CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
LINA
“ H ow was the baby shower?” Kara asks the moment I walk through the apartment’s entryway and past the kitchen. Her bedroom is wide open, giving me a perfect view of her perfectly made bed, with a model brain on her nightstand, sitting atop a stack of her neuroscience textbooks.
From what she’s told me, she’s been starting to study for the MCAT, and I can only imagine the type of neurotic process she’s turned it into. Color-coded tabs in all of her textbooks, a study schedule taped to her closet door, and highlighters found on every surface in the apartment.
“It was good,” I say, stepping into her room. It’s much cleaner than mine, yet it feels like that's where we always end up congregating. “Claire and a few of Abby’s friends really went all out. They even made Grant wear a tux since he was the only man there.”
Shockingly, they didn’t make him pass out hors d’oeuvres the entire time, so he spent a majority of the shower sitting next to me with his arm wrapped around the back of my chair, grazing his fingertips across the collar of my sweater or hooking them in the belt loops of my jeans.
As I sit on Kara’s bed, she stands from her desk chair and begins darting around the room. She looks dazed and panicked, something I rarely see from her.
“What are you looking for?” I ask when she opens every drawer of her dresser, digging through them like she’s lost something vital. Her hands are jittery and uncharacteristically frantic.
“Did you sleep alright?” she asks, still occupying herself around the room. It’s obvious she’s trying to change the subject.
“Yeah. I slept fine.” I sit up straighter. “Kara, what are you looking for?”
She shuts a drawer too hard, making me jolt back. Now I’m worried. I also think I know what this is about. I’m not sure whether she’s going to admit it or not. I don’t know if I want her to, either.
“I thought I had something,” she says, her voice sounding completely void. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you okay?” I hate that I’m the one here to handle this. I love Kara, and I want to help, but out of everyone who lives in this apartment, I am the least equipped to handle emotionally sensitive situations. “You seem off.”
Kara snorts, like it’s the understatement of the century.
“What’s wrong?” I ask again.
“I’m fine.” She turns toward me for the first time.
She doesn’t look fine. Her pupils are blown wide, and there’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead despite the window being cracked.
I squint at her, noticing her mismatched socks. I’ve never seen her uncoordinated like this. “Are you on something?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I stand from her bed, taking a lengthy step toward her. “I can tell by looking at you that you’re on something.”
“It’s just Xanax,” she tells me after a long moment.
My brows furrow. “You got prescribed Xanax?”
I don’t know a whole lot about the drug besides the fact that it’s supposed to calm people down, but I’m sure Kara does.
She straightens slowly. “Not technically.”
That’s all it takes for me to get the picture. “Are you serious right now?”
“Don’t make a thing of it,” she mutters, eyes darting toward the door. “I’ve got a shadowing shift this weekend. I just needed something to calm me down.”
“That’s not calming,” I snap. “You look like you’re about to sprint out of your own body.”
“Okay, well, I wouldn’t need it if I didn’t feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin every time I tried to sleep,” she fires back. “I’m not you, Lina. I can’t just go running and pretend it’s a cure.”
I’m really not trying to make this about me, but the first place my mind goes to is Grant. How this would make him feel. Whether he would ever come over again if he found out my roommate is taking pills she bought off the street. And that’s just what she’s telling me about.
I can barely look at her; I’m so angry. “Kara.” I take a deep breath, turning away from her. “My boyfriend’s mom died of a drug overdose . When that article came out about you in Notes of New Haven, I told him that you’d never bring that stuff into our apartment. You are making me a liar. ”
It’s not my business to tell. I know. But I’m trying to find anything I can say to get through to her right now.
“It’s neither of your guys’ problem,” she says, as if it means nothing.
The door bursts open before I can respond.
“Is Meredith okay?” Savannah asks, joining us in Kara’s room. “She’s been in the bathroom for forty-five minutes, and I can hear the sink running.” I hadn’t even realized she was here.
She must’ve been waiting in my room for me to get back and heard Meredith through the wall—our bedrooms are on the same side of the apartment, and the bathroom sits right between them. The walls are practically made of tissue paper; every drip of the faucet travels through like a broadcast.
It doesn’t matter now. She’s here and concerned about Meredith. And of course every issue happening in our apartment has to happen all at once.
“I’ll check,” I say quickly, glad for the distraction. As I move, Eden walks in, cradling one of the blankets that usually resides on the back of the couch.
“Hey,” she says gently, eyes flicking between us. “Everything alright?”
Kara snorts. “Depends on who you ask.”
I head into Meredith’s room, no longer wanting to bother with Kara. I knock on her bathroom door. “Mer?”
After a pause, the sink turns off and the door opens. Meredith steps out slowly, sweater sleeves pulled halfway over her hands.
“Sorry. My contacts were bugging me,” she says. Her voice is off. Too light.
Does Meredith wear contacts? I glance down. The sink is spotless, the hand towel folded perfectly. But she doesn’t meet my eyes.
Before I can press, Kara’s voice cuts across the hall, slicing through the silence like a blade. “I guess we’re all lying today, aren’t we?”
I expect her gaze to be fixed on Meredith, but when we exit her bedroom and cross the hall back into Kara’s, she’s looking directly at Eden.
What the fuck is going on right now? I just got home, and within the two days I’ve been gone, our apartment turned into a powder keg getting ready to blow up.
“You want to take a guess at what I’m referring to?” Kara asks Eden.
Eden’s face pales. “I?—”
“Actually, I change my mind.” Kara pushes past her and into the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”
My eyes trace back and forth between the two of them, eventually narrowing on Eden. “What is happening?” I mouth to her.
She has a guilty look on her face. We all know that whatever it is, she won’t be able to deny it.
“You’re fucking Jack,” Kara says with her normal calculated demeanor, despite how her accusation drops like a bomb.
Everyone freezes. Including me.
“Wait,” Savannah says, holding a hand up, “Jack? As in, Kara’s ex-boyfriend, Jack ?”
It’s a rhetorical question. We all already know the answer. Savannah simply isn’t comfortable with silence and had to fill it with something.
Eden opens her mouth like there might be an apology forming on her tongue, but it closes again. She just stands there, her eyes brimming with shame as she wraps the blanket tighter around herself.
Kara doesn’t scream. She doesn’t throw anything. Somehow, her silence is louder.
Meredith and Savannah fall further into Meredith’s bedroom, whispering to each other. I can’t say anything because I’m still focused on Eden.
Eden, who has spent every minute I’ve known her caring for other people. Who takes care of the dishes that get left out and folds our laundry for us when we leave it in the dryer.
It makes no sense why it would be her—why she would be the one to commit such an act of betrayal.
I don’t want to think like that yet. I can’t immediately condemn her because right now, I’m only receiving facts. I need context to understand.
After all, humans need narrative to survive. It’s why most people remember stories and not facts. While that may not apply to me, it doesn’t take away from the fact that I need the full story to understand the insanity unfolding in front of me.
She finally speaks, her voice wrecked. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”
Kara laughs, except it’s completely hollow. Sharp and humorless. “Oh great!” She claps. “I guess that takes away the fact that you hopped on my ex-boyfriend’s dick the second we broke up.”
Eden flinches at that. We all do.
“What the hell happened while I was gone?” I mutter, more to myself than anyone.
Kara leans back against the kitchen counter and crosses her arms. “Jack and I broke up because he said I was too much. Too intense. Too erratic. And I believed him. I apologized for being hard to love.”
She looks right at Eden again. “And all that time, he was waiting for someone easier.”
“Stop,” Eden whispers, voice cracking. “Please.”
“Don’t beg,” Kara snaps. “It’s pathetic.”
“Okay!” Savannah yells suddenly, stepping between them. “Time-out. Everyone, just—” She spins around like a referee in stilettos. “I’m starting to get the feeling that someone is going to commit a crime, and I, for one, don’t look good in orange.”
It doesn’t break the tension in the room. In fact, I think the idea of a crime only urges Kara on.
“I’m not even mad about Jack. I wasn’t what he needed, and if you are, then great !
I wish you, and your white picket fence, and your three kids the best!
” Her breathing is erratic, and I’m sure the drugs pumping through her system aren’t the only reason she’s shaking like a leaf.
“The issue I have is that you didn’t go behind my back with my ex-boyfriend because you’re in love with him.
You did it just to have sex with him and move on. It’s what you do.”
“That’s not fair,” Eden says, barely audible.
“Isn’t it?” Kara fires back. “Because I think it’s a pattern. And the worst part? You wrap it up in this whole sweet-girl, sunshine act. Like you just fell into it. But you don’t fall into someone else’s bed, Eden. You fucking crawl. ”