19 #2
I suck. Let’s just start with that and get it out of the way.
I suck. I have always sucked, and I will probably continue to suck in the future.
You seemed fine with that. I never got it, but I figured I was just lucky things turned out that way.
I mean, I’ve been pretty lucky forever. Rich dad, etc. But also—sad rich boy problems!
Anyway, I suck.
I try not to suck. I felt I sucked less around you. Or, if you liked me, things were not as bad as I thought. Around you,
there seemed to be reasons to do things. Not to suck. To be a useful person.
Also, I wanted to have sex with you. Yeah. Or whatever we were doing. Just being around you is really, really great. Insert
song lyrics, etc.
So what’s the problem with this situation? Nothing. So I figured I should make a problem. Those days we were together in England
were the best few days of my life. Then I panicked. I did the stupidest, most cowardly thing I have ever done and all I wanted
to do was take it back. I thought about skipping the end of term and flying back to the US. I thought about calling, but I
thought you’d hang up, and that I’d say all the wrong things.
I could put it in an envelope, but why not put it in the coat? You like my coat. I got it for you, so I want you to have it. That way, if you decide you never want to talk to me again, at least you’ll be warm.
If I were you, I would avoid me. But I’m not you. You’re you.
But we both seem to make bad decisions.
If you want to talk, send me a message. Or your coat. Maybe we’ll be people who only talk through coats. We’ll make it a thing.
Fuckupidly,
David
Stevie sat on the cold, sticky linoleum of the basement floor.
The scene had not changed, but the camera had spun around to show another angle, and that angle revealed a different story.
It showed her approaching the Seven Bishops, but it showed David inside, slumped over the bar, fingers webbed around a pint,
openly weeping. (He hadn’t done that but this was Stevie’s head and if she wanted him weeping he was going to be going off
like a lawn sprinkler.) The figure in the sweater was there, but off to the side of the frame.
It could all have been different. Had she gotten there a little sooner, the nightmare would never have happened.
David: are you there
it’s not that long of a letter
Something was bubbling up in her chest, air or blood or maybe a lung had detached and floated up like a balloon and was trying
to squeeze out through her throat.
Where are you? Janelle texted.
Everyone wanted to see her all of a sudden.
Come to the basement, she wrote to Janelle.
Janelle didn’t look all that surprised when Stevie popped out of the trash bin hole and waved her inside. Stevie had been
running her hands along the painted cinder-block walls, trying to find calm. Janelle put her hands on her hips, ready to take
a stand.
“I did what I had to do,” she said. “And that is some bullshit. Please tell me you aren’t buying that. You’re too smart for
that.”
“You read it,” Stevie said.
“Because I wanted to see what he was trying to do to my friend. It said, I’m such a pathetic person that I had to break up with you so give me another chance. I thought if I gave that to you . . . I didn’t know what would happen. Nothing good. So I put it in my bag.”
“It was my letter,” Stevie said.
“I’m tired of him doing it, Stevie. I’ve watched his bullshit since we got to Ellingham. I’m tired of him hurting my friend.
You are what matters to me. He’s a privileged mess and you can’t fix him.
It’s not your job to fix him. No one can fix anyone.
People do work on themselves. You can support someone, but you don’t do the work for them.
He”—she banged her palm angrily on the wall—“is not doing the work. He’s putting this on you.
Please don’t tell me you’re going to buy in to this because that is the worst excuse I’ve ever read. The fact that he came here is . . .”
Romantic.
“. . . stalkery.”
“It’s not stalkery,” Stevie said. “He’s in New York, which is a big place where people come for New Year’s Eve. Like all of
us.”
Another text from David. Stevie felt like she was falling through the floor.
David: do you want to meet and talk?
“He wants to meet and talk,” Stevie said.
“He’s here? In New York? You’re going to go,” Janelle said. “Aren’t you? After we came all this way to be together.”
“Nate needs to be alone,” Stevie shot back.
“Nate may say—”
“No,” Stevie said. “He needs to be alone. He needs to finish his book. If he doesn’t, they’ll cancel it and make him pay back
all the money and then he won’t have any money for college.”
She was not supposed to be saying this, but it was all coming out. She and Janelle had never argued before, not really. Not
like this.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Janelle said.
“Because he didn’t tell me until about five minutes before you got here. He doesn’t want you to know. He’s embarrassed. I’m not supposed to . . .”
Janelle grabbed her braids with two fists in frustration.
“So what are you going to do?” she said. “Stay with us or go to him?”
The answer must have been clear from her face, her body, the everything of Stevie.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Vi and I will go to the ball drop. That’ll help Nate. We’ll leave him the nachos, and you can do whatever
it is you’re going to do.”
It was too many things at once. The pain of disappointing your friends—of being forced to by some drug, some compelling force,
like gravity itself—was extreme. But it was counterbalanced by that force, the rush. The ecstatic command of love or lust
or whatever compulsion that was. She could have gone through the wall if she needed to.
“Just remember,” Janelle said as she climbed through the trash hole, “he has always been like this and will always be like
this and will keep doing this over and over until we are all dead.”