help it. “Just stuff. Stuff for the kids, stuff for the apartment, stuff for me…I don’t know. It was nothing crazy, I swear. It just adds up quicker than you’d think.” He looked around the room as though trying to ascertain what objects she’d bought with the card. “Seriously! It wasn’t like one day I just went out and spent thousands of dollars. It’s like, a sweater here, a vase there, a pair of rain boots for Amelia…it just adds up.”
“But twenty thousand dollars,” Dan said. “I just don’t get it.”
“I don’t know what else there is to get. I spent a lot of money and now I’m trying to pay it off.” She wasn’t going to mention the other cards. Not now. Maybe not ever. “And, like, we’re fine. You have a job, I have a job, we’re still paying our mortgage on time, there’s food on the table. And it’s over! I’m not spending money like that anymore.” She believed this to be true, but she also knew, even as she said it, how delusional it sounded, especially since there was a pair of Céline sunglasses in her purse that she’d just bought last week on FlairMatch, and a Vince cashmere sweater from Saks still in its package in her closet—she didn’t have to open it to know how soft it was—and a couple of things, she had forgotten exactly what, from J. Crew that were on back order and should be arriving sometime in December.
“I can’t even talk to you right now,” Dan said. “I’m going for a walk.” She had no response to this. She watched silently as he got up from the couch, put on his coat, and walked out the door without saying anything else to her. It looked like he wanted to slam it but he closed it quietly.
“Goddamn it.” Her phone buzzed again—it was Isabel. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. The text read, sorry to keep bugging u but srsly i could use some help.
21
Secret Service
BEFORE SHE’D EVEN gotten home from Old Town the other night, there was already a text from Dan that said, good seeing you tonight. ;) She didn’t respond. When she got home, Janelle was still up, watching something on her laptop on the couch in her leggings and Taylor Swift concert T-shirt. “Hey,” Katya said as she sat down next to her. At least she wasn’t shooting a video. She and Janelle had the kind of roommate relationship that Katya preferred; respectful, but they kept their distance. Janelle had her friends and her job and her beauty videos, Katya had her job and…well, now not much else. She had never been good at keeping friends—there were always the girls who targeted her for friendship because they thought she was cool and edgy or whatever, but they quickly realized that she wasn’t interested in going to brunch or having picnics in the park or learning how to crochet and chronicling all of it on Instagram or in a Snapchat story or participating in any of the other activities of bourgeois New York twentysomething existence. Janelle tried in the beginning, inviting her out to drinks and concerts, saying with purpose that she was going to draw Katya out of her shell, whatever that meant. My shell is me, Katya thought every time this happened.
“What’s up,” Janelle said without taking her eyes off the computer. “Oh, by the way, thanks for getting your boyfriend out of here. Though…could I have his number? He had really good weed.”
“Um…yeah, sure. But can I ask your advice on something?” Before she’d even finished talking, Janelle had closed her computer and turned theatrically toward her.
“Me?” Janelle brought her hand to her chest. “Advice? Are you okay? Let me get this straight. You, Katya Pasternack, are asking me, Janelle Lewis, for advice. Can I take your temperature? I think you might be deathly ill. Or wait. Are you an impostor?”
“Ha-ha-ha,” Katya said. “I’m serious. I…” She was having trouble getting the words out. Did she want to ask Janelle for advice? Not really, but she was all Katya had at the moment. Then the words just came tumbling out of her mouth: “My boss kissed me at a bar just now and he just texted me and I’m just like…I don’t know what to do.”
Janelle’s eyes widened. Fuck, Katya thought. I shouldn’t have said anything. “Hoo boy. Wait. What about Victor? Wait. Was he mad he had to leave?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. It was good he left. We got in a fight—it’s a long story. And I ended up at a bar with Dan. My boss. And then we like…kind of made out for a minute and I feel really strange about it.” She paused. “This is a new feeling for me.”
Janelle laughed. “I see that. Well, what do you want from the situation? Do you like him?”
Katya shook her head. “No. It’s not about that.”
“What’s it about?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well…how did you leave things?” Janelle said.
“I was just like, I’ll see you tomorrow, and I got in an Uber and came home. And he already texted me, like, ‘Glad we didn’t do anything else,’ or something like that.” She rolled her eyes. “As if that was on the table.”
“It’s always on the table, silly,” Janelle said.
“No,” Katya said. “It was a random fluke; it wasn’t like we had arranged some secret rendezvous at a hotel or something. I was the one who texted him! Dan would never actually want to, like…” She trailed off.
“Fuck?” Janelle finished. “Oh, honey. You are seriously delusional if you think he isn’t jerking off to you right this second and thinking about how he can get in your size twenty-five jeans.”
Size twenty-four, actually, Katya thought. “That’s gross, Janelle.”
“Sorry, but that’s just reality. Don’t you know that by now? Where have you been?”