I didn’t see you again until the next morning.
Carter
I stare at Lincoln, the weight of his words sinking in.
He’s avoiding my eyes, staring at the coffee table.
“So you’re saying you did this to me.”
“I really don’t know.” Lincoln looks up. His voice is shaking. “But I’m sorry, CT. You’ll never understand how much I wish I’d never said anything to you that night.”
“You think I’ve been living this nightmare because you got mad about a stupid joke I made? Did I also punch you or something?”
“No,” Lincoln says. “I know it seems like a small thing, but...” He wipes at his eyes, inhales some snot. “You humiliated me in front of my best friend. And then you... You said you wanted to be like this forever.”
I stand up from the couch as anger rises in me like a slowly filling bathtub. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? What is with everybody? You and Maggie and everyone, just fucking burying the lede.”
“Ihavetold you this before, Carter!” Lincoln says, also rising from the couch. “The first time you looped, I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore, so I told you what had happened. And it... It didn’t do anything! It just made you hate me. So I decided I was going to support you and be there for you and do everything I could to—”
“No,” I say. “I don’t buy that. Do Mom and Dad know about this too? About our fight?”
“I mean... Kind of. Not all the details, really.”
“Doesn’t even matter.” I shake my head and stumble off the couch, trying to get away. “I’m surrounded by liars. Thanks for ruining my life.”
Even as I say it, I realize my own hypocrisy.
I’mthe one who said I wanted to be this way forever.
Which meansIdid this to me.
“CT,” Lincoln says as I barrel up the stairs.
“Enjoy the rest of your fucking internship,” I shout.
Maggie
“They don’t hide,” I sing. “They don’t hiiiiiiiide. They don’t hiiiiiiide from each other.”
I really belt out that last line, my fingers still pressing on the keys as the final chord of the song rings out, along with the shimmer of a cymbal crash and the bright bounce of a guitar strum.
The crowd goes nuts. Shana, Ember, and I exchange grins.
Angry Baby is back.
It’s our first performance since our set at the wedding, which, as you might imagine, didn’t go so great. I can’t even tell you what we played. Carter had just dashed off, so I was trapped in my head the whole time, thinking about what a horrible person I am, all the relationships I’d ruined, as Shana and Ember carried me through the set.
Vivian did not watch.
Afterward, I tried to give Mom and Ron their money back. They insisted we’d earned it.
That was a month and a half ago, but it easily feels like it could have been a year. And now, here we are, playing a set in Shana’s backyard for the graduation/going-to-college party her parents are throwing her. Mom and Ron are here, standing toward the back, beaming. It’s nice to see.
This is probably the first moment since their ceremony that I haven’t felt like a pile of rotting garbage. My days have not been wonderful.
Vivian and I haven’t talked much since the wedding. I texted her a long apology that night. She responded:Thanks. That felt a little worse than if she hadn’t written back at all. Then she unexpectedly decided to go stay with Dad for a little while. That’s when I knew things wereverybad. A few days into her time there, I sent a rambling, eight-minute voice memo. She texted back:It’s ok, Mags. I just need a minute.When she finally came back to our place a week or so later, she and I hugged and started talking again, mostly about the unsettling lack of hand soap in Dad’s home and not at all about Carter.
No, we don’t talk about Carter.
