Chapter 23
Brooklyn
A llison looked like a kicked puppy showing up at the front door, and she didn’t have to say anything—I stepped back and let her in. Really didn’t want to talk about Ryan, but I had a feeling Allison wasn’t about to be chatty either.
“Have you had dinner?” she said, which reminded me that I did, in fact, still have to eat. I hadn’t even had lunch.
“I’ve got some pizza dough,” I said. “Any topping requests?”
“Pizza sounds incredible. I want mushrooms.”
That was specific. Allison had never once asked for mushrooms on her pizza. I wondered if Stella liked mushroom pizza… “I’m pretty sure I’ve got a can sitting somewhere. Make yourself comfortable. Do you want a drink?”
“I want an entire bottle of whiskey.”
“If we’re sneaking you alcohol, we’re not starting you off with depression binge drinking. Bad habit to build.”
Allison gave me puppy-dog eyes as I shut the door behind her. “Something with a lot more sugar than I should be drinking at this time of night, then.”
“Yeah… I might do the same.”
Allison was just as quiet as I’d thought, going straight out onto the back patio and hovering around the couch, alternating between crashing on it and meandering around the back to stare out over the greenery behind the house, but it didn’t lead to me thinking any less about Ryan. Just meant I didn’t even have a conversation to distract myself with. Cutting dough and rolling out pizzas had never felt so monotonous, so miserable, and I was itching to do something by the time I was out on the patio with her, checking the heat on the oven before I slid the pizzas in.
Of course, I’d been itching to do something since earlier, when I’d had to handle the unbearable task that was saying goodbye to Ryan. Thanks for coming around, I’d tried to say, like it was all casual and like I wasn’t going to cry as soon as she was out the door.
Ugh.
“I told her,” Allison said as I was setting down her colorful drink, and I looked up at where she sat huddled in the corner of the couch, swaddled in a blanket, cast in long orange light from the torch lighting.
“Told… who? What?” I didn’t know if she was talking about Ryan or about Stella, but I wasn’t stoked to think about either one. I was wrong, though.
“Isabel.”
“Who…?”
Allison smiled thinly. “The girl whose girlfriend cheated with me…”
“Oh, yeah. Oh. God.” I dropped into the chair across from her, leaning forwards, desperate for anything to talk about, think about, other than Ryan and the overwhelming fact that she wasn’t here anymore. “How did it go?”
“It was as shitty as I’d expected,” she said with a halfhearted shrug, eyes looking somewhere just past me. “She laughed and told me her girlfriend wouldn’t be interested in me. Kept sending me harassing messages for hours after I’d tried to end the conversation with, you know, sure, do what you like, I just wanted to let you know, but she was still going, all… what are you after, why are you trying to sabotage our relationship, are you trying to get us to break up, are you trying to sleep with her, are you trying to sleep with me. And a lot of insults.”
“Christ, what an asshole.”
She shrugged again. “It’s a normal psychological response, isn’t it? She has to either figure out a way that I’m a lying dirtbag with an agenda, or reconcile the idea that her picture-perfect relationship with her hot girlfriend is broken. Of course it’s easier to revert defensively to the former.”
That was mature. More mature than I was. “I guess. Still a jackass.”
She grinned, just the littlest spark of Allison there in it. “I mean, didn’t say she wasn’t.”
“Okay, I’m glad we’re on the same page.” I stood up, picking the pizza peel off the wall and sliding the pizzas out, traying them up on the coffee table before I sat back down, picking up my drink and swirling it. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this from me, but hey, I’m damn proud of you. Just… takes a lot of guts, facing that kind of thing.”
She looked down. “Thanks…”
“How are you feeling?” That was a stupid-ass question. “About that whole thing specifically.”
“Honestly? Completely fine.” She let out a long, heavy sigh, shifting and lying down on the couch, one leg kicked up over the back. “A lot better. Now I know they’re both just a couple of douchebags, and I’m not the bad guy here.” She paused. “And there’s this one… tiny… vindictive little part of me that looks at all their pretty photos and happy relationship posts, and I look at the blonde bombshell there who sent me the most vile messages, and I’m like… ha. I fucked your girlfriend. So who’s winning now?”
“You do what you’ve gotta do to survive these situations.”
“Hopefully fucking other people’s girlfriends isn’t something I gotta do in the future. It sucks. Everything sucks. I just… wanted to… be better,” she said, her voice falling off into the tiniest little thing, almost swept away under the distant sound of the ocean waves. She gave me a small, vulnerable look, eyes shimmering. “Do you feel that way too…?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, looking away. “Not really,” I lied. I think it was a lie. I didn’t fucking know anymore.
“Oh… maybe it’s just me.” She turned her gaze back to the sky. “I just… god, Stella is… she’s so far out of my fucking league. I feel like I had some kind of encounter with divinity. I’m so fucking sad she left, but… I’m just really grateful I got to spend time with her. And I guess maybe there’s this part of me that’s like… if she saw something in me, maybe I’m not the worst in the world. Or maybe I at least have the potential to be something worthwhile.”
I swallowed against the bitter feeling in my throat, putting on a smile. “Love comes in a lot of ways, takes a lot of forms, and a lot of the time, it hurts. A lot. But I’ve never heard someone regret loving somebody.”
Allison snorted. “Is this because I’m a lesbian, you think I’m in love with her after we were together for a couple days?”
“I don’t think you’re in love with her, but I think you felt things that are in the same category as love, don’t you? You loved things about her. You loved the time you spent with her. Don’t waste your feelings away by sitting around overanalyzing them.”
She scoffed, sitting up to take a long sip of her drink and crashing back down before she mumbled, “Are you… are you doing okay?”
“I’m all right,” I lied. That one I definitely knew was a lie. “I’ll be all right,” I said, that one maybe true. Hard to say.
“You really didn’t want to… I don’t know. Ask her to come back?”
I snorted, turning away. “Forget it, Allison. It’s done now.”
“She’s different from the others, isn’t she? She really meant something to you.”
“I’ve got a big heart. Lots of people mean something to me.”
“Don’t give me—”
“Even Laura means something to me. That’s saying something.”
She groaned. “You’re even worse than I am when you’ve gotten your heart broken.”
I turned on her, my lips pursed tightly. “Allison, what am I supposed to do? If I’d asked her to make something more serious out of this, then either she’d say no and I’d feel like crap, or she’d say yes and mess with her already fragile life situation trying to make this work with me, and then I’d feel even worse, screwing with her life like that.”
“You know—”
“No, I don’t know.” I stood up. “I don’t know anything. But that’s how it goes. It sucks when someone leaves. It sucks when everyone leaves. But you get used to it. You get used to the fact that you don’t get used to it—used to the fact that it’s going to hurt every time, and you’re going to be broken for a few days after. And yeah, this is worse than usual. Might be a whole week. But life’s made up of a whole lot of weeks. It’ll go on. I’ll get better. And I’ll find someone else to pass a week with, and then I’ll be a little sad about them leaving, and then I’ll get better. Nobody’s got a perfect life happy all the time. Trying to pretend like you do is how you end up like that asshole Isabel harassing someone who lets you know your girlfriend was unfaithful. I’m going to be miserable sometimes. It doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong.”
Allison was quiet, hunching her shoulders, staring down into her drink. I muttered a quiet curse, flopping back down onto the seat next to her.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to go off on you. I appreciate you coming around and checking in. I’m just a little bit of a mess at the moment.”
She laughed thickly. “Okay, well, verdict is, I don’t think I like hookups.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not sad I did it, though… thanks. For the push, and everything.”
I shook my head with a dry, quiet laugh. “You’re a better person than I am, Allison. Glad I get to at least make you pizzas. Now eat up. It’s getting cold.”
“It was just in a trillion-degree oven. It’s not getting cold that fast.” But she took a bite of pizza, chewing slowly, as we looked up at the stars, crisp and clear out here over the water, and I said,
“I’m glad she’s a writer.”
“Ryan?”
“Yeah. I subscribed to her newsletter. Under a different email that doesn’t have my name in it… just in case. I’ll get to read her writing, and it’ll be like I’m hearing her voice again. So I’m going to be very well-informed.”
“Christ, you’re down bad.”
“Christ, I really am.”
She snorted, and she took another bite of pizza, taking a long time before she said, “Stella’s studying graphic design, so I, uh, I followed her Instagram. She posts a lot of her work there. She’s really good.”
“You’re just as down bad…”
“At least I used my actual name.”
“Okay, you win just this once. It’s still close, though.”
“I’ll give you that.” She sighed. “I kept telling her we should go do painting or something together, but we never actually got a chance to do it… now I feel sad I didn’t get to put my studies to good use trying to impress a hot girl.”
“Do some paintings and post them on your Instagram. She did follow you back, right?”
“I am not becoming an art influencer just to get her attention. I’d be just as bad as you then.”
“ Just as bad, you’d be ten times worse. I could see you doing it, though.”
“Ten times is a lot. Have you seen how bad you are? Maybe just like… three times worse.”
“Five times.”
“Five,” she settled. “I almost wish we hadn’t added each other… a clean break would have been easier.”
“Says the one chiding me for having a clean break…”
“I said I almost wish it. Ugh. What’s the sense in life if you’re not going to spend it looking for something good?” She pointed an accusing finger at me, and I flinched looking at it. “If you’re just cutting out everything that makes you happy because one day you might not have it? When everything we have in life, everything that’s good and everything that’s bad, all of it is temporary anyway? There’s no difference between hiding from everything you want and just lying down to die. Jesus, why were any of us born if not to go and look for those things that make life good? What’s the point of carrying on each day just wincing that the next one might hurt?” She dropped her hand, looking down at the ground. “What a stupid-ass fucking mindset.”
I didn’t say anything—let the silence set in, let the sound of the wind in the trees and the low crackle from the brick oven, the distant rolling of the tides, the occasional hum of a car driving past, fill the night air around us, before, finally, I said, “You’re going to start posting your paintings, aren’t you?”
“Ugh. Yeah.”
“You are good at it. I’m sure she’ll notice. Maybe she’ll say damn, what a cool painting, let’s have video sex. ”
“You’re so annoying.” She paused. “That’d be nice. I, uh, I don’t think it’d happen, though.”
Kind of embarrassing how she was braver than I am with these things. Not embarrassing because there was something wrong with her, just… she’d made it clear since the first time she got here that she looked up to me, followed me as some kind of role model, even though she’d die before she admitted that to my face. Cool, confident queer woman who owned her sexuality and didn’t need her family’s approval of it. And now, here I was, letting her down.
Letting myself down.
Maybe one day I’d be better. Or maybe I was wasting my life away shrinking away from the next day. And maybe trying to look cool and confident didn’t mean anything when I didn’t have the guts to do something hard.
Maybe. Who could say?