Chapter 5
5
K icking back on Liz’s bed, a far more comfortable option than the lumpy hand-me-down that served as our living room sofa, we’d managed to nearly plow through the two bottles of wine we’d picked up on the way home from Schwilly Pete’s. We’d passed tipsy some time ago and had stumbled over into drunk territory, which Liz endorsed by inadvertently dribbling wine from her mouth as she sniggered at some dumb joke I’d made. “There’s a hole in my lip!” she exclaimed, making me crack up.
It had been a while since I’d been inebriated—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any alcoholic drink, actually. The foggy bliss that had settled over my brain was a welcome breather from all the stress and anxiety that had been plaguing me, yet underneath the haze remained a splinter of pain that would occasionally slice to the surface, reminding me of Nick’s cheating. But I would take whatever small delights I could get. I wish Liz had never brought him up, since now he was taking up precious real estate in my brain that could be used for things more important than him. Remembering to take out the trash, for instance.
Liz and her boyfriend had been attached at the hip as of late, so it was nice spending time in the apartment with just my roomie. It wasn’t that I didn’t like David. On the contrary, I thought he was a great guy, especially since he was always friendly to me and treated Liz like a queen. Still, it was the worst, being a third wheel in my own home.
They, of course, didn’t make me feel like a gatecrasher intentionally. Sometimes, though, like when the three of us would watch a movie together, the way they’d make out under their blanket and have giggly little side conversations made me uncomfortable. Resentful, even, since they acted as if I wasn’t even there. Like I, a voyeur intruding on activities meant to be private, should apologize for my presence. Which was ridiculous. What was I supposed to do, hide in my room like a little mouse until David went home?
Not wanting them to dismiss my irritation as sour grapes, I never made passive-aggressive comments along the lines of, “David, you’re here . . . again ,” though there’d been more than a few occasions when I’d been tempted to. He had an apartment nearby, so they could have gone there as easily, which they never did. Liz had mentioned that David’s roommate, a virtual stranger he’d found through an online want ad, was weird—apparently, he also smelled of stale cheese—so I suspected that might be what was keeping them away.
Liz and I had just started to discuss what else we could drink now that the wine was gone when she clamped a hand over her mouth. She knocked her empty glass to the floor, pushing me out of the way. “Sick!” she yelled as she sprinted toward the bathroom, though it came out sounding like soiiiikkkk , since she was on the brink of hurling. From the sound of it, she made it to the toilet just in time.
I shuddered, not envying her one bit. I was beginning to suspect that our side trip to the Mexican food drive-thru hadn’t been such a hot idea. “I believe this ten-dollar merlot will pair nicely with a greasy plate of nachos and beef burrito with extra sour cream,” said no one since the dawn of fast food. A sharp headache was budding behind my right eye, I suddenly realized—if signs of a hangover begin to show while you’re still intoxicated, you know it’s going to be a doozy—but I was thankful that at least I wasn’t nauseous. I quickly knocked on wood.
I started to feel guilty for loafing while Liz continued to barf. I flung back the chenille bedspread we’d been sharing and staggered to my feet, my brain sloshing around inside my skull. As I crouched to pick up Liz’s glass, I noticed a royal blue velvet box on the bottom shelf of her nightstand. I’d been in her room hundreds of times in the past and hadn’t noticed it, so I knew it that it hadn’t been there long.
Being drunk as a skunk and thus neglectful of boundaries, I opened it instead of minding my own business. I’d been expecting jewelry, so I was perplexed by the key inside, which had a purple satin ribbon looped through its center. Weird.
I returned the box to the shelf and shuffled into the bathroom, where I found Liz hunched over the toilet. Drool seeped from her mouth. She moaned.
“You look tore up from the floor up,” I said, snapping my fingers. The noise reverberated through my ears like a banging drum. “Ouch.”
Liz turned her head into the bowl to dry heave.
“Want me to get you anything?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t going to request something that required effort. Water and aspirin I could do, but if Liz wanted toast and ginger ale she was out of luck. We didn’t have either.
“Can you bring me a time machine so I can travel back and talk myself out of inhaling eighteen pounds off nachos? Nachos . . . Oh . . . God.” I looked away as she retched into the toilet.
“Maybe we shouldn’t bring up food anymore,” I suggested, starting to feel a little queasy myself.
Liz wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m good. I just need to sleep it off.” I helped her up, holding my breath as she exhaled on me. She rinsed her mouth at the sink and then we headed toward our bedrooms.
At my door, I paused. “Hey, what’s up with the key in the box? Is there a new jewelry trend, wearing a key like a necklace?”
She frowned. “Why were you snooping in my room?” Her words were slurring together, snoopinginmmmmmmyroommmmmmm. Now that I thought about it, she had been refilling her wine glass a lot faster than me.
“I wasn’t. I saw it when I picked up the glass you knocked over,” I said piously. “It was sitting out in the open—” kind of “—so I assumed it wasn’t anything you didn’t want me to see. We go into each other’s closets like every day, so I didn’t think—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted. “I just feel bad that you had to find out this way.”
I had absolutely no idea what she could be talking about. “Find what out?”
“David’s asked me to move in with him.”
“Oh.” A key. Of course. I should have seen that one coming, but that didn’t stop me from feeling blindsided.
“I’ve been trying to find the right time to tell you. I hadn’t planned on it being while we were shitfaced.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “I hope you told him that we’re on a lease. Unless you’re planning on leaving me high and dry?” I’d meant the last part as a joke, but the words came out sounding accusatory. A byproduct of a turbulent childhood, my emotional pain tended to reveal itself as anger.
“Do you think I’d bail on you like that?” Liz asked, looking pretty angry herself. “And, in case you’ve forgotten, our lease is up in sixty-three days.”
The specificity of the number told me that she’d preemptively looked it up, which annoyed me. She’d known I was going to put up a fight, which is why she’d been trying to muster the nerve to tell me. She was right about our lease being up. I’d been thinking we had at least a few more months. How time flies when you’re destitute.
“So, what, then? I’ve got two months to figure it out?” I felt sick, and not only because of the wine. “I know my money issues are not your problem, but you know how broke I am. How am I supposed to come up with a deposit for a new place, not to mention money for a U-Haul and the gallons of gas I’ll need to drive around looking for apartments? And who the hell is going to rent to me, anyway? I don’t have a job.”
“This isn’t some personal attack against you,” was all she said, as if she hadn’t heard me.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.” I’d meant what I’d said, that my shitshow finances were not her problem. Still, two months—sorry, sixty-three days —wasn’t much time. As my best friend, she could have at least acknowledged the situation she was putting me in. Not that it would change anything if she did; seemed she’d already made up her mind.
“David and I have been dating forever. Moving in together is the next step.”
“I guess.”
“ You lived with Nick, remember?”
I grunted. “And look at how well that turned out.”
“I seriously hope you aren’t comparing Nick to David. Like I’d ever be with somebody like him,” she said nastily, her words overlapping together even worse than before. “I’d rather die.”
Now it did feel like a personal attack. Was she trying to say that I had no standards? “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ignoring my question, she said, “What exactly were you hoping for, anyway? That we’d keep living together until the end of time—sit on the front porch in rocking chairs, two old biddies sipping chardonnay and bitching about how shit men are?” Like the sixty-three days comment, her words sounded prepared. I pictured her trying out each zinger on David like he was a judge at a talent show. Yeah, use that one. It’s a little mean, but funny. She’ll be laughing so hard she’ll forget how much poorer she’s about to be.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore!” I exclaimed, hoping to end the conversation. My head was pounding.
She leaned on the wall for support. “Oh, yes you do. You’re not fooling anyone. It’s so obvious how pissed you are that I’m with somebody and you’re still single. Which is funny, since you shut down completely whenever anyone suggests you start dating. You’re your own worst enemy and you don’t even see it.”
I gaped at her, incredulous. Sure, we’d had petty tiffs before, but this was absurd. “Angry drunk does not look good on you, Liz.”
“Okay, whatever you say. News flash—we’ve all got issues, Olivia. So, maybe it’s high time you got over yours and stopped using what happened with Nick as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself.”
Where the hell was all this coming from, and what did any of it have to do with her moving in with David? Had she just had too much to drink, or were these things she’d been mulling over since we’d started living together? It was so left field that I suspected the latter; alcohol is an excellent truth serum.
I thought of all the times she and David had gone quiet after I’d left the room. Had they sat around dissecting me behind my back, shaking their heads at my pitifulness? Had they smugly congratulated themselves for having found one another, thanking their lucky stars that they weren’t a lonely, pathetic mess like me?
“I’m a grown woman, Liz. I don’t want or need advice from you.”
She barked out a laugh. “Well, maybe you take some, since you haven’t had sex in over a year.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Whatever. Not every woman needs a man’s penis to validate her self-worth.”
“That’s why I’m with David, I have low self-esteem.” She rolled her eyes. “Know why you’re so bitter that I’m moving on with my life while you’re stuck on your own, spinning your wheels? Because you have nothing going on now that you’re out of school. You don’t work, you don’t date, you don’t see friends. All you do is mope and whine about how broke you are. I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt, but this is something you need to hear: you’re no fun to be around. And you’re surprised I don’t want to live with you anymore?”
Ouch.
Ouch times infinity.
“I’m so sorry that I’m too much of a loser for you!” I shouted, my eyes stinging as I held back tears. “But while you were busy self-righteously dissecting my life, did the reason why I’m so broke ever occur to you? Did it? It’s not like I have no money because of some crack addiction! I went to Dewhurst! Fucking Dewhurst!”
She snorted. “Big whoop!”
The only color I saw was red. My education and relocation to San Francisco represented so much more to me than simply going to college. It was my way of doing right by Tilly and showing all the naysayers back in Pelville that they’d been wrong about me—that it was possible for a lowly trailer park girl to make something of her life beyond marrying the first druggie lowlife who knocked her up, which is what they’d expected. Like mother, like daughter, right?
And maybe Liz had been on to something when she’d said I was jealous of her good fortune, her gorgeous boyfriend and great job that she loved. And maybe I had been feeling like a miserable failure lately. And maybe she was just drunk.
But how dare she dismiss something so important to Tilly and me, something I’d worked years to achieve, as “big whoop.”
My words oozing with sarcasm, I said, “I’ll make you a deal, Liz. How about you don’t lecture me on higher education, and I won’t debate with you the best hair masks for spilt ends. Sound good?” In truth, I thought it was so cool that she was a hairdresser, which I’d only told her about a thousand times. I’d only wanted to hurt her the same way she’d hurt me.
Clearly, I’d succeeded, because her nostrils were flaring.
“Fuck you, Olivia,” she hissed, her face lobster red. “ Fuck . Youuuuuuuuuuu .”
“Oh, so it’s okay for you to say all kinds of nasty things, but the minute someone talks back to Queen Elizabeth it’s like murder has been committed!” I took a moment to get a grip, pinching the bridge of my nose to steady my nerves. “This is stupid. What are we even arguing about anymore? We’ve both had way too much to drink. We should stop right now before we say things we’re going to regret.”
“I think we’re way past that now,” she said, skulking into her room. “But at least now I know how you really feel about me.”
“So . . . that’s it? We’re done talking?”
“Well, I’d hate to force you to keep talking to a dumbass hairdresser who is so far below your intellect.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and she slammed the door in my face.
“Broke biiiiiiiitch!” she yelled loud enough for me—and probably our neighbors ten blocks away—to hear. It must have felt good, because she added, “Snob!”
“Fair weather friend!” I shouted back. “Deserter!”
I skulked into my own room and banged the door shut. Our upstairs neighbor, mean old Batty Betty, whacked the floor with what had to be her cane. Trembling like a leaf, I leaned back against my door and gave the ceiling the finger.
My mouth tasted vile, and I was dying for water. I so badly wanted to go into the kitchen, stick my head into the sink, and suck at the faucet like a nursing calf. But that would require walking past Liz’s room, and I didn’t trust myself to keep my mouth shut, furious as I was. On the bright side, the taste inside her mouth was probably a lot worse than mine on account of her vomiting.
I opened the tin on my desk and dumped a handful of chalky mints onto my tongue, a skanky substitute for brushing my teeth. Huge mistake. After a few crunches, my throat was aflame with menthol potent enough to stop a herd of charging rhinos in their tracks. I got into bed so I couldn’t cause any more damage to myself. The way my night was going, I’d probably find a way to strangle myself with my bra.
I pulled the covers up under my chin, so riled that I couldn’t imagine falling asleep for hours. However, soon my breathing slowed and the harsh words echoing through my mind became a faraway jumble of chatter. I let go of consciousness completely, sinking deeper into a void of dreamless sleep.