Chapter 13
Greer
“So—what, you’re afraid he’s never going to have sex with you again?”
“Zoe. For God’s sake,” I say, tightening the knob on my handlebars and giving an apologetic glance to the rider on the bike next to me. She’s either not listening or pretending not to listen. “Be quiet.”
“Oh, no one can hear over this—” She looks up and shouts across the room to the instructor of our early morning spin class. It’d been my idea, a change from our usual weekday routine. Six a.m., Saturday morning, why not? It always makes me feel good to come. Makes me feel strong. “What is this song again?”
A cheerful but terrifying coed named Gabby looks over at us, one of her hands adjusting the mic she’ll wear once class begins. She’s a sports management major at the university, and she wears a different pair of disarming screen-print leggings every time she teaches a class, as though you’re going to forget that she’s going to ask you to do hill climbs that feel like someone is murdering your quadriceps. This morning’s pair is covered in what I’m pretty sure are different-colored skulls, though it’s hard to tell in the weird purple light that’s supposed to give us “warm-up” vibes.
“It’s not even a song,” she yells back. “It’s just like, electronic noises. To get you excited.”
“Right, I’m excited about these electronic noises!” Zoe calls. She looks back at me, lowers her voice again. “I’m getting too old for this shit. Anyways, so you told him. I mean, it sucks that Douchebag Chad is the one who let him in on the secret, but it’s not the worst thing.”
“It’s Douchebag Josh,” I say, and then wince. “NotDouchebag Josh. Regular Josh.” But hehadbeen kind of a douchebag last night.
Zoe shrugs, snaps one of her feet into her pedals. “I always forget. He feels like a Chad to me. Did he freak out? Not Chad, obviously. He probably went home and flexed his tiny muscles in the mirror and looked at your homecoming photo. I mean Alex.”
“We didn’t go to homecoming.” I was too sick, the first surgery unsuccessful, the wait for the second one painful, endless. “And no. He didn’t freak out.” Though even as I say it, I have a disturbing flash of Alex’s face when I’d told him. He’d turned pale. He’d looked like I was bringing on one of the horrible panic attacks that I’d stupidly, irrationally, started to think of myself as some strange cure for, no matter whether I know the exact lecture Patricia would give me for thinking in such a reductive way about mental health. “Or if he did, he waiteduntil I left.”
Zoe stops her warm-up pedaling. “Whendid you leave?”
“Uh, you know. After.”
“After youhad more sex?”
The rider beside me has definitely heard that. She’s tucked her chin into her chest to hide a smile, pretending to stretch.
“No,” I loud-whisper, the best I can do with this—God. This music is theworst. It’s so aggressive I’m hearing it in my teeth. “Just after I told him. Like, right after?”
“Are you asking me a question?” says Zoe, her tone slightly scolding. Yikes. I knew it was risky, asking her to leave a warm bed with a hot paramedic on a weekend, but she showed up punchy this morning.
“Kit would be nicer about it,” I say, a half mumble. I’m positive she won’t be able to hear me.
“Kit wouldn’t talk to you about her brother’s penis. This is a one-woman job, Greer, and I’m your woman. So basically, you dropped a big bomb about your past and then ran out of there like you have something tobe ashamed of.”
“We’re not talking about his penis!” Even Gabby hears that. She looks up from her iPhone like she’s never seen me before, in spite of the fact that we’ve been coming to this studio for years. “Anyways, I’m not ashamed.” I lean forward, grip my handlebars under the auspices of checking their stability. But really I’m squeezing out my frustration, and—yeah, my shame. I can feel Zoe watching me.
“If he loses interest in you because you were sick, that sucks. But if you didn’t stick around to find out, that sucks too.”
“It’s not like I’d expect youto understand.”
I regret it as soon as it’s out of my mouth. I told Zoe about my Chiari at the same time I told Kit, when Zoe had found a coupon for a boxing class and they’d both been browbeating me endlessly about joining. I’d used all kinds of excuses: I couldn’t get Thursdays off at the telemarketing gig I’d had at the time, I was pretty sure someone got murdered in that boxing gym back when it was a billiards hall, I objected on moral grounds to combat sports. Finally, after two margaritas and Zoe’s laughing threat to send the instructor—who called himself Ribeye, in case I was wondering—to my job before the next class, I’d caved. I’d said, “I cannot actually risk blows to the head and neck,” and then I’d blurted the entire thing. Kit had cried (she’d had four margaritas) and for weeks afterward she’d do thisisn’t she bravesmile when I did anything requiring bodily movement: walking through a door, climbing stairs, holding a bag of groceries.
But Zoe had sobered up almost immediately. She’d listened to me talk, her face serious but not sad. She’d said, “Well, that’s horrible,” and ordered me another margarita, then she’d told Kit to go to the bathroom and clean herself up. She’d looked back at me and asked if I could do the boxing class so long as no one tried to hitme in the face.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her now, but it’s drowned out as the warm-up electronic music shifts into prepare-to-die electronic music, and Gabby’s on her bike, shouting about whether we’re ready for this. When she tells us to set our intention for the workout, I choose the same thing I always do:feel strong.
But it doesn’t work the same as it usually does. For the next fifty minutes, following instructions to sprint, to add on, to get out of the saddle, to jump and tap back, I feel weaker and weaker, smaller and smaller. I try catching Zoe’s eye, but she’s focused, her jaw set—not just against the struggle of this workout but against me and the way I’d cut her off. By the time we segue into the congrats-you-didn’t-die song that Gabby’s chosen for cool down, I thinkImay well burst into tears, no margaritas necessary.
Out in the lobby, switching out of our cycling shoes on one of the teak benches, I lean into Zoe, nudging her shoulder with mine. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”
Zoe sighs, big and gusty—probably part in frustration with me, and part in fatigue over what we’ve just been through in there. It’s not even seven in the morning yet. “Greer. I know I can’t understand what it was like for you. Of course I know that. And I know your family doesn’t help, acting like you need to be vacuum sealed with packing materials every time you go outdoors. But I’ve been your friend for a long time now, and the thing is—” She breaks off, shakes her head, pulls a thin, long-sleeved shirt over her head, her blond ponytail dark with sweat.
“Thething is what?”
“The thing is, you can’t freeze people out because you’re afraid they’ll treat you differently. They might treat you differently, at least for a while. It’s new information. It’s scary information.”
