23. Morningside Heights, USA
23
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, USA
Before
“A lex!” Paul shouted, briefly pausing from his otherwise incessant banging. “Open the door right now, or I’m actually calling the cops.”
It had been four days since she’d last opened it. Once Dev had safely deposited her there after the party, she’d passed out in her bed fully clothed, only waking twelve hours later. It took her a while to piece together what happened, and even longer to understand that the combination of medication and alcohol in her system could have created a far worse outcome.
Since then, she’d been holed up in her studio apartment, living off of whatever already happened to be in her kitchen. She spent her days in a half-waking state of anxiety and sadness, but her nights were manic, clicking around on her computer until she’d opened dozens of tabs across four separate windows. On the stereo she’d brought from Rochester, an old opera mix looped at all times, only shifting in volume depending on the hour.
Her phone was full of messages from people who had seen her at the party, true friends and rubbernecking acquaintances alike. Dev was worried, Paul was worried, even Bee and Sophie were worried (or, at least, they were good at pretending to be). But there had been a distinct, deadly silence from Danial, save for some unambiguous evidence on social media that he was very much with Daphne. Alex studied the photos of them from that night with the intensity of a private investigator. Renee had been merciless in her public flaunting of her sister’s relationship: she might as well have rode a horse through Morningside Heights ringing a bell and crying, “Hear ye, hear ye, my sister is in a relationship with Danial Azad and Alex Onassis is not.”
The message had been received, the speculation was over: Danial was with someone, maybe he even loved her, and Alex’s letter had done nothing but make him too uncomfortable to acknowledge her. Even their chess game remained untouched, collecting digital cobwebs as she waited in vain for him to make his move. Normally, Alex would nudge him, taunting his hesitation. But today, she only deactivated her account, eager to erase every lingering connection between them.
“I’m coming,” she finally said, willing herself to stand. “Hold on.”
She tied the belt of her tattered robe over her oversized concert tee, pushing the greasy black curls away from her face. She had showered exactly once since the party, and it only occurred to her then that she hadn’t even bothered to properly remove her eye makeup. In the tiny IKEA mirror next to her door, her reflection showed a tapestry of blotchy red and smudgy black. She looked away from her drawn, frightening expression and opened the door.
“Hi, Paul,” she said, stepping aside to welcome him in.
Her place was never a hub for entertainment, but in its current state—dirty dishes and clothes piling up, combined with her already sparse wall decor of tacked-on posters—it felt downright uninhabitable. Paul walked himself over to the threadbare couch she had inherited from her aunt on Long Island, setting his leather backpack on the floor next to him.
Alex walked to the kitchenette, shutting off the heat to the one of two burners she had lit to make some ramen noodles. From the half-fridge, she grabbed an old bottle of orange juice and snagged two glasses from what remained of her clean dishes.
“This is all I have,” she said, setting the glasses on her overfull coffee table and pouring out the last of her OJ. “Sorry.”
It was funny how the muscle memory of hospitality still took over in the presence of Paul: it had been one of the first things he taught her, the art of making someone feel welcome in your home.
“This is perfect,” Paul answered. He watched her movements with the careful speculation of a house mother. “Thanks for letting me in.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to call the cops.” She flopped herself down on the hand-me-down armchair Paul had given her nearly two years ago, her legs dangling over one of the arms. “I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s your concern.”
“It’s not,” he started, more tentatively than his words suggested. “But that’s good to know. How are you?”
“You know.” She gestured around at the worrisome state of her studio. “Not great.”
She felt something stabbing into her from the side of the cushion and reached down to pull out a hairbrush. She threw it across the room onto her unmade bed as Paul’s eyes followed its trajectory, lingering for a moment before turning back to face her.
In the ensuing silence, she moved her head to the aria that had just started. The playlist was one she’d created when she first started falling for Danial, when opera felt like the only thing capable of expressing her feelings. Now, it was like the soundtrack to a funeral: a burying of that potential love, of this version of herself. She closed her eyes, relishing the sharpness of the pain she felt, stepping intentionally toward it like a too-hot shower.
After a time, she finally broke the spell with the most self-harming line of questioning she could think of: “I saw Danial and Daphne stayed at the party all night. They were at Conrad’s.”
“I wasn’t there.” He set down his glass, looking her in the eyes. “I waited outside your building so long your neighbor threatened to report me for trespassing.”
“I was asleep.”
“I was terrified.”
She did not apologize, or even acknowledge his statement. She thought, briefly, that maybe he wouldn’t have been so terrified if he hadn’t flippantly given her Xanax, but she no longer had the energy or desire to argue. She only wanted to return, masochistically, to the subject of Danial.
“He’s still with her.”
The music swelled between them in the vacuum of her statement, taunting them with Italian lyrics about star-crossed lovers. Paul’s eyes darted toward the stereo, as if attempting to destroy it with his mind.
“What do you want me to say, Lex?” he finally said, still looking uncomfortably at the stereo. “I guess they’d been dating for a while, and it was getting kind of serious. I wish I had known.”
“Have you seen them since?”
He hesitated, and her heart fell through her stomach. Daphne would get everything that Alex had struggled so hard to cling onto, simply because she was born rich and beautiful and brilliant while Alex was a fool for ever believing she could fake her way into such a life. But then, this was the most devastating possible outcome, so in some small way the news that they’d all hung out was almost reassuring. Her humiliation was total.
“They were at Sophie and Bee’s yesterday, they just showed up. I didn’t stay long.”
She imagined the scene: the cute, feminine apartment, the group gathering on their coordinated living room furniture. Maybe someone ordered takeout and Danial volunteered to go grab it, always so gallant with that sort of thing. And Daphne would have insisted on joining him, holding his hand on the walk up the block, helping him carry it back. And after they all ate, she would have sat on his lap on the overstuffed loveseat, resting her beautiful blonde head against his chest, the rumbling depth of his laugh vibrating against her when someone made a joke.
“Did they look happy?” She asked the question with an almost eerie detachment, her voice and mind once again separating as they had many times over the past few days.
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It’s okay if they did, you know.” She took a deep breath, so exhausted from hours of jagged crying that she could only feel hollow resignation. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” His brows knitted in a pleading, anxious way. “I’m really worried about you.”
Her eyes involuntarily darted away from his.
“You don’t need to worry about me.” She shook her head, taking a defiant swig of orange juice from her chipped glass. She had allowed herself a moment of indulgence, of reaching her hand to the hot stove of Danial’s happiness, but that would be the extent of it. It was time to reclaim herself. “I’m going to be fine.”
“That’s… good to hear.” Paul reached for his own glass, taking a nervous sip before continuing. “So, are you still coming to Dev’s graduation brunch tomorrow?”
“Absolutely fucking not.” The words came out in a half-laugh, startled at the implication. Turning again to face him, she added, “I’m not going to anything except my parents’ house for a few weeks, then Athens.”
“Athens… New York?”
“Athens, Greece.” She smiled.
There was another, brief silence, and Alex saw his face flicker through a series of emotions before settling on cautiously concerned.
“NPR is letting you intern from Greece?”
“No, I quit!” Alex rose to her feet, doing a delirious sort of dance in front of her armchair, bathrobe swinging to and fro.
“Holy shit, what ?” He looked up at her, deadly serious. “You haven’t even started yet.”
“I sent them a note and told them I would be giving up my spot. I honestly couldn’t afford to live in the city and work for a stipend, anyway, so who gives a shit?” She walked over to the stereo, turning up the music and closing her eyes as she swayed along.
“Alex,” Paul said, walking over to her and placing a hand on each shoulder, “you can’t do that. You’ve worked so hard for that internship—you can’t give it up over some stupid guy.”
She moved her hands on top of his, looking him dead in the eye with more of that manic confidence. “It’s not some stupid guy,” she said, continuing to move her hips. “Danial was the actual love of my life, and I was half-staying in New York just to be with him. But now I don’t have to, because he wants to be with Daphne, which makes total sense! So I’m free!” She could hear how crazy she sounded, how full of rage and denial.
“Stop talking about her.” He moved her hands down to her sides, holding them still in his grasp. “And how are you moving to Greece?”
The question almost took her by surprise, as if something as banal as logistics couldn’t be part of the equation.
“My cousin’s friend can get me a job at this beach bar. They basically only hire English speakers, and if I start in June, I can work almost a full high season, which means more money. I’ll have enough to rent an apartment!” She nodded her head encouragingly, as if she needed his approval.
“Alex, stop.” She had never heard Paul this serious, but it only made her nod harder, feel more deliriously confident. “How are you even getting there, though? This is actually insane.”
She could feel the chaotic energy flooding her, filling her with a jittery certainty, the only thing stronger than her sadness.
“I’m a Preferred Cardholder .” She smiled, pulling his hands above their heads and twirling herself underneath them, “I have a $5,000 limit on one of the cards!”
“ One of—Alex,” he pleaded, his eyes starting to slick with anxious tears, “do you want me to call your mom?”
“I already talked to my mom yesterday,” she asserted, returning to the armchair and flopping down, bringing her laptop to rest atop her thighs. “She doesn’t get a say. And I know you think I’m out of my mind,” she continued, “but I’m not. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m actually, truly done pretending to be one of the Club. I’m going to go enjoy my life, and forget about Columbia, and Danial, and all of this bullshit.”
Paul stood for a moment where she had left him, before shaking his head and coming to kneel in front of her.
“You can’t do this.” Paul’s eyes were full of tears now, slipping free down his beautiful, freckled, privileged face. “I know you want to forget about Dan, but this isn’t the way to do it. Just running away from everything… running away from me.” His voice caught on “me.”
“Oh, no,” Alex countered, setting her laptop on the coffee table and clasping his hands between her own. The same manic, weightless tone still colored her voice. “You are my best friend. You’ll always be in my life.”
He looked up at her, searching her eyes for some anchor of recognition.
“I should have stopped you from leaving that letter.” He broke into an open sob, squeezing his eyes shut and tilting his head toward his chest. “I should have never given you Xanax, or let you stay at that party without me. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She held his hands for a moment, letting him cry, occasionally whispering for him to shh until his breath became less jagged.
“Paul, please,” she finally said, her voice gentle but still unmistakably delirious. “This isn’t your fault. It all had to happen this way.” She looked around the chaotic state of her apartment, and had the thought that it looked like a forest just after the underbrush had been cleared. Only from this kind of fire could something new and sustainable grow. She glanced over to her laptop screen, glowing with the website of the third bank to give her a credit card in as many days. She thought, briefly, of covering for herself in case Paul happened to see what she was doing, but thought better of it. Money flowed so easily to him that he likely wouldn’t even recognize the act of seeking it out.
With a slight nod of satisfaction, she added, “I’m going to be fine.”