—
When we got home, Matt went to the kitchen for a beer. I wanted to ask him if he felt the same way I did, like the Dillons were keeping things from us, but even in my head it sounded paranoid. Maybe it was just that I’d thought our friendship was more than it was. Ash once got drunk and told me that she and Jimmy liked to role-play in the bedroom, that she owned a dirty schoolgirl costume for this very reason. And Jimmy always joked about the first hand job Ash had given him, how awful it was, how he thought she’d permanently harmed him but continued to date her anyway. I’d just assumed that friends who would tell you that much about their lives would tell you everything. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d been wrong about them all along.
But I didn’t want to upset Matt any more by talking about it, so I just opened my own beer and the two of us sat on the couch with the TV on, staring straight ahead, but not really watching.
“I wonder if they’ll move soon,” Matt said finally, and I didn’t mean to sound as irritable as I did when I replied, “Who knows what they’ll do?”
—
The next week, Celeste came to our house to clean, and at one point she said, “It’s so exciting about Mr. Jimmy’s new job.”
“It is,” I said.
“It will be exciting for him at the Facebook.”
I smiled at Celeste, wondering when she’d found out about the job. I imagined Ash telling her about the interview weeks earlier, unable to keep it in. And when Celeste said, “It’s going to be very big,” as she ran her dustcloth over our shelves, I just nodded and said, “Very big.”
—
When the Dillons told us that April that they were moving, I cried. Ash did too, and we hugged like we were never going to see each other again. But to be honest, there was a part of me that felt relieved, that thought maybe it would be better for us if we didn’t spend so much time with them. They were just so lucky, so charmed. Everything was working out for them, life was unfolding exactly as it should—and most of the time, it seemed like it was all happening without any effort on their part. And when they sat and marveled at Viv and Jimmy talked about his new job, Matt and I would watch them, more aware than ever of what we didn’t have. Sometimes when we were around them, I’d feel a sharp sense of betrayal, like they’d left us behind.
But I never said any of this out loud. Instead, we went over to their apartment the night before they left, sat in a circle of lawn chairs (all of their furniture was gone), and drank vodka out of plastic cups. And at the end of the night, when we hugged good-bye, I said, “What are we ever going to do without you here?”
Chapter 12
I sat on the bed and watched Matt pack his suitcase, carefully, as he always did. He was an unusually slow packer, folding a shirt over and over to get it right, rearranging piles to make sure they fit just so. Usually, I teased him about it, sometimes setting a timer to see if he could set a new record. But he had the same look he’d had on his face for over a month now—mouth set in a straight line, eyebrows wrinkled like he’d just heard unpleasant news—and I knew he wasn’t in the mood for a joke.
“Are you bringing your running shoes?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, not looking up.
“Okay. And you think we should leave by ten a.m. tomorrow?” At this, he just nodded. I waited a few seconds and then said, “You know, if you don’t want to go we can skip it. Or go later in the week.”
Matt looked up, surprised. “I never said I didn’t want to go.”
“I know. It’s just you seem…” I tried to find a nice way to say angry or annoyed.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know, never mind. It was just a suggestion.”
“Plus, we can’t skip it. My mom would have a heart attack.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
Matt’s parents spent most of the summer at their house in St. Michaels, Maryland, and during the third week of August the entire family joined them. Throughout the summer, Michael’s and Will’s families went up there other random weekends, and so did Meg, and sometimes even we did too. But Babs was firm on the fact that no matter what, she wanted everyone together for one week. No excuses.