The next morning, I woke up to sunshine spilling out across crumpled white sheets. David was still asleep, sprawled across the bed, and to temper my splitting headache I stumbled intothe kitchen and downed a glass of water, gagging a couple of times over the stainless steel sink. In the bathroom, I looked for a pink bottle to ease the nausea from my hangover and found nothing except some razor blades, a half-rolled-up tube of toothpaste, and a blue toothbrush that had seen better days.
In the clarity of daylight (and sobriety) I realized that I had been overreacting the night before, or at least focusing my attention on the wrong problem. David was a guy, and guys didn’t talk about the details of their sex lives with other people. He was probably too ecstatic about getting laid to care too much about my request. It wasn’t like I asked him to pretend I was aspecificLaura; only a person named Laura who could be a figment of my imagination for all he knew, not an actual person I knew from school. The real problem was how much I enjoyed pretending to be Laura, how it felt soright, as though in a world that was fair and in which everything made sense Iwould beLaura, or at least have all of the positive attributes of hers, and none of the negative attributes of Elizabeth.
—
Later that afternoon, when Ihad already returned home, Leah texted me to come to her dorm right away. My mind immediately jumped to the direst possibilities: someone had died or was about to die.
Are you hurt? Do I need to call 911?I texted her.
Just come, she said. When I got there, she was sitting on the floor sobbing, black mascara smeared across her cheeks.
I was the first to admit that I never was the best at comforting people. It wasn’t because I didn’t care; in fact, sometimes the more I cared, the more awkward I would feel, and I would freezeup and not know what to do. But it seemed like my own friends always knew how, just naturally, without even thinking about it. Like when I was sick with a cold and Alex brought me Gatorade and snacks to my room and wouldn’t let me even reimburse them. Or when my computer broke during finals week and the only appointment available at the Apple store was at 4:00 a.m., and Leah insisted that she go with me. Or like when I had my mental breakdown over the Harvard rejection and Eunjin stayed with me until I felt okay. I still didn’t think it had been necessary for her to call the EMTs, but in retrospect it was the kindest thing that she could’ve done.
So I thought about what my friends would do if I were the one sitting on the floor sobbing, and I realized that they would first ask what was wrong. I sat down next to Leah and patted her back.
“Tell me everything,” I said. At first she was hiccupping so hard that it was difficult to understand her. “Do you want a glass of water?” I asked. When she didn’t respond, I realized that she probably didn’t even want to think about whether she wanted water, so I just took out the water bottle from my backpack, unscrewed the lid, and handed it to her. She gulped down the entire contents and started to talk.
It turned out she had discovered after looking through Alex’s phone that Alex had been cheating on her with an ex. The ex had been in the same Eastern Civilizations class as Alex; at first, Leah had been jealous, but Alex told her she was being paranoid and had nothing to worry about. It wasn’t until she read some texts on Alex’s phone that she realized her instincts had been right all along.
Alex had been in the shower when Leah snooped throughthe texts, and after they came back, the two of them entered a screaming match. Alex packed up some clothes in a duffel bag and agreed to stay with a friend for a few days until they figured out the rooming situation.
“I just feel so stupid,” Leah said. “Everyone warned me to not room with Alex in case something like this happened. God, everyone’s probably going to be saying behind our backs ‘I told you so.’ ”
“Well, if they are thinking that or saying that, they’re the ones who are stupid,” I said. “You and Alex were in love, and who in the world doesn’t make a questionable decision when they’re in love? There would literally be no good art in the world if that were the case.”
I knelt down next to Leah and rubbed her back. Her shirt was lightly damp with sweat. I didn’t speak for the next few minutes, just continued to sit next to her while her sobs turned into whimpers.
“Why am I not enough?” she asked through labored breaths.
I didn’t know what to say. It was obvious to me that Leah was enough for Alex; it was obvious to me that Leah would be enough for anyone. Leah’s worth was so obvious to me that I didn’t know how to explain it to someone who didn’t already understand. It would be like explaining to someone that the sky was blue and that grass was green.
“Of course the problem couldn’t have been you,” I said. “Who in their right mind would think you weren’t good enough for them? No one. I mean, maybe like George Clooney. But only when he was in his prime, not now when he’s so old and wrinkly.”
She managed to chuckle a little bit. It came out more like a choke.
“But I wasn’t enough for Alex. Otherwise, why did they cheat?”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously that has nothing to do with you. No idiot in their right mind would cheat on you, so either Alex is an idiot, or Alex was not in their right mind. I mean, you know you’re hot, right?”
“God, Elizabeth. You’re so fucking shallow.”
“I know. But so are you, right? We all are. Otherwise why did you start to smile after I said that?”
She wiped away her tears. This time, she let out a real laugh.
“You’re so annoying,” she said.
“I know. Also, now that you’re mad at Alex, I can tell you that you’re out of their league anyway.”
Leah shrugged. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, but like…I don’t know. I used to care about that kind of thing, but Alex was actually the person who made me stop caring about that kind of thing.”
“Oh. Because of the whole nonbinary thing?”
“No, not that. It’s because when you feel so deeply connected with someone…none of that stuff matters. You don’t think about ‘Oh, I’m more attractive than them’ or ‘Oh, they’re more attractive than me.’ Because you feel so solid in your connection that you don’t need to feel threatened by anyone else. I mean, clearly I was wrong, but you get what I’m saying.”
