Chapter 23
It’s strange to realize I’ve carved out a new life in the shell of an old one. The frame of it is the same as I remember, but it’s filled with entirely new decor. A new boyfriend, new friends, a new job, new classes.
Most of my professors assign a final essay in lieu of an exam, so as the semester winds to a close, there’s none of the late-night cramming I remember from college. I pick up shifts at the shelter, but with every day that passes with no Ruthie, I grow more convinced I’ve missed her.
I miss Madison, but I can’t quite get myself to return to my dorm room, anxiety plaguing me at the thought.
It even sparks my first fight with Alex.
One day, he asks if I want to spend the night apart, hang out in my room with Madison instead.
I take offense to it, like he’s trying to get rid of me.
Calmly, he promises that’s not the case—“Madison is your best friend,” he points out.
I snap that Madison and I are roommates, not friends.
It’s like something clicks into place and he realizes this is what has been going on with me since before Thanksgiving.
He says something about how friends can have fights, but that doesn’t mean they’re not friends.
I accuse him of patronizing me. He doesn’t get riled up, which makes me even angrier.
Eventually, I calm down, and we make up.
He doesn’t bring it up again.
I spend most of my free time with Alex, but I also hang out with Helen. We’ve grown even closer since the Ellie short-story debacle.
I start going to the Second Take Anonymous meetings and feel fully welcomed into the dysfunctional family. I go to Kimiko’s place after every meeting, and we watch TV and gossip.
I download an app for a little-known startup called Uber, but it’s nearly impossible to get a ride with so few drivers.
My separate social circles finally collide on a Sunday.
It starts at the Beverly Center, the absolute behemoth of an eight-story shopping mall in the heart of Beverly Grove. Helen drags me there so she can find an outfit for some frat party she wants to go to. While we’re shopping, she begs me to come to the party too.
“You don’t even like parties.” I force my tone to stay lighthearted even though her sudden urge to party has my hackles raised. I had begun to think that maybe, without me and Madison dragging her to parties, she might not have started drinking to begin with.
I realize now that might’ve been naive of me. She’s a college freshman. Why wouldn’t she want to go to a party?
“Can’t know if I like them if I never go to one.” Helen laughs and pulls me into Forever 21. I worry about how to fix this situation the entire time she flips through racks of dresses and tries them on in the dressing room.
“Maybe we could do something chill on Thursday,” I suggest as we exit the store, her with a brand-new dress.
The party is on Thursday, the day after finals end, and the theme is the End of the World—because at midnight, it will officially be December 21, 2012, which, according to some silly theories, is when the world will end.
I almost forgot about that. “We could watch a movie, order pizza, that kind of thing.”
“Joey, all we do is stay in, watch Redbox movies, and order pizza,” she counters. Which—fair. That is what our girls’ nights tend to consist of.
“Maybe we can go out and do something fun that isn’t a party.”
“Like what?” she challenges.
“Anything.”
“Okay, but what?”
I list the first things that come to mind. “We could go out to a movie. We could…” What the fuck do college students do for fun that doesn’t involve drinking? “We could see a comedy show. Or get dinner. We could… go bowling? Or roller-skating? Play miniature golf?”
She perks up at that and says, “I don’t think I’ve been mini-golfing since middle school.”
“Great! Me neither,” I lie, because I’ve gone on a possibly embarrassing number of mini-golf dates as an adult. “Yeah, maybe we can do that on Thursday—”
“Why don’t we go today, after the mall? Alex could join,” she says, which I immediately start to protest.
“No, this is to replace the party—”
“Is that Joey Vasquez? In the flesh, out and about at the Beverly Center?” a droll voice calls above the crowd.
Helen sees who’s calling me. “You know her?” she asks, a little incredulously.
I follow Helen’s line of sight and can’t blame her for that reaction.
Kimiko’s hair is an icy blue, and she’s decked out in designer clothes of the same color, a veritable ice queen fit for the season (mid-December), if not quite the actual LA weather (high fifties).
I watch as she approaches, strangers’ eyes darting toward her.
The drama continues when she stops in front of me and leans in for two air kisses.
“Look at us. Two babes hanging out in a mall in 2012. How quaint,” she says, then raises an eyebrow at Helen and looks her up and down with unconcealed interest. “Make that three babes.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Kimiko.”
Her lips turn down in the slightest of frowns when Helen introduces herself, and that’s when my panic sets in.
I think there are two kinds of people: people who want all of their friends to be friends with each other, and people who prefer to keep their distinct social circles as separate as possible.
I am quite firmly a member of the second camp.
As a general rule, I try to avoid the merging of social circles.
Throughout my twenties and into my thirties, I had my group of college friends and various smaller groups of mostly work friends, people who came and went.
In my short-lived relationships, I would occasionally hang out with the guy’s friends, and he’d hang out with mine, but I never invited my friends and his to the same event.
The very idea of merging groups like that always felt too messy.
I feel validated in that approach right now as I wrack my brain to remember exactly how much Kimiko knows about Helen. She knows things about Helen that even Helen doesn’t know. It’s a recipe for disaster. One tiny slipup, and everything will fall apart.
“So how do you know Joey?” Helen asks.
“Oh, Joey and I go way back,” Kimiko says vaguely.
“You’re from San Diego?”
“San Diego? Me? God, no. I’m from the city,” Kimiko responds, sounding truly appalled at the thought.
When her declaration is greeted by a blank stare, she clarifies, “New York City. Manhattan. Upper East Side,” and I want to laugh because Kimiko is exactly the type of New Yorker who would refer to New York as “the city” even when she’s on the West Coast.
“Oh, like Gossip Girl.” Helen lights up.
“Exactly like Gossip Girl,” Kimiko confirms with a wink.
“Right, so, then…” Helen trails off, still searching for an explanation.
“We’re in a book club together,” Kimiko says with a shrug, which Helen accepts as a good enough explanation. She doesn’t know I would literally never join a book club.
“I love malls. Don’t you just love malls? So nostalgic.” Kimiko changes the subject, marveling at our surroundings. “What store are you hitting next?”
“We were actually leaving to play mini-golf. Do you want to join us?” Helen offers.
Before I can protest and say we’re going on Thursday, Kimiko exclaims, “Mini-golf? How kitschy—I love it. I need to run home and change. I have just the outfit. Text me the addy.”
She leaves. Resigned, I call Alex to tell him the plan, and we go back to campus to pick him up.
Before I know it, the three of us are walking through the doors of Sherman Oaks Castle Park, a “family amusement center” with batting cages, arcade games, and multiple mini-golf courses. It’s where most of my mini-golf dates took place.
As soon as we enter, I’m pulled back to childhood by the scent of buttered popcorn and churros, the beeps and chimes of arcade games, the slamming of air-hockey pucks, the eager screeching of kids running around.
Alex leans in toward me and murmurs, “I bet I could beat you at foosball,” and I wonder why the hell my eighteen-year-old hormones decide to interpret that sexually.
We exit out the back of the arcade and arrive at the miniature-golf courses, where Kimiko waits for us.
The just-the-outfit she ran home to change into is a pastel-blue golf dress with a pleated skirt.
She spots us, scoops up the four golf clubs leaning against the table next to her, and heads in our direction.
I meet her halfway and take two of them.
“I paid and got us clubs and score sheets. They were very adamant about us staying on whatever course we choose rather than jumping around. The courses get harder going from right to left—or maybe it’s left to right, I’m not really sure. Oops.”
I’ve been here enough times that I should know, but the answer eludes me.
“Yeah, I’m not sure. Wanna just do the left one?”
“Works for me,” Kimiko says with a shrug.
I turn to Alex and Helen for confirmation and find Alex glancing from me to Kimiko and back expectantly. Oh, right—
“Alex, this is Kimiko. Kimiko, this is—”
“Well, well—if it isn’t Alex Aquino,” Kimiko says dramatically, sounding not unlike a Scooby-Doo villain.
“Don’t say his name like that,” I mutter, struggling to conceal my laugh.
Alex’s smile barely dims as he holds out his hand for her to shake. “I see my reputation precedes me.”
“Boy, does it,” Kimiko says, her voice filled with innuendo that, if you didn’t know Alex’s future, might imply that I’ve overshared about our sex life.
Somehow, I think that’s her intention.
“Kimiko,” I protest. Alex and Helen don’t know her, and I think they should be eased in.
“What class do you two know each other from again?” Alex asks.
“Please. Higher education isn’t for me,” Kimiko scoffs.