“What did you say to him?” Alice asked once they were outside.
“I told him that if he isn’t out of my apartment by tomorrow morning, I’m going to have my cousin Raul come over. He’s a professional boxer, and trust me, if I call him, he won’t take ninety minutes.”
“I didn’t realize Raul boxed.” As far as Alice knew, Raul was an immigration lawyer in San Francisco, more than an hour and a half away.
“He doesn’t, but Oliver doesn’t know that.” A smile flitted across Gabby’s face before it was replaced by a distant stare. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”
“That wasn’t you up there he was making fun of,” Alice said.
“Yes it was.” Gabby leaned against the brewery wall, breathing deeply as she tried not to cry. The alley smelled of stale beer and garbage. “All I did was love him and be supportive. Why would you do that to someone who loves you so much?”
Alice guided her friend toward her car, parked a few blocks away. It went without saying that Gabby would stay at her apartment that night.
“Jesus, Alice. What happened in here?” Gabby said as she took in the unwashed dishes on the counter, the dirty clothes draped across the room.
“I told you I’ve been busy.”
“This isn’t busy. It’s insane. Come on.” Gabby lugged her best friend into the kitchen and pulled the dishwasher open. “I’ll load, but you’re scrubbing. There’s no way I’m going near whatever that is.” She pointed to a bowl with a layer of cereal congealed to the bottom.
Dish by dish, the two friends cleaned the kitchen. Gabby found a shopping bag under Alice’s sink and used her thumb and index finger to lift individual articles of clothing from the floor, barely deigning to touch them.
“I get you to buy silk, and this is how you treat it,” she said forlornly, setting the bag of clothes by the door. “I’ll be taking these to my cleaners tomorrow. Clearly you can’t be trusted.”
“Glad to see you’re feeling like yourself,” Alice teased as she turned off the faucet.
Alice and Gabby worked in silence until Alice’s apartment resembled its natural state, cluttered yet clean.
“I’m not okay,” Gabby said as she settled into Alice’s double bed, “but I’m going to be.” She reached over Alice to flip off the light.
The old friends talked best in darkness, when talking to each other became talking to themselves. After Alice’s father died, Gabby spent a week with her. During the day, Alice insisted that talking didn’t help. Then the second the light went out and they were lying beside each other in Alice’s twin bed, she admitted things she hadn’t even allowed herself to think in daylight, like about how she didn’t get to say goodbye. She wasn’t sure that would have made it easier, but the unexpectedness of it didn’t feel real, and yet it had to be real because she was never going to see her father again.
She told Gabby how her father had taken care of her mother in ways neither of them fully recognized and now she didn’t know how to take care of her mom in his place. Her mom knew how to love her, she just didn’t know how to parent, not in the groceries-in-the-fridge, clean-clothes-in-the-dresser sort of way. It was selfish, but Alice didn’t want to have to learn to do these things for herself. Not yet. She didn’t want them to not need her father. Gabby never said anything as Alice spoke about all the ways she didn’t want her life to change. Sometimes, Alice feared her friend had drifted to sleep until Gabby’s grip on her hand tightened, squeezing at appropriate intervals.
It was no different in Alice’s bedroom tonight, other than it was Gabby who did the talking, detailing all the changes she planned to make in her life. First she was going to put her apartment on the market. After two failed relationships, she simply couldn’t live there anymore. She calculated the hit she’d take on it, how she could recoup some of the loss through taxes. Alice let her get lost in the numerical minutiae, until she had no idea what Gabby was calculating.
“I’m sorry,” she said when Gabby grew quiet. “I’m sorry I brought him into your life.”
Gabby sat up. “Did you know something? In the car, is that why—”
“No,” Alice said a little too quickly. “Not even an inkling. I guess I’m not as good at understanding people as I thought. He seemed like a good one.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“If it weren’t for my story, you never would have—”
“I’m getting a little sick of this. This happened to me, Alice. Not you. You didn’t make him an egomaniac comedian any more than I did. Please don’t make this about you.”
Alice had no reply.
“Sorry,” Gabby continued. “I’m just so embarrassed. Mortified, really. I’ve never had anyone do anything like that to me before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m heartbroken too, but I’ve been heartbroken. I’ve never been completely humiliated.”
“None of it was true.”
“It was all true.” Gabby got out of bed and walked over to the window, opening the thin curtains that looked onto the street. The streetlamps shone into the room, outlining her figure, curvy even in Alice’s baggy pajamas. “You know what? I love who I am. Someone else will too. It just isn’t Oliver. It would have been nice, though, if it hadn’t required public humiliation to find that out.”
Gabby walked back to the bed and perched on the edge. “Look, if you’re really done writing, I’m not going to pressure you, but don’t use me as an excuse.” She wove her hair into a bun, collecting her thoughts.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Insistent, yet loving. “I was always going to meet Oliver. This was always going to happen to me. I believe that as much as I believe in your story. You didn’t bring Oliver into my life, you just made it happen in a way that felt magical. Not felt, itwasmagical. Even now, after everything that’s happened, that moment when we met, the beginning—I wouldn’t give that up for anything.”
