18. Morningside Heights, USA
18
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, USA
Before
P aul was waiting in front of Guy’s brownstone apartment when the trio of girls arrived. Bee and Sophie were laughing, heels clicking in effortless rhythm and arms linked while Alex strode a few feet ahead. It was demanding the work of every cell in her body to appear normal, to smile at the appropriate moments and pretend as if she hadn’t just spent the last three hours perfecting her appearance for a man who was dating someone else. Paul extended his arms to her, taking her in his embrace and whispering “Let’s talk” in her ear before turning to air kiss the other two, saying he would be right up after he called his dad to put more money in his account.
“Ugh,” Sophie moaned, rolling her eyes as she clicked up the stairs, “I hate those calls.”
Once the girls were safely buzzed into the building, Paul turned to Alex.
“Well, you do look very hot,” he opened. “So there’s that.”
“Thank you.”
When she said nothing else, he presented her the logistics of the matter.
“Okay, so, here’s the deal: That weird motherfucker was hiding a whole relationship for the last two months. Dev told me this afternoon.”
“Don’t call him weird.”
“He is, and that’s okay. You’re weird, too.”
They briefly went quiet as a group of mutuals passed them on their way up the stairs.
“But I think it’s all good,” he continued, pivoting to an unconvincingly perky tone. “He seems totally normal. He probably didn’t have a chance to read it yet! You guys can talk on Sunday when Daphne goes back to Pittsburgh.”
“You don’t think he read it?” Her heart raced with the many possible implications, the stomach-dropping scene that might be awaiting her upstairs. “So everyone’s here? Did you ask Dev?”
“Yes, they’re here. And so is Renee, so if the whole apartment smells like Santal 33, you know why.”
“Maybe you should just tell everyone I’m sick.”
“Babe, you literally just came with Sophie and Bee. Don’t make this more awkward.”
“How could it possibly get more awkward?” She squeezed her eyes shut, embarrassed by the naive version of herself that existed five hours ago.
“Well, I did famously tell you not to write a letter.”
Her eyes snapped up, full of unearned rage. “What the fuck, Paul?”
“I’m trying to help you here. Listen.” He reached into the pocket of his cream linen pants, “Take this.”
He produced a prescription bottle with NAOMI KENNEDY printed on its label, along with the word BENZODIAZEPINE.
“Xanax?”
“Correct.”
“I’m not taking drugs.”
“It’s not drugs ,” he clarified, biting a tab into halves. He handed her one and placed the other back in the bottle. “It’s medicine, and you need to fucking calm down.”
She reluctantly placed the pill between her teeth before finding it with her tongue and swallowing it dry.
“The cooler you play this, the better it will go. I promise.”
Alex wondered why she hadn’t thought of taking Xanax before. In a matter of what felt like minutes, she had never been more at ease in her own skin. Her constantly churning anxieties over what these people thought of her—that hyper-awareness of everything, from what she was wearing to how she would describe her internship—simply ceased to matter. It wasn’t that the anxiety was gone, per se; she could still intellectually understand that it existed. But she felt as if she were in a warm pool, floating a safe distance away from the pointed edges of her own thoughts. She could almost see the potential stressors drifting by her and felt the rather odd urge to wave at them.
She could even appreciate Guy’s minimalist apartment, instead of just feeling resentful of its overwhelming niceness. She ran her hand along his light wood dining table, noting that he probably bought it while visiting his mother in Norway.
And with another glass of prosecco in her hand, rapidly going flat, as she felt no particular urgency to drink it, she had frankly never felt better. The usual suspects were there, including a few guests who always made her feel supremely inadequate, but their voices became one with the tasteful indie pop soundtrack playing on the speakers, creating a gentle hum that seemed to wrap itself around her as she gently rocked back and forth.
“Alex, hey,” Danial said, appearing before her like a storybook prince: tall and elegant, with lush black waves forming a kind of crown around his face. “You look great.” He smiled, clinking his fresh can of beer to her glass. She looked down at her own body, remembering suddenly the effort she had put into her appearance.
“Hi.” She smiled, cat-like, raising her glass to her lips. “You look good, too.”
His cheeks bloomed pink at her compliment as he laughed, looking at his can. “Can you believe we’re finally graduating?”
From over his shoulder, she could see Paul, seated in the corner of Guy’s deep white sectional and staring at her with suspicion. She smiled woozily at him and shook her head in an approximation of “it’s fine.”
Danial glanced at Paul from over his shoulder before turning back to her. “How many Proseccos have you had?” He searched to meet her unfocused eyes with his own.
She grinned, taking another deep sip from her glass. “Enough to make you handsome.”
It was strange: she could almost hear herself from outside her own body, and understood that she was being inappropriate—but she didn’t care. She only felt the base instincts of her own bitterness and desire, untempered by the usual anxiety that kept them hidden. At her words, he smiled again and looked down at his feet, so she did, too. She recognized his shoes as the nicest pair he owned, the ones whose brown leather he kept impeccably conditioned.
“Oh.” He turned, opening his arm to the beautiful blonde math genius quickly arranging herself next to him. “You know Daphne, right?”
“Of course,” Alex turned to her, pushing her curls somewhat unsteadily behind her shoulder. “It’s been a minute.”
In her altered state, she could sense that there was a deeper despair waiting for her at the base of her stomach, but that she had at least a few more hours to float on top of it, unencumbered. The enamel bangles on her wrist made a delicate tinkling noise as she brought her hand down to her side, playing with a loose thread on her dress.
“Hi, Alex.” Daphne smiled, creating a perfect little dimple in her porcelain cheek. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been good,” she mused, feeling far from her words even as she said them. “My internship starts soon so, you know, just gearing up for that.” She could hear how delayed she sounded, could feel her eyes closing into insincere half-moons as she spoke.
“Oh, yes!” Daphne’s smile deepened, and Alex marveled at her understated beauty, the perfect white teeth of early orthodontic intervention. “Danny told me all about it! NPR, that’s so exciting!”
It was, when she thought about it. In truth, it had mostly served as an ironclad guarantee that she would get to stay near Danial, but it was impressive on its own terms.
“She’s modest.” He smiled, nudging Alex’s shoulder with his fist in an almost brotherly way. He was usually never this polite around her—but then, she had never seen him with a girlfriend. “It’s really impressive.”
Even through the haze of her intoxication, his kindness toward her sent a jolt through her muffled heart. The true emotions waiting on the other side of her brain pushed forward for a split second, insisting she take the lowest possible road.
“And you’re going to be interning for Daphne’s dad, right?” Alex replied, raising her glass in sarcastic cheers. “Talk about sleeping your way to the middle.”
The two of them seemed to recoil, finding no humor in her acidic barb. It was the kind of thing she might think, but never say—at least, not to his face. For the first time since arriving, she had the distinct thought that she wanted to be less inebriated and set her glass on the table.
“I’m going to grab a drink,” Daphne chirped, leading Danial by the hand into the kitchen. Alex watched their hands together, the delicate way hers rested in his palm, the contrast of their skin. He turned and looked at her over his shoulder, something concerned and almost mournful behind his eyes that she had no desire to acknowledge.
Before she had time to rethink what she’d said, Paul appeared in front of her, placing a glass of water into her unsteady hand.
“Lex, what the fuck are you doing?”
She rolled her eyes in an unconvincing display of certainty, adjusting the top of her low-cut dress. “I’m making conversation.”
“Okay, well, make less of it then, because you look insane.”
“Hey,” she slur-whispered, pushing his shoulder, “you were the one who gave me drugs to calm me down, and look—” she raised her hands above her head, doing a little shimmy, “I’m calm!”
His eyes followed her hands as they slowly dropped back to her sides.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“I don’t know. A couple glasses of prosecco.” At the mental count, she grabbed her glass from the table, trading it in for her water, and Paul instinctively wiped his hand on the ring of condensation it left.
“Please use a coaster, you know how Guy is about his furniture. And you’re only drinking water from now on. I should have told you that.”
She was so used to being the one to worry for Paul that seeing him like this, so serious and concerned, filled her with an enormous tenderness. Without the constant internal chatter of her anxieties, she could see what he actually was to her: a guardian angel.
“I have to run back to my place to grab something for Guy,” he continued, somewhat nervously. “Why don’t you come with me?”
At his proposition, she started moving to the music, setting down her glass and taking his hands into hers for a little dance.
“No way!” she laughed, throwing her head back, “I’m having fun!”
She really was, somehow.
“Alright, well,” he looked around for Dev, spotting him in the far corner of the living room next to an enormous Bird of Paradise, and nodded. “You stay here, I’ll be back in twenty. And don’t do anything weird until then, okay?”
His hands were still in hers, moving back and forth in time with the music.
“Sure!”
“And no more drinking, I’m serious.”
She furrowed her brows in imitation, taking on the deep southern drawl of his father. “Mistah Kennedy says no more ah-drinkin’.”
“Jesus Christ.” Paul sighed. He caught Guy’s eye from across the room, who responded by tilting his head and impatiently tapping at his watch.
With a deep breath, Paul finally broke free from Alex and made his way across the room. He glanced back at her one last time, not unlike Danial had just moments earlier, before disappearing behind Guy’s front door. And as soon he did, Alex downed her prosecco and walked confidently to the kitchen.
There, a tight cluster of people gathered in the galley space, pouring drinks and passing joints and having conversations she wanted in on. Alex scanned the room before landing on a familiar face: Daphne’s sister, Renee. She was perched next to an open window and straddling the sill, one leg resting on the fire escape as she spoke to Danial and Daphne in hushed tones. Renee sat with the unique confidence of gangly, attractive women everywhere, with zero concern for her angles. In her high-waisted cutoff shorts, flowy black top, and dusty black ankle boots—worn down to disrepair from too many music festivals—Alex thought Renee looked cool and vaguely scary. She would never be so pedestrian as to dress up for a house party, and while the contrast between them would normally make Alex feel downright itchy in her bandage dress, the confluence of drugs in her system made her incapable of anything but admiration.
Alex reached for the bottle of prosecco, shaking it to discover that it was empty and hoping that it wasn’t entirely her doing. Truthfully, she couldn’t remember anymore. From across the kitchen, Renee’s eyes cut toward Alex, her ice-blonde hair whipping in her direction. Daphne turned to face Alex next, a withering look on her face that was miles away from the pleasantries they’d exchanged in the dining room. Without a word, Daphne and Danial moved past Alex and out of the kitchen, Danial once again looking back at her, this time with a look of confusion.
Alex suddenly found herself in damage control mode, her drug-induced confidence convincing her that the best move was to address Renee head-on about whatever had been said. She used her remaining coordination to move toward the windowsill, where Renee pulled a pack of American Spirit Blue from her banged-up Givenchy Pandora bag, shaking one loose.
“Do you have one more of those?” Alex slurred. She realized as soon as the words left her mouth how awkward they sounded.
“Hi, Alex,” Renee replied, shifting slightly on her seat as she lit her cigarette, notably ignoring the question. Even considering her usual condescension toward anyone whose parents weren’t blue on Wikipedia, she sounded particularly frosty.
“How are you?” Alex continued, squinting her eyes to steady her wobbly vision.
“I’m fine. I heard you got an internship in the city.” Her tone was menacing, every word icy and intentional. “Congratulations.”
“Yes.” She kept her reply as short as possible, minimizing the extent to which she could butcher it.
“And Danny’s staying here, too. That’s lucky, isn’t it?”
“Um…” Alex put a hand on the refrigerator, steadying herself. “Yep.”
There was a pause between them, Renee turning her head toward the window to exhale her smoke without ever moving her eyes. She slowly clocked Alex’s stupor before nodding almost imperceptibly, as if she were deciding to show no mercy despite their imbalance.
“Because I know you’d be ‘shattered’ if he were going back to Los Angeles. Right?”
The question hovered over them like a dark cloud, Alex remaining silent while oblivious partygoers squeezed behind her on their way to the living room. It took her several beats to understand what was happening but, even through her inebriated haze, the truth started to click into place: Renee had read her letter.
“Listen, I don’t know what your deal is,” Renee’s voice lingered disdainfully on deal as she took the time to give Alex a head-to-toe look, almost certainly noting the spots on her dress where the acrylic fabric had pilled. “But if you hurt my sister, we’re going to have a serious fucking problem, okay?”
Alex found herself unable to formulate a response, settling again for nodding as tears began to rise within her, along with a distinctly sick feeling at the base of her stomach.
“Stay away from both of them,” she continued in a raised voice, piercing her with her husky-like eyes, unwavering. “Do you understand?”
All at once, Alex realized that the hum of the kitchen had gone quiet and everyone was looking at them—including Danial and Daphne, who were standing just outside the doorway. Danial’s face was unmoving while Daphne’s was furious, and the tears slipped faster down Alex’s cheeks at the sight of them. “Please,” she thought, looking at Danial across the room, “Please help me.”
The floor began to spin beneath her, the untenable combination of drugs and prosecco and this devastating turn of events. She couldn’t bear the way he was looking at her, full of pity and confusion, his hand firmly grasping his girlfriend’s. Suddenly, her primal instincts took over, telling her to run to the sink immediately. She barely had her hands gripped to the cold metal edge before furiously heaving the contents of her stomach into it. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she vomited, still pathetically crying rivers of regret as her body rejected everything she had put into it over the past two hours.
“Gross,” Renee muttered, and Alex could hear her turning to walk out of the kitchen, boots clicking on the tile.
She felt a man’s hands on her shoulders then and, for a brief, beautiful moment, she thought it might have been Danial—that this was all a bad dream, that he was coming to tell her he’d read her letter and that he loved her, too. But when she turned her wet, makeup-smeared face to take him in, it was Dev who’d been propping her up, his forehead knitted in deep concern.
“Come with me,” he whispered, putting one of her arms over his shoulder to hold her steady. “Let’s get you out of here.”
She nodded, leaning into him as he moved with her in lockstep through the kitchen and living room. The walk out of Guy’s apartment only came to her in flashes: blurred faces, whispered conversations, and one mental image that remained seared in her brain with a cruel clarity. For the rest of her life, she would never forget it: on the coffee table amidst a tangle of other trash was her letter, the words bleeding under a heavy ring of condensation.