Chapter Twenty Three
TWENTY-THREE
You ordered the two-egg combo at Perkins with an entire pot of black coffee.
Four days had passed since the last good day at the quarry, though you didn’t know to call it that yet.
At this point, you assumed there would be more good days.
That somehow things would get back on track with Sean and all would eventually be well.
The problem was: You couldn’t quite see the path back.
And in the meantime, you didn’t know what to do with yourself.
Sean and Diana were the only people you liked to spend time with, and now it was painful to be around both of them.
So you sat alone in your favorite booth.
You weren’t sure what to expect going to Perkins by yourself, but it was as if someone had put the whole place on a dimmer.
The lightness you’d once felt just sitting in this booth, the one that faced the car dealership across the street, was gone, and you noticed things that you previously hadn’t.
The ancient cigarette burns in the upholstery from when you could still smoke in restaurants.
The cobwebs in the hanging light above the table.
And the regulars, who once seemed like a lively cast of extras from an indie film, now revealed their true nature as lonesome insomniacs scowling over a cup of coffee.
Geoff came to take your order, and he paused when you were done, like maybe he wanted to ask about Diana.
But he didn’t. Instead, he just looked at the empty spot across from you and muttered your order to himself before disappearing to put in the ticket.
In the lobby, a middle-aged man in sweatpants played the claw machine, and no matter how many times his three-fingered robot tried to abduct a unicorn, it came up empty-handed.
Still, the guy fed it a seemingly endless supply of crisp dollar bills.
You tried not to read into this, but suddenly everything felt like a painfully obvious symbol for the human condition. When you’re depressed, the whole world is a tragedy. Especially if you’re in a Perkins alone.
“Sta radis, bre?”
Before you could even turn your head to look, she sat down in the seat across from you and opened a menu, hiding her face like a spy. You thought you smelled alcohol, but there was a base layer of perfume that made it hard to tell.
“Whoa,” you said. “Where did you come from?”
Diana ignored you, lazily turning the pages of a menu she had long ago memorized.
She was wearing the same jean jacket she’d had on the night you met on the garage roof.
Only in the time since, she’d covered it in buttons she found at thrift stores with Sean.
Your favorite was a small green one that just read DANG!
Ordinarily, it would make you laugh just looking at it, but this time, you were too distracted.
“Now,” she said, “should I get the Pot Roast Stroganoff or the Hibachi Fried Chicken Skillet? So many choices…”
She slurred her speech just a little when she spoke, and there wasn’t a hint of a smile on her lips. Instead, she just stared at you glassy-eyed and dropped the menu. In the time you’d been coming here, Diana had never ordered anything other than pancakes. Not a single time.
“How did you know I was here?” you said.
She clicked her tongue.
“Then again,” she said. “The Double Seafood Catch does sound enticing. Because when I think fresh seafood, I think Perkins. Don’t you?”
Diana folded her hands over the menu, and Geoff appeared as if summoned by a bell. You could have sworn you saw the beginnings of a smile on his face as he set your eggs down and paused next to Diana with his pad at the ready. She cracked her knuckles and said:
“Geoffrey, I shall have the pancakes this evening.”
“You got it, boss,” he said.
Then he was gone and so was the menu. And Diana looked at you like she was really trying to figure you out. You glanced down at your food, knowing you no longer had an appetite for it. You picked up your fork anyway.
“What does it mean?” you asked.
“What?” she said.
You poked at an egg, breaking the yoke and watching it erupt.
“The Serbian. When you sat down.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Did you learn absolutely nothing from me?”
Another pot of coffee was set next to yours, and Diana poured a cup, dumping in her usual packets of sweetener and watching them dissolve. You managed a bite of hash browns, and it felt like you had to tell your body to chew each time.
“Sorry,” you said. “I guess I just don’t remember that one.”
She shuffled out of her jean jacket and adjusted a strap on her tank top.
“Sta radis, bre?” she said again, a bit more slowly. “It means ‘what the hell are you doing?’”
“Oh.”
“And I said it in Serbian because I didn’t think you would answer me. At least not truthfully, and so what does it matter if I say it in a language you don’t understand? I could whisper it or write it in the sand.”
She took something out of her pocket, an airline bottle of clear liquor—vodka maybe—and poured it in her coffee. Nobody around you seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn’t say anything. Then she drank half the cup in one long gulp, and grimaced.
“I’m going to tell you something, Case, because I’m not sure if we’re ever going to have a real conversation again after tonight.”
You were already starting to sweat, and you had a lump in your throat. You wondered if she remembered saying something similar the night you met, but you couldn’t bring yourself to ask, so you just nodded and held on to your own coffee mug without drinking it.
“I haven’t known a lot of good people.”
She looked outside when she said this, as if the car dealership was full of all the awful ones.
“It’s bad luck, some of it. I get that. My family life was pretty rough when I was little.
My parents were a mess. They couldn’t take care of me, so I had to live with a grandma I barely knew.
My mom said it was temporary, but then she never came back.
And, along the way, I also kind of chose friends and boyfriends who weren’t the best. Sometimes I think it was on purpose.
Like, I had a homing device for assholes.
I wish I could explain it to you, but the only thing I can say is that I felt terrible and part of me didn’t want to stop feeling terrible. It was mine, that feeling. And it was…”
She stopped to burp and push her coffee away.
“Familiar.”
You connected to this with your anxiety, the way it was better sometimes just to sink into it than to fight it. But all you said was:
“Okay.”
“I thought that was the case with Sean. I thought I was choosing another jerk. He had all the signs with his dive-team swagger. But it turned out he was kind of a decent person. And so I stuck around. It’s nice to be at your house, where things are quiet and your parents basically love you and let you live your own lives.
It’s nice to be there with him in that place. And it’s nice to be there with you.”
Your face was in flames, but her eyes were so unfocused that you wondered if she could even see you clearly. You set your fork down again.
“I wasn’t expecting to find a friend too.”
The word friend kind of destroyed you. It was the first time she’d said it about you, and it was so powerful to know she’d thought it too.
“And maybe it’s weird that my best friend is my boyfriend’s brother. I get that. It’s kind of strange. And maybe it was always going to cause some problems. But this…”
She motioned around, at you and in the air.
“It’s killing me, Case.”
She took a second to rub her eyes, smearing her mascara.
“I can do breakups. I’ve done so many. For a while, I wondered if I even felt real emotions about them.
But it turns out I do feel things, because friend breakups are heartbreaking!
It’s not like I’m tired of making out with you.
It’s like: I’m tired of really knowing you.
So I’m going to ask you one time. Right now.
Can you please just tell me what’s happening?
I asked Sean, and he said you were fine.
That you just get kind of emo sometimes, and to give you some space.
But I’m not good at pretending. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t care about this. ”
Right as she finished talking, Geoff arrived with her pancakes. They were topped with a neon butter pat, and you watched as it oozed down the side of the top pancake.
“Sean said what?”
She seemed surprised at your tone. She didn’t touch her pancakes. She didn’t move.
“He … he just said, you know, with your anxiety or whatever you just kind of get in these moods where you hide from everyone. And that I shouldn’t read too much into it. He said you’d snap out of it eventually, and everything would be fine.”
“That I’d snap out of it?”
Your throat felt hot. And you barely saw what was in front of you.
Your therapist had always told you to take some time.
Think before you speak. Don’t let your emotions do the talking.
That’s how the anxiety wins. But you were not feeling anxiety in that moment.
You were finally feeling anger. So much pent-up anger.
And you were not used to it coming over you so fast and so intensely.
But you managed to take a single breath.
“I’m sorry,” you said. “But it’s just hard.”
“What’s hard? Being around me?”
You sighed.
“Yeah,” you said.
You watched as she paused for a second and then laughed.
“Okay, well, I’m glad we cleared that up.”
She picked up the coffee cup again and took another drink.
“I don’t mean it that way,” you said.
And you felt for a moment like you might actually split in two. That’s how intense the rift was inside you. But you swallowed it, and it hurt in your chest.
“I liked our time together,” you said. “When it was just me and you. And it’s a little weird having Sean back. He’s going through something. He’s changing. It’s a good thing, I guess. But it’s just…”
“Different,” she said.