Out of some sense of obligation to the past, they ordered a massive plate of chicken nachos and a couple of bourbon and Cokes.
“Ah, bourbon on a hundred-degree day. I feel like I’m twenty again,” said Caroline.
“If that means you feel insecure about your thighs and sticky from sweat, so do I,” said Betsy. They sat in silence, pretending to watch the game, half listening to the conversations between the people two decades their junior that surrounded them.
“I don’t even remember what we were fighting about, you know, before everything went to shit,” said Caroline, not meeting Betsy’s eyes. She paused for a minute.
“Actually, that’s a lie. I remember all of it.”
“I do, too,” said Betsy. “We pretended that it was about guys and my leaving the sorority and all of that. But there was more.”
“I think I probably felt rejected, like you were leaving us behind. Like you thought that we were stupid and you were too wise for all of it. And maybe I thought on some level that you were right. But then you literally disappeared,” said Caroline. “You just left me here.”
In the two decades she’d been gone, it had never occurred to her that Caroline needed her help.
“I was desperate to leave, even before everything went down,” said Betsy. “And then, you know, the drama just expedited things. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t do it without Ginny.”
“You know, I called you on the day McRae was executed,” Caroline said. “But I couldn’t leave a message.”
Betsy remembered being pregnant with Remi, her walk up Central Park West on that awful morning in Dr. Kerr’s office. “It was Remi’s birthday. As in, the day she was born,” said Betsy. “I was kind of busy anyway.”
“Part of the problem was that I was jealous,” said Caroline. “I was the one who was supposed to get out of here first. I was the one who was on to bigger things. But you and Gavin just sailed into the sunset, like Danny and Sandy in that fucking flying convertible. And all of a sudden I was Frenchy, standing on the ground with some freaked-out hairdo waving a fucking hanky. I was the one who was supposed to get out. You were the one who was supposed to sell real estate in Miami. We got it all wrong.”
Betsy stared at the bottom of her empty cup.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally.
“Sorry for what? You didn’t stop me from going. I stopped myself. In the end, I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know . . .” Caroline said.
“I’m sorry, but you got it all wrong,” said Betsy, averting her eyes. “You were Rizzo.”
“What?”
“Frenchy was way too nice. Rizzo was the mean, slutty one. You were Rizzo.”
Caroline took a beat.
“I was totally Rizzo.”
And for the second time that day, the two friends laughed so hard that Betsy nearly peed herself, and then had to wait in an endless bathroom line, standing helplessly while a quarter inch of beer slop on the unmopped floor seeped above the soles of her sandals and between her toes.
CHAPTER 25
LONG DRIVE HOME
September 25, 2010
By the end of the fourth quarter, Betsy was all but sober. The beer and nostalgic Jack and Cokes had done nothing but fog her brain and dull her senses, and she was covered with the salty, sticky residue of dried sweat. As Teddy predicted, they were ready to head back without saying goodbyes, so when he texted them the location of his parking spot, they hopped into the first bike cab they could flag down. A sinewy nineteen-year-old with a couple of missing teeth towed them through the crowd to a lot next to the baseball field.
“Should we ask one of these shirtless wankers what the final score was?” asked Caroline, gesturing to a pack of skinny college boys who had their T-shirts tied around their foreheads.
“Nah,” said Betsy. “I don’t care.”
The last time she went down that street, she was sitting on Gavin’s handlebars. She wondered if Remi was in her pj’s yet. She called Gavin, who picked up after the first ring.
“You survived,” he said. She could hear Remi in the tub in the background.
“Yes, but just barely. I’m with Caroline on the back of some guy’s bike,” she said.
“Of course you are,” he said.
“Can you put Remi on speaker?” she asked.
“Hi, Mama!” The sound of her voice sent electricity down her spine.
“Hi, sweetie! Can you say hi to my friend Caroline?” She put the phone on speaker.
“Hi! Daddy says ‘Go Gators,’” a small voice squeaked on the other end of the phone.
“Oh yeah? Well don’t believe everything your daddy says,” said Caroline.
“Nice to hear your voice, Car,” he said.
“You, too, Gavin.”
“Listen, Teddy’s giving us a ride to Tampa and I have to pay attention or we’ll ride right by his parking spot.
“Bye guys, I love you,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rem.”
“We love you, too.”
Caroline put her hand on her friend’s knee and gave it a squeeze.
“Well, well,” Caroline said, nodding in approval. “He turned out alright, didn’t he?”
“Hey, I’m as surprised as you are,” said Betsy.