Chapter 28
It’s mostly muscle memory that brings me back to my dorm room.
Strange, considering my muscles haven’t brought me here in a while.
But now, in the wake of Alex’s revelation, I no longer feel the anxiety that plagued me anytime I considered coming back to my room.
I need to process the pain I’m feeling. Even though I might not be Madison’s best friend, she’ll always be mine, and nothing eases heartache like wallowing with your best friend.
Besides, I have nowhere else to go.
She sits cross-legged on her bed, dressed in pajamas, her hair wrapped in a bonnet, no makeup on, and a magazine open in front of her. I freeze in the doorway, wondering which of us will be the first to break the silence.
“You look like shit,” she remarks dryly.
“Believe it or not, I feel even worse.”
“Might want to look in the mirror before you make that call, ’cause I kind of doubt it.”
Nothing she’s said is kind—the complete opposite—but I feel like she’s doing me a kindness by acting so normal right now when she could be giving me the cold shoulder for responding to our conflict by avoiding her for weeks.
I shut the door behind me and walk over to the mirror above our sink, curious what I’ll find.
I’m unsurprised to see that she’s right—I look like shit.
Makeup running, eyes and nose red and swollen.
I stare at myself, trying to reconcile the girl I see in the mirror with the woman I am inside.
Months in, I’m still not used to the face reflected back at me. I wonder if I ever will be.
“Still feel worse than you look?”
“Jury’s out,” I reply. I sit on my bed and take a makeup wipe to my face. Madison doesn’t respond, and we descend into a silence that’s far from comfortable. Desperate to fill the silence and give my mind something to focus on that isn’t Alex, I mention, “I saw Ellie tonight.”
When I look up and see horror written all over her face, I backtrack. “That’s not why—this is a completely separate—I’m not crying because of Ellie.”
I hear a relieved breath rush out of her even from my spot across the room, and I can’t help but laugh at the misunderstanding. And laughing feels so much better than crying that once I start, it’s hard to stop.
“What the hell is so funny?” she asks, but there’s amusement coloring her tone, like she wants to laugh even if she doesn’t quite get the joke.
“It’s just—” I stop to catch my breath. “It’s just that Ellie asked if I could tell you that he apologized and I forgave him so you might text him back. And instead, I came in as a total hot-mess puddle of tears and made you think Ellie was the reason. Oops.”
“Is that true?” she asks, her words slow and cautious. “Did you forgive him? You don’t have to, you know. I read what he wrote. It was really fucked-up.”
“It was—” I pause, looking for the right word. “Tactless, to be certain. But it was also raw and honest, in the one-sided way honesty often is. I know he didn’t mean any harm by it. So, yeah, I forgave him.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess. For the record, I’m still pissed on your behalf.”
I’m tempted to thank her and leave it at that, but I know there’s more that needs to be said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you back at Ellie’s place. I was hurt and shocked—but that’s no excuse.”
“You were right.” She shrugs. “I totally broke girl code.”
“No, you were right. I’ve been MIA all semester, and you barely know me. You didn’t owe me anything, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t have felt the need to sneak around. So I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I said we aren’t friends.”
“Are you saying—are we friends?” I ask, tentative and awkward and completely unashamed about it.
“I mean, I wanted to be your friend.” She laughs, but her eyes dart around as if she’s not sure how much to say.
“I think that’s why I was so upset. I was so nervous about college and scared I’d have one of those nightmare roommates that, like, leaves their dirty underwear lying around or constantly has guys in the room or—I don’t know, any of the million things that can be wrong with a roommate—and instead you were cool, and I thought we were getting close.
And then you started ignoring me and hanging out with Helen and Alex all the time, so I—oh God, were you crying because of Alex? ”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” I brush her off, only to catch a flash of hurt in her eyes—or maybe it’s worry; it’s so quick, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, I can’t quite tell. Things are so new between us, and building this friendship is going to require me to allow myself to be vulnerable.
Despite what Kimiko said about the disconnect of being thirty-something years old and friends with an eighteen-year-old, I realize I do still value my friendship with Madison.
“Sorry, we just—we got into a big fight, and I’m still processing.”
“Process away,” she says. She stands, walks over to the minifridge, and pulls two pints of ice cream out of the small freezer section.
She brings one over to me with a spoon, and I fight a smile when I see that it’s H?agen-Dazs coffee ice cream, both of our favorite and the first thing we bonded over. I had forgotten about that.
“Boys are the literal worst,” Madison comments after we’ve spent a few minutes eating in silence.
“They really are,” I acknowledge around a bite of ice cream. “But—and I promise I’ll let this drop and never mention him again after this if you want—I think Ellie’s a pretty good guy. Maybe you should give him another shot. If you want to. Or there’s always Patrick…”
“We’ll see,” she says, but she wears a small smile that tells me all I need to know.
I have no clue where this will lead. It’s possible that in pushing her back into Ellie’s arms, I’m creating a big mess for her down the line if she wakes up and realizes that Patrick is her perfect match.
Maybe I’m taking the messy, unrequited, pining mess I lived in for fourteen years and pawning that off on Patrick.
Maybe I’m worried over nothing, and everything will work out in the end.
Or maybe life is messy, and nothing ever works out as neatly as we’d like.
Maybe there’s always someone standing on the sidelines, silently suffering through heartbreak, even if you don’t notice them.
I’m almost asleep when my ringtone cuts through the silence and yanks me back to reality. I bolt up at the sight of Kimiko’s name on my screen.
I completely forgot about Kimiko and Helen.
The realization causes a pang of guilt to jolt through me. I left them alone at the party without so much as an explanation.
I answer the phone and start to apologize, but Kimiko cuts me off.
“Do you know where Helen’s dorm is? She keeps repeating her childhood address from Iowa.”
In the background, I can make out Helen slurring, “Sixteen thirty-eight Jacaranda Drive. It’s got a little red mailbox, can’t miss it.”
“We’re in Los Angeles, not Des Moines,” Kimiko tells her, not bothering to hide her irritation.
“I don’t live in Des Moines, I live in Davenport,” Helen says.
“You live in a dorm room in Los Angeles.”
Now I’m definitely awake. “Wait, is Helen drunk?”
“I’m not drunk, I’m just—” Helen stops talking, and then there’s a moan and an “Oh God” and, finally, loud retching.
I demand to know where they are, and ten minutes later I walk up to them on a corner just a block from the frat house; Helen is still throwing up.
“What the hell, Kimiko?”
“I know. My shoes are soaked. Thank God I’ve never been a sympathetic vomiter,” Kimiko remarks dryly, apparently misunderstanding my tone.
I hand Helen the water bottle I took from my minifridge. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”
“You’re gonna want to sip, not chug,” Kimiko advises after Helen downs half the bottle in one go.
“How the hell did this happen?” I demand as I pull Kimiko away and skirt around a puddle of vomit.
“I tried to explain the dangers of mixing liquors, but Helen was determined to try all of them to see which one she liked best,” Kimiko explains with a laugh.
“I don’t like any of them.” Helen moans. She looks at me and continues, her voice small and pitiful, “Are you mad at me?”
I take a deep breath and try to remain calm. None of this is her fault.
“I’m not mad at you,” I assure her, then turn to Kimiko. The evening has completely wiped all my energy, and I realize I don’t want to fight. “I can take it from here.”
“Wait a second—are you mad at me?” Kimiko scoffs.
“Of course I’m mad, Kimiko. You promised you’d take care of her.”
“I did take care of her,” she says. I dart a pointed glance at Helen, then back to her, but Kimiko ignores me and pushes on. “Which is more than you did. Were you asleep?”
“You did the bare minimum. I told you what happens to her—”
“What happens to me?” Helen mumbles, but she’s lost all steam and sounds half asleep.
I step away from her and lower my voice, even though my building frustration has my volume crescendoing with every word.
“I told you I was worried, and you promised you’d help.”
“I did help. I watched her all night. I made sure nothing bad happened. I held her hair while she threw up. It’s my shoes covered in her vomit. Meanwhile, you fucked off to screw your billionaire boyfriend and left her there.”
“I left her with you because I thought I could trust you,” I yell. My voice cuts through the silence of the night.
“News flash, Joey—this isn’t some multiple-choice question with a straightforward, easy answer.
There’s no quick solution. She isn’t an addict, she’s an eighteen-year-old girl who wanted to drink at a party.
If you think you could talk her out of drinking a beer because she might become addicted to heroin a decade from now, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. ”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“It also wasn’t yours. It’s hers. But here’s some free advice: If you want to protect your friend, you’re going to have to always be there for her.
You can’t just change one moment in time and fix all her problems. You said yourself she developed her addiction years after you two lost touch.
If you want to keep that from happening, there is not a single thing you can do now to protect her—except maybe become a better friend and not abandon her at a party when you’re actively worried about her substance-abuse problems.”
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Helen slurs, her words barely intelligible.
“Nothing,” we bite out at the same time without taking our eyes off each other.
I don’t say anything else, and neither does Kimiko. Finally, she shakes her head, laughs, and mutters something to herself that sounds distinctly like “Fuck this.”
She walks away but says over her shoulder, “Feel free to call me when you realize I’m right.”
I manage to get Helen to her feet, and she leans on me as we trek back to the dorms.
“I’m never drinking again,” she groans.
“That’s a good idea—you should hang on to that.”