Chapter 5
The bell above the door is still announcing my arrival when Liv’s welcome scream rings out through the packed bar area.
She bounces over and her infectious energy draws a little shoulder shimmy from me.
The whole display is very on-brand for us, and I immediately feel like an idiot for thinking she was blowing me off.
“Oh my god, Kai!” she squeals into our hug.
Liv’s basically a bubble in human form—that airy, flighty, POP!
POP! And though on the surface she looks just as delicate, fragile even, that’s never stopped her from finding the light in any room and bending it to her will.
But right now, instead of her usual rainbow refraction, she’s a bubble going POP! in black leather and lace.
“Oh my god, hi!” I mirror, glancing around the bar to make sure I didn’t miss the costume memo. “What are you wearing?”
I barely get the words out before Liv grabs my hand to drag me through the crowd of mostly familiar faces. Though I’m pretty sure I spot a nose job or two. She leads me down the oh-so-elegantly wood-paneled hallway to the bathroom at the bar’s end.
If it means avoiding small talk with guys who peaked in high school and the women who love them, I’ll gladly stay in this dingy stall watching Liv pee for the foreseeable future. And we might need that long for me to wrap my head around the story she’s telling.
A few weeks ago, when Liv texted about her drunken graduation night hookup, she’d sounded embarrassed to have chosen the least Liv guy in that particular Lower East Side bar, but like any good confessional, the sanctity of the women’s restroom has revealed a new truth.
Today, to my abject horror, Liv is in love.
“Are we talking about Leather Vest?” I ask, praying it’s anyone but Leather Vest. “Is that why you’re in cosplay tonight?”
Liv follows me out to the sinks. Her blond ponytail bounces innocently in the mirror ahead, but her grip is surprisingly strong when she yanks me back to face her pout.
“Okay. We cannot call him that anymore.” Her green eyes are alight with excitement or hope or one of the other painfully na?ve emotions she embodies so easily at the start of every new something with every new somebody.
This is usually the point where I’d warn her that she’s doing it again and remind her that if history has taught us anything, it’s that this feeling, like this relationship, is temporary. But right now, she’s looking at me like a little kid who still believes in Santa Claus.
So, for now, I choose the path of least resistance.
“What’s his name again?” I ask, pulling my phone out to stalk him a little. It’s more than I usually offer at this stage, and my reward for my generosity is watching Liv vibrate out of her skin.
“Travis!” she screams at a decibel that should be criminal.
“Does he have a last name?” I ask at a more reasonable volume. “Or should I just type in Travis to see if Instagram guesses the right one?”
Liv steals my phone to pull up the guitarist formerly known as Leather Vest. I yank my pineapple to the side, clearing the curls from my eyes to stare at the screen. I’m going to need all my senses for this one.
“Liv,” I warn, scrolling through the Marilyn Manson parody before me. Can you even be a parody of a parody?
“Don’t!” she whines. “You have to get to know him.”
“I have to?” I ask, already brainstorming excuses to not.
Her expressive-ass ponytail bobs with her nodding head.
Fine, I mime, with a dramatic shrug that looks more tortured than I feel. Because, even clad in black leather, Liv makes me feel light. Well, light-er. So it’s no wonder she’s always been able to bend me to her will too.
I missed that. I missed us.
When we open the bathroom door to make our exit down the hall, I’m smacked in the face by the deafening wave of our hometown friends’ hometown conversations, floating around this hometown bar.
A not-so-small part of me wishes I could click my heels three times to be back in that tow truck rerouting us anywhere but here.
But after my earlier performance, I might not be welcome.
The thought upsets me more than it should.
The thought of him, and the way he looked saying my name that last time.
I can’t believe I never even asked his name.
I only notice Liv’s come to a stop ahead of me when I slam into her.
“Why do you look like that?” she asks, blocking my path. “What just happened?”
“Nothing,” I say, because it is nothing. “It’s a long story.”
Liv’s silence urges me to tell it anyway, so of course I do.
“I had to get a tow earlier and ended up sort of fighting with the driver.”
Saying it out loud sounds ridiculous, but as always, Liv’s quick to offer me a pass.
“Did he deserve it?”
“He really, really didn’t,” I admit.
“Meh,” she decides. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at me—”
“Oh, I am,” I joke, assessing her ensemble again.
“In what world am I dating a rocker?”
“You’re right. Yours is worse.”
She rightfully ignores me.
“And you’re yelling at strangers,” she continues.
“We’re like animals being released from captivity into the real world.
None of us know how to act. But tonight, we don’t have to.
You’re home and we’re together. And there’s alcohol,” she says, grabbing both of my shoulders and shaking.
“So maybe for the next couple hours we let ourselves act like kids again and pretend life isn’t about to drop-kick us into the deep end. ”
Liv links her arm through mine, moving us down the hallway once more, and I’m happy to follow. Because she really does know how to find the light.
—
At the end of the hallway, we spill out into the bar again, and the scene playing out leaves me mentally cataloging and reassessing every life choice that’s led me here tonight. You know that saying “You can’t go home again”? Turns out you can, it’s just depressing as fuck.
“I see the football team is still pro-warm-booze-before-sundown,” I say, scanning and judging. Judging and scanning.
I haven’t had a chance to properly fix my face, when our forever cheer captain spots us in the crowd.
Michelle Meyer has been on the top of every physical and social pyramid since she moved to Connecticut’s Gold Coast in middle school.
She’s the kind of person for whom the world will always make way.
And now she’s making way right at us—or Liv rather.
“Ahh!” Michelle and Liv both scream in wordless greeting.
Michelle doesn’t waste any energy acknowledging my existence, as the giddy pair start volleying NYU-alum-specific inside jokes back and forth.
I don’t appreciate anyone talking to my best friend like she’s their best friend, but I set my face on bored rather than brooding.
I know better than to have a lovers’ quarrel in front of the other woman.
When Michelle finally trains her glassy vodka soda eyes on me, a lazy smile of recognition forms on her perfectly pink lips. She’s finally placed me. I wasn’t sure she’d get there. It’s not that I was unpopular in high school, but I was only cool by proxy. To Liv.
Michelle raises her drink, a finger lifted from her sweaty glass to point at me. “You’re Zola’s sister, right?”
Correction: cool by proxy to Liv and Zola. It’s not news. My high school made space for exactly one transcendent Black girl at a time. Zola got there first.
“Weren’t you in Kentucky?” she continues, a gentle sway to both her stance and her words.
“Kansas,” I yell, over the music.
“Yeah, Kansas,” she says, nose scrunched by the apparent adorableness of the locale. “Same thing though, yeah?”
Liv enters the conversation before I can respond to the assertion that any place outside the Tri-State is all the same thing.
“Kai’s gonna be a teacher,” she says, beaming. “I would’ve killed to have a teacher like her.”
My face heats under their spotlight as they watch me expectantly.
The only thing I want to do less than teach for pay that borders on offensive is admit that truth out loud, in front of Michelle’s Botox frozen Spock brow.
There’s only one way out of this. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
If there was money in that, maybe I’d have a career path I could get behind.
Luckily, I’ve always got a tight five ready.
“And if that doesn’t work out, I saw they’re hiring at the Starbucks downtown.” I raise crossed fingers into the air and pause for the silent snare drum. “Taking down union busters with a discounted macchiato in hand sounds like a lovely little Tuesday.”
Liv’s face screws up in concern at my performance, but before she can respond, a cheer erupts from the crowd.
A resurrected call-and-response time warp from the longest four years of my life.
And just like that, I’m back at the big Friday night game watching Asher Hall on the field, while he watches these same will hurkey for booze girlies.
Though that particular star quarterback is noticeably and unfortunately absent from tonight’s reunion.
The cheer teases out another darker flashback, but I don’t let that one play out. One mental breakdown at a time, please.
Michelle’s eyes are still vodka-vacant and her smile is rabid as she yells, “That’s my cue!” And as quickly as she surfaced, she’s lost to the swarm of ex-cheerleaders getting into formation.
My disapproval is palpable as I take in the insurance liability before me.
Liv’s disapproval is palpable, too, but her stare is trained on me. “Be nice.”
Turning away from everyone and everything else, I meet the warning in Liv’s eyes and enunciate my words above the fray: “I’m too sober for this.”
—
By our third drink, Liv and I have retreated into our own world the way we have since we were young. Huddled together, codependently swearing to never love another the way we love each other—and incessantly checking train times. Liv’s already missed the first three she’d meant to take.