She dated, sometimes, but it never went anywhere. A couple guys from work over the years, a girl in her building for a while, some meaningless hookups from apps that she’d hoped would take the edge off her loneliness, but never really did.
She’s never done happy hour with a group of friends. Never sat around and ordered a pitcher without being on a mediocre date with some forgettable person and their equally forgettable friends. Alice isn’t trying to date any of Delilah’s friends, she’s not looking for a hookup; she literally just wants a friend.
It shouldn’t be a big deal—Delilah certainly didn’t mean it to be anything but nice and low-key—but Alice is on the verge of hyperventilating for her entire bus ride to work.
—
After their shift is over, Alice follows Delilah for a couple of blocks like a pathetic little duckling. They step inside a dark bar, and Delilah leads Alice to a table filled with some of the trendiest people Alice has seen in real life. They’re all tall and thin and interesting-looking, although one has a truly horrible mustache and Alice wonders if anyone has ever told them it makes them look like a real creep. They all seem kind of queer in the way so many Gen Z people do, the way that’s maybe just fashion Alice doesn’t understand but maybe is also a much more highly evolved sense of self and gender than she’s used to.
She likes them.
They don’t pressure her to talk much; not as if she isn’t there, but more like she’s not any different from them. Instead, they fold her into their conversation like she’s always been there, and even though she can’t follow some of it, it’s thrilling.
It’s like how Babs and Aunt Sheila and Marie brought her into their lives, but without all the lying and comatose people and sexy, confusing butches.
“So, Alice,” one of them says, a gender-ambiguous person with a mullet whose name is some nature word Alice was told and then immediately forgot. Maybe Raisin? That can’t be right—who would be named Raisin?—but it’s Portland, so. It could be Raisin. “You’re the one who saved that guy, right? Delilah told us about it.”
Alice nods, taking a sip of her beer to hide her face. She ordered a PBR because it’s cheap and some of the others ordered them too. It’s more like a beer-flavored LaCroix than a beer, but hey. If it means she fits in and can still pay her rent, all the better.
“And isn’t he, like, your boyfriend or something?”
Fucking Raisin. Alice was enjoying not lying for one stupid minute—was that too much to ask?
“Well, not exactly,” Alice says, slipping back into her mental gymnastics with a silent groan. She feels like a forty-year-old woman trying to put on her teenage leotard again, suiting up for a competition she’s long since gotten too old for. “And not…it’s over now.”
“Oh shit,” Raisin says. “I’m sorry.”
“That sucks,” the person next to Raisin says, who Alice is pretty sure is named Juniper. Or Maple? There are so many nice kinds of trees to name Portland children after! Alice isn’t immune; she doesn’t want kids anymore, but when she was younger she’d always wanted to name a kid Cedar.
Alice hums, and then realizes she’s kind of sounding like a closed-off bitch right now, and she’s trying to make a good impression, damn it. “He has amnesia,” she volunteers, and the table goes silent for a second.
“What?” That’s the third friend, Jessica, which feels like the weird name after Raisin and Maple.
“Amnesia?” Raisin says, their eyebrows so high it’s like they’ve melded with the mullet. “For real?”
“Yup,” Alice says, taking another sip of her watery beer. “Lost five years of his life, although it’s started slowly creeping back. He had no idea who I was.” That’s technically true; she’s careful to make that second sentence a separate one rather than a dependent clause.
The beauty of omission.
“You were pretty tight with his family, right?” Delilah says, her big eyes warm and sympathetic. “They came by the office.”
“Yeah. They’re…they’re great. Definitely the hardest part of the breakup.”
Delilah gives her a bit of a considering look, then seems like she’s steeling herself before she says, “His sister stopped by a lot.”
Alice blinks at her. The words are casual, but Delilah’s tone is making Alice nervous. She nods slowly, and Delilah keeps going.
“She’s hot.”
Alice almost spits out her beer. Instead she chokes it down, and creepy mustache dude slaps her on the back, trying to keep her alive.
“Um,” Alice wheezes. “Sorry, you surprised—” She finally swallows and takes in a few big breaths. “Yeah,” she says, able to be honest now. Hopefully none of them know Van—she knows queer communities can be small, but these people can’t be over twenty-five and Alice is going to hope that the Gen Z/Millennial social divide is working in her favor right now. “She’s very hot.”
“Did, um…” Delilah scrunches up a napkin in her handsand then looks sideways over at Alice. “Did anything happen? Between you and her?”
Alice looks around the table. Raisin, Maple, and Jessica are looking at her, eyes blown wide open, and mustache dude is mutteringOh shit,and fuck it but Delilah asked.
“It…did,” she says, and she’s pretty sure everyone at the table screams.
