“Let’s RSVP,” he says. “Let’s go to their wedding. And get wasted. Eat the cake before they’ve even cut it, and puke on the dance floor.”
I laugh. “Okay.”
“I’m serious,” he says. “Let’s go.”
“No way,” I say.
“Okay, fine,” he replies. “Then let’s just say we’re going.”
“Miles,” I reply, “why?”
“To make them sweat,” he says. “And pay ninety dollars a plate for dried-out chicken that no one’s going to eat.”
“Their parents will pay for that chicken,” I say. “And I don’t know about the Comers, but the Collinses are lovely people.”
He flinches. I’m not sure at which part, but something I said definitely shifted his mood a bit. “They’re also rich,” he says. “Ninety dollars is nothing to them, and at least this way, they have to spend the next few months worrying that we’ll show up and ruin their big day.”
“Maybe they don’t care,” I say.
The smirk seeps from his face. “Shit,” he says. “You’re right. I guess that’s why they invited us.”
I snort. “You know why they invited us, Miles. Because they’re both addicted to being universally loved. And they’re good at it. Good enough that they don’t realize you don’t get to be loved by people whose hearts you completely fucking destroy. They think they’re being the bigger people right now. But they don’t get to be the bigger people. For the next few years, they have to live with being the assholes.”
He seems unconvinced, but now I’m sure.
“We should RSVP,” I say. “They’re not the bigger people. Fuck that!”
“Fuck that!” he agrees.
“Fuck that!” I half shout.
Mr. Dorner pounds on the wall. Miles presses a pointer finger to my lips. “Fuck that,” he whispers.
“Fuck that,” I whisper back.
He watches my lips move against his finger. I feel another pleasant zing. “We should go to bed,” I say.
And then, because it came out a little too low, I say, “I mean, I should get to bed.”
He lets his hand fall away. “After we RSVP.”
I awake to bright midday light and a walloping headache. Last night returns to me in bits and pieces, in no particular order.
A drunken walk home.
The tattered felt of a pool table.
A rough finger against my lips.
Laughing in the hallway.
And then Mr. Dorner? Was? There? For some reason? At some point?
Before that, or maybe after, Miles and I drank red wine straight from the bottle.
At some point, we were out on the street, walking with our arms around each other, his hand curled against my waist where my shirt had ridden up. My neck and face go hot.
I’m trying to fast-forward through the memories, to be sure I only did anything mildly embarrassing and nothing irrevocably humiliating.
The fast-forward doesn’t help. I remember falling into bed, exhausted, only to realize I couldn’t sleep, because I was also a little bit turned on.
Oh my god, did I cry at some point?
Wait. Did Miles cry? Surely not.
I feel around for my phone and find it tangled in my sheets. I guess I at least had the wherewithal to turn off my alarm. It’s almost noon.
I never sleep this late.
I scroll through my texts, searching for incriminating evidence of my drunkenness. But I didn’t send a single message after work.
There is, however, something else worrying on my home screen.
A new icon.
A dating app.
I have no recollection of downloading it. I don’t really remember anything after the bar.
I clamber out of bed and wait for the pounding in my skull to subside before staggering out into the living room. I feel like I’m made of nuclear waste.
The apartment is quiet, but not clean. A half dozen half-drunk water glasses litter the coffee table, the counter, and the two-person breakfast table. The bottle of coconut rum is empty, and both wine bottles are down to dregs.
I feel like Hercule Poirot, stumbling on a murder mystery without any body or even blood, just the bothersome suspicion that something happened here. Something important.
And then my phone starts ringing in my hand.
I see his name onscreen.
All at once, I remember.
And I really, really wish I didn’t.
OceanofPDF.com
5
SUNDAY, MAY 19TH
90 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
I try to gather myself, to catch my breath and clear my throat, so I won’t have to answer in a dehydrated croak.
Of course, I don’t have to answer.
But this is the first time I’ve heard from Peter in weeks, and the thought of not hearing what he has to say—of simply wondering, forever—makes me feel sick.
Just kidding, Gill’s shots are doing that just fine.
The name Gill just occurred to me out of thin air, the image of his braided gray beard flashing across my mind.
I clamp my phone against my ear and beeline toward the window for fresh air. It’s cool out, more spring than summer today.
“Hello!” I say, too loud, too forceful, and too cheery. A rare trifecta.
“Daphne?” Peter’s soft voice fills my head like helium.
“Yes?” I say.
There’s a pause. “You sound different.”
“I feel different,” I reply. No idea why that’s what comes out.
“Oh.” There’s a silence on the other end.
“So,” I say.
Another pause. “So, I got your RSVP?”
I dig the heel of my hand into my forehead and press, hard, against the throbbing there. “Yeah.”
“And I guess I just . . .” He takes a breath. “I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“Okay?”
I feel like I’m back in high school calculus, random bits of equations and numbers drifting around me nonsensically: there’s some kind of meaning there, but I do not have the right brain to interpret it.
“Yeah, I mean . . .” A soft breath. “You don’t have to come, you know.”
My laugh sounds more like a cough.
“I mean, of course we’d love to have you,” he hurries on.
The sound of we alone is enough to make the contents of my stomach flip around like I chugged clam chowder, then hopped on a roller coaster. We used to be the we he talked about.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew there was no pressure on our end,” he says.
Our. We.
Let’s get all the most painful words out on the table and make sure each one positively drips with condescension.
The worst part is, even after all this, I’m not positive I don’t love him. I mean, not this version of him, but the part that remembered every important date, who brought home flowers just because he happened to be walking past a cart selling them, the Peter who had my favorite soup delivered to me every time I got sick.
The parts reserved for her now.
“We know how hard this must be for you,” he’s saying, and just like that, he snaps back into the other Peter. The one I hate. “And I just . . . I hate to think of you there, on your own . . .”
As if this whole thing isn’t humiliating enough, he’s called me to make sure I know he feels bad for me. I’m seeing red.
“I won’t be alone,” I say.
