“The six to the L, I think.”
When we got to the party, I recognized a few people from school. I asked one guy what he’d been up to since graduation, and he cocked his head. “Same thing as before, man,” he said, taking a long draw from his beer. His tone was odd, almost offended. And then I fuzzily recalled: it was this guy. I’d talked to him at a party not so different from this one, several months earlier. Back when I was still at Spire and still with Julia. “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “Shit. Sorry. I knew that. I have a bad memory.”
My memory was fine. But memory was beside the point when I wasn’t even noticing things in the first place. The thing that kept me going through the months at Spire—it was the same thing that had kept me alive through playoffs and postseason intensity in the past. An adrenalized tunnel vision, everything else dropping away into background noise. And maybe that was okay in short bursts, but there was a danger when it went on for too long. For months at a time. It was like a hole in my brain. There was an entire section missing.
A little later, I felt a hand on my elbow. I turned around and saw Abby.
“Evan,” she said after we hugged. “Wow. It’s so nice to see you.”
“Been a while, huh? How are things?”
I didn’t really have to ask. Her happiness was obvious.
“Well, I’m in the home stretch.”
“School’s almost done for the year?”
“Praise the Lord.” She laughed.
People came in and out, rearranging our corner of the room. Abby and I didn’t get to talk for much longer. I caught her eye a few times and started to move toward her, but then someone else would get in the way. Her gaze said the same thing—we were both thinking about the one thing missing from this night. The hip-hop on the stereo, the keg in the bathtub, the Solo cups scattered across the kitchen counters. It was almost like college. Almost, but not quite.
“Hey,” Arthur said, coming over. “Ready to go? I’ve got an early train.”
I glanced back over at Abby, stuck in conversation with some close talker. I took a deep breath. I wanted to interrupt. This merited interruption, didn’t it? A chance for news of the person I had spent four years of my life with and hadn’t heard from in months? But Arthur was already holding the door open, waiting for me.
We took the subway back to the Upper East Side. “Pizza?” Arthur pointed at the neon sign of the slice joint on Lexington. It was just like old times. Two pepperoni for me, one cheese for him.
“Was it weird?” he said on the walk back to the apartment. “Seeing Abby?”
“Kind of.”
“You don’t talk about her much, you know.”
“Who? Julia?”
“No, the Mona Lisa. Yes, dummy. Julia. The girl you used to live with?”
I shrugged. “What is there to say?”
“Well, you don’t have to be so stoic. You can admit that you’re upset. Or mad or whatever. You don’t have to pretend like nothing happened. It’s kind of strange.”
“I’m not. I’m just…” I shrugged again. “I’ve learned to live with it.”
We walked for a while. By silent agreement we sat down on the stoop outside my building, finishing our pizza. I felt a click, the temperature rising a notch. “Why?” I said. “Did you want to say something about Julia? Do you have something you need to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. You’re not tempted to say ‘I told you so’? That you could have seen this coming all along?”
“I’d never say that.”
“Aren’t you the one who called her self-centered? Don’t you remember?”
“Yes,” he said, picking at his pizza crust. “But I didn’t mean like that.”
“What did you mean, then?”
Arthur was silent for a long time. Finally he cleared his throat. “Okay. Yeah, maybe I thought you guys shouldn’t have lived together. That wasn’t a great idea. I’ll stand by that. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like her. It doesn’t mean I think she’s some terrible person, that you should never think about her or talk to her again. I mean, she made some pretty big mistakes. But so did you, right? You guys both screwed up. I just don’t think it does anyone any good if you keep hanging on to it. If you don’t let yourself move past it.”
“You think I’m hanging on to it?”
“Aren’t you?”