“How could she cheat on Will?”
“What a whore?”
“I don’t blame her. Ben’s hot, but his brother? That’s cold.”
I feel outside of myself as I move through the next motions. I try to help Will up as he spits blood, his eyebrow completely split and needing a stitch or two. He shrugs me off, tears in his eyes either from the pain, the embarrassment, or what he considers my betrayal. I keep my voice low in order to avoid the numerous onlookers.
“Let’s go.” I see Ben flinch, clearly hearing me, but I need to do this before I lose my momentum, before the thoughts of mypeers and their impressions of me sway me. I meet Ben’s eyes, but there’s something broken in them, and I feel my throat bob. He shakes his head and turns, Grant clapping his. I feel like I ruined something, but I have to keep moving.
I pull Will through the crowd, grabbing a towel off a waiter's arm and dumping some ice out of the water on a nearby table. I hold it to his face. Once we get to the valet and I pull Will’s wallet out of his coat pocket, his posture relaxes.
“Liv—” his voice is the one he’s always used. Every fight, every time we’ve bickered, when it’s time for me to forgive him he pulls out this voice.
“No— Will. Don’t.” For a second he looks like he’s going to argue, but then he nods once and lets me speak, which is a first in our relationship. “I wanted a break so I could think about things. I didn’t realize this going to be all the time I needed to really know what decision to make.” His posture is rigid again as if he knows what’s coming. It would be surprising if he didn’t after the shit he just pulled.
I take a deep breath, steadying myself.
“This relationship is over Will, and I mean that. It has nothing to do with your brother or the coat check girl, or hell, even Gen. We don’t work Will, we’ve never worked. I am not myself when I’m with you andyouare hiding from yourself when you're with me.”
His feet shift as he looks up, tears streaking his face. “I fucked up, Olivia. I’m fucked up.” His voice is filled with desperation as if me giving him a second chance will fix him, fix this. For a second I pause and take in the boy I was head over heels for when first coming to Astor. He’s older now, taller and wider somehow, more handsome, but something changed. We worked against each other; we made each other smaller and smaller until we both disappeared.
“I can’t fix you Will and you can’t fix me.” He meets my gaze, his lips a thinly formed line as if he’s coming to terms with the fact that this is really over just as his car arrives.
“Just come home with me, please. Just tonight.” His eyes brim with tears as he softly grabs my hand and I feel my own tears fall down my cheeks.
“I can’t.” We stand there for a second longer. He finally nods, getting in the car and shutting the door.
It’s Tuesday morning and I just got a text from Ian that there is a“911 Newspaper emergency.” I stuffed my feet in an old pair of Uggs I had tucked away in my closet and threw on one of my Dad’s old flannels that I sometimes sleep in because they smell like home.
I haven’t heard from Ben in a few days and I’m wondering if I was too forward. Maybe he regrets the things he said, the things he almost did. I clench my jaw trying to quell my embarrassment. I felt so seen when he said all the things I’ve yearned to hear for so long after I confided in him about Lily. About how ordinary she made me feel. After that fight though, with all those eyes on us, it’s like I completely reverted to the girl I described myself as. The pressure I felt from having an audience, to bepretty, to beperfect, to bebetter. I just wanted their eyes off me. I needed to make the spectacle end. So I left, but not before officially ending things with Will.
I think when we age, we assume the behaviors of our younger years were due to a lack of maturity, and when we no longer behave that way, we attribute it to “changing” or “personal growth” or whatever. That is not the case, at least for me anyway. So much of my adolescence was spent feeling embarrassed,whether it was warranted or not, and lately that feeling has come up more and more. Having a friend who is so enigmatic, like Lily, means that you will at some point feel a flush of shame wash over you when they point out the weird or subpar thing you did. That’s youth, though, I think and yet, that feeling haunts me. We’re all automatically, subconsciously, assessing each other for faults and virtues, usually keeping a quiet score in our head. Lily didn’t have to keep a quiet score because somehow I always came up short and every time she highlighted my faults, I froze, recovered, and brushed it under my rug of resentment.
It feels gross, resenting a dead person, your dead best friend. But last night, when I was tossed back into my eighth grade form in a room of bodies in black tie, the feeling I felt after stupidity was resentment. And maybe that, mixed with the realization that I’ve brushed so much under the rug with Will, too, is why I’m letting the ginger tea I put in my thermos this morning scald my esophagus.
The weather matches my mood, the gray clouds hanging low in the sky seeming to sag with rain begging to be let out. The humidity hits my nose and I'm teleported again to the summer I spent with Lily in the Hamptons. I have a tendency to always think of the beginning of that summer and not the end. I was so excited to be spending a summer with Lily, that she just wantedmeto go with her, ignoring the pleas to join her from the rest of our friend group.
I pull the heavy door of the journalism building and find Ian in ‘The Stacks,’ otherwise known as the Astor Hills archives. The mothball scent of old newspapers hits my nose as I observe Ian frantically skimming the papers in row E. If there’s one thing I’ve never seen Ian be, it’s frantic. I’m instantly on edge as I approach.
“Hey…” I say, wearily.
“Hey,” he says without glancing my way, completely focused on whatever task is at hand.
“What, no you look like you got hit by a bus, Olivia?” I attempt a joke and Ian finally glances my way.
He rolls his eyes. “You do look like a bus hit you but that is the least of my worries right now.” He picks up a large bin filled with papers and all but shoves them into my hands. “Look through this and then start rows F and G and tell me if you see any papers from September 2022.”
Holding the large box I look up at him incredulously. He’s basically just asked me to look through hundreds of newspapers for only five or six that have gone missing.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask. My head is pounding from a hangover and lack of sleep. The last thing I want is to sift through old newspapers. He rolls his eyes, clearly frustrated with my questioning. He stands up straighter, assessing me.
“So I take it you made the ‘break’ official?” he asks, sitting on the corner of his desk.
I clench my jaw not really wanting to deal with Ian’s journalistic line of questioning. I used to think it was his convoluted way of friendship, the only way he knew how to communicate. Lately, I’ve started wondering if maybe he’s just always seen me as a ticking time bomb, the next big story to plaster on the front page of the school paper. After what happened at the gala, I wouldn’t put it past him. I set down the bin he basically assaulted me with and begin sifting, averting his gaze.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says, his tone incredulous, frustrated I’m evading his questions.
“I don’t see how that is relevant to the task at hand,” I say through gritted teeth. It’s not like I expected sympathy from Ian, but maybe a‘How are you holding up?’The realization thathe’ll ultimately give me the third degree and move on without considering how I feel is grating on my nerves.
