Chapter Four
Four
My Thursdays and Fridays are routinely reserved for client work and practicing bass, but Gin’s coming over, and it’s been months since I’ve had company.
Thus begins my two-day deep clean. I wipe down the baseboards.
I degrease the cabinets. I scrub the floors with such aggression that even the former tenants must sense it.
I won’t let Gin be anything less than impressed.
Friday afternoon, I swing by the corner store so I can offer Gin something to drink besides water, and when I lug two cases of seltzer to the counter—one standard, one spiked—I feel a little like I’m getting away with something. Years have passed since I last bought booze.
“It’s not for me,” I assure the clerk as I slide him my ID. “It’s for my friend.” But he didn’t ask, nor does he care.
At home, I load Gin’s seltzers into the refrigerator, counting the weeks since we last hung out one-on-one.
I went over to hers the day after Rishi proposed, but I don’t think we’ve had a proper life catch-up since.
I tick off the necessary updates in my head—Dad’s replacement in The Handful and the memorial concert, plus Aidan’s slipup at the studio and, in non-dead-dad-related news, the folk EP I just finished mixing.
I pin each story to the squishy corkboard of my memory, hoping we’ll have time for them all, then check my phone to see if there’s any word on Gin’s location.
Instead, I’m greeted with a text from Mom.
Mom
Hey Alice. Any word about your availability to help clean out the Outpost before the memorial concert?
My stomach bottoms out. Shit. I distinctly remember checking my calendar, but I must’ve forgotten to text Mom about it.
Alice
Sorry, yes! I’m available.
Mom
Great! What about rescheduling dinner?
Just then, my screen flashes to an incoming call from the front gate. I buzz Gin up, then pocket my phone. Mom can wait a little bit longer.
I slide open the dead bolt just in time to watch Gin trudge up the third and final flight of stairs.
She’s fresh from work, looking every bit the fun music teacher in jeans, a green-polka-dotted blouse, and dangly earrings shaped like the treble and bass clefs.
They jostle and swing as she shoves a garment bag into my arms.
“Your clothes from the engagement dinner,” Gin explains before I can ask. She breezes past me and toes off her ballet flats. “I got ’em dry cleaned.”
“And here I was congratulating myself on pretreating that wine stain on your dress.”
“That’s perfect. You just…you know me.”
It’s universally known that no one spends more time at the end of the extra mile than Gin Bennett.
Yes, she’s liable to spill half a glass of wine on herself at the start of her engagement party, but she’d go to the ends of the earth if that’s where your favorite dry cleaner was.
How is it that I gave her the clothes off my back and I still feel like she’s the one doing me a favor?
I stow the dry cleaning bag while Gin begins a self-guided tour of the concert posters framed down the hall.
Most are vintage from the early days of The Handful, but a single Cold Sweat poster hangs in the center from my final headlining show.
I listen for Gin’s wind chime laugh when she lays eyes on my latest DIY effort: an entire living room wall collaged with vintage covers of Rolling Stone magazine.
“You’re crazy for this.” Gin twirls a finger toward my masterpiece. I track her gaze as it jumps from the old oak record cabinet to the leafy monstera plant I’ve proudly kept alive. “This place looks great,” she says, then wonders aloud, “How long has it been since I’ve been over?”
“Since, uh.” I swallow. “Not since right after the funeral.”
For a too-long moment, it’s dead air between us. Gin chews her lip, then softly asks, “Was that when I brought the lasagna?”
I have so few memories from those first few weeks without Dad, but the day Gin stopped by is one I won’t forget.
I can still hear the rustle of the trash bag as she walked laps around my apartment, deconstructing my depression nest one crumpled tissue and rotting takeout box at a time.
It was humiliating, having my ex-girlfriend bring me dinner and clean up my mess, but it was also the first time in weeks I felt any way other than sad.
It was the strangest swirl of shame and gratitude.
At least someone other than my mom and The Handful gave a shit.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “When you brought the lasagna.”
It meant more to me than she’ll ever know.
Our dinner arrives, and Gin and I unload the goods from a seemingly bottomless brown paper bag: tightly packed takeout boxes stuffed with white rice, plastic containers of curry with clear lids splashed in tomato reds and golden yellows.
Just when I’m sure I’ve unpacked the last of it, I fish out one more piece of foil-wrapped naan.
“Did you order the whole menu?” Gin teases.
“I just got you everything that was marked dairy-free.” I rip the receipt off the bag and read it aloud. “One chana masala, one chicken vindaloo, one aloo gobi, one yellow daal, two naan, and two orders of samosas.”
“So there’s a secret third person coming to dinner,” Gin guesses.
“Cute,” I say, “that you think I have a second friend.”
The air thickens with the smell of garlic and turmeric, and we scoop up double servings of everything, then settle into the couch with a stack of napkins and a seltzer apiece—a boozy black cherry one for Gin and a regular lemon sparkling water for me.
“Why do you have these?” Gin asks, tapping the side of her hard seltzer.
“I just got ’em today,” I say. “For you.”
Her eyes narrow the tiniest bit, a flicker of worry shining through.
“I’m serious.” I tuck my legs beneath me and hold a hand up in oath. “It was kind of weird, actually. My first time buying alcohol in…shit, three years?”
“Three years.” Gin glances between me and her seltzer. “You swear?”
“On my original DVD copy of The Princess Diaries.”
Satisfied, Gin nods and snaps the pop tab open. “Well, cheers to that.” But it doesn’t sit right, the way she’s raising her alcoholic beverage to my sobriety.
“Cheers to…putting in the work,” I try, and Gin accepts the revision with the tinny clack of her spiked seltzer against my sparkling water.
I take a sip and, on the subject of sobriety, prepare to deliver the latest update on The Handful when Gin slams down her can with the conviction of a judge banging a gavel.
“So.” She straightens. “I have news.”
“You’re pregnant,” I blurt, and Gin looks terribly unamused.
“No, Alice,” she sighs, and I roll my lips in, sealing my mouth shut as Gin tries again. She smiles and says, “We set a date.”
“You set a date?!”
“We set a date,” Gin repeats, “and picked a venue.”
“And you’re not pregnant?”
Gin rolls her eyes and shoots me a look that says Shut up and stop interrupting, so I scoot back on the couch, a perfect, silent listener. “So.” She starts again. “We kind of took things in a different direction.”
“You’re eloping,” I guess.
She swats my arm. “Alice! Stop!”
“Sorry, sorry!” I hold my hands up in surrender. “I’m just excited. I’ll shut up. Just tell me.”
Gin pulls her legs up onto the couch, folding herself into a perfect crisscross applesauce. “Things kind of changed after the engagement party,” she explains. “It felt more like a party for Rishi’s parents than for us.”
“I can see that,” I admit.
“Right? I hardly knew anyone there! So on the drive home, Rishi and I talked about it. We don’t want to spend our wedding day with strangers and pay for them to eat chicken or fish.”
“Plus Indian weddings are supposed to be huge, right?”
“Huge,” Gin echoes with a slow, knowing nod. “And the ceremony will still have plenty of Indian elements, but we don’t want the big production. We want something small and intimate and fun with the people we love the most.”
“Sounds perfect,” I say. “So what’s the venue?”
Gin pauses for a sip of seltzer, undeniably building dramatic effect before announcing the news. “The Bhats’ backyard. We’re gonna DIY it.”
The size of her smile makes me want to apologize for how my stomach sinks like a body in a lake. I try to mimic Gin’s expression, but I’m not the one with the theater degree. It feels like I’m wincing, so I can’t imagine how pained I look.
Gin’s face drops, her voice practically flattened. “You hate it.”
“I don’t hate it!” I say, laying the enthusiasm on thick. “I think it sounds amazing! It just…also sounds like a lot of work.”
“I actually don’t think it’ll be that bad,” Gin says brightly, then launches into an explanation she has absolutely rehearsed.
“Most of the work is just going to be gardening and landscaping, which Rishi and I can help with since I have the summer off and he’s already up in the northern suburbs for work.
We’re gonna invite maybe thirty people max, do flowers from the farmers’ market, catering from this really good Mediterranean restaurant…
super intimate, super simple. Then if Rishi’s parents want to throw us a reception with all their friends and family, that’s on them. What do you think?”
“I love it,” I say as brightly as I can, not allowing a second of delay. “You’re so right—that sounds totally doable.”
Gin’s smile comes back in full force. I guess I still can lie a little.
“So when’s the big day?” I ask.
“Labor Day weekend.”
My heart leaps halfway up my throat, but I maintain my poker face. “What day?”
“Saturday. It’s the thirtieth.”
Two days after Dad’s Gone Day. I reach for my phone, eyeing my paper calendar on the fridge from a distance. “Is there gonna be a rehearsal?”
“Probably?” Gin lifts her plate from the coffee table and rests it in her lap. “We haven’t nailed down all the details, but I promise the bridesmaids will be the first to know.”