“Akidpool.” Claire sighed. “Not a party pool.”
“Anyway.” Mac set down her wine and sat up straighter. “Nate comes to the house to pick her up with his parents in tow. And they find her on the roof.”
Zoey’s wide eyes swung to me.
“It was a thing we did.” I shrugged. “We liked to smoke pot on the roof.”
It was a strange compulsion: the desire to be surrounded by people and, at the same time, completely alone. The roof was nice for having it both ways.
“And then guess whatStoner does?” Mac shook her head. “Nate and his parents are standing there in the middle of this crazy party, Nate’s pissed, his parents look terrified, and Stoner yells down that she’ll be right there. And thenshe jumps off the roofinto the pool.”
Zoey gasped, her eyes searching my body, as if I still bore hints of some long-ago, pool-related injury.
“Just like inAlmost Famous,” Claire said. “Like that idiot rock star on acid.”
“I thought they’d appreciate I was taking the shortest route to dinner,” I said, which was both silly and a lie.
“So she climbs out of the pool soaking wet and walks right up to them and says, ‘Can we get tacos? I’m really craving tacos.’”
Claire leaned back in her lounge chair, lifting her glass. “Henceforth, and forevermore, she was Stoner.”
I shook my head at the memory. “Nate didn’t even break up with me after that. I still had to do it at graduation.”
I’d tried everything that year to see what it would take to get him to break up with me. I think I’d stopped being into Nate the minute I realized nothing would do it.
Zoey was shaking her head, looking at me like she was seeing me anew. I didn’t understand: at twenty-six, Zoey was three years younger than the rest of us. She should be the one who appreciated my antics the most.
“I swear,” Annie sighed, “the lengths you’ll go just to avoid intimacy.”
“Thanks, Dr. Park, but I was only having fun.” Annie was a therapist. Since I refused to book an appointment with any of her colleagues, she was constantly trying to counsel me on the sly. She’d been doing it for years, ever since we’d met in grad school, when she was a first-year PhD student and I was in the first year of my master’s.
“So what, you got stoned and did something bad to Ben?” Zoey asked. “Is that what caused the breakup?”
My stomach clenched. Nate, I had no regrets about. Ben was a different story.
“No, she just fucked things up in general.” Mac got up and poured herself more wine.
“Yep, classic Stoner,” Claire agreed. “Honestly, what haven’t you pulled?”
Well,thisrequired alcohol. I gestured and Mac padded over, refilling my wineglass.
“If you want the whole story,” I said, swirling the glass, “then yes, I liked Ben.”
More than liked. I could feel the ghost of the feeling tugging at me, even now.
“I met him my first year of grad school. He was in law school. Generally, I avoided law school students because they were preppy douches—no offense, Claire. But one night I found myself in a bar, in need of a whiskey but down to my last five dollars. Remember, I was a grad student. These were desperate times.”
“Zero money,” Annie confirmed. “We were broke as hell.”
“In walks a gaggle of law school guys. And I think to myself, hey, why not let these country-club popped collars buy me a drink before they go off to play beer pong? Everything was fine until, out of nowhere, Ben showed up. And he was different.”
Mac held up her phone to Zoey. “Different as inhot. See?”
I caught a glimpse of her screen. Sure enough, there was Ben’s face, wearing that half smile he gave cameras, like he didn’t quite trust them. At a glance, he looked a little older than I remembered. “Hold up. Mac, are you stillfriendswith Ben on Facebook?”
Mac shrugged. “Was I supposed to unfriend him just because you broke up?”
“Yes!That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”
