SUBJECT:RE: following up :)
See you all Thursday at 7:30! Everyone please be sure to haveall 48 questionsof the survey filled out before we meet.
XO, Renee
Hey Dad, quick question. Actually, 48 of ’em.
Love,
Your Dallas Alice
Four
My Thursdays and Fridays are routinely reserved for client work and practicing bass, but Gin’s coming over, and it’s been months since I’ve had company. Thus begins my two-day deep clean. I wipe down the baseboards. I degrease the cabinets. I scrub the floors with such aggression that even the former tenants must sense it. I won’t let Gin be anything less than impressed.
Friday afternoon, I swing by the corner store so I can offer Gin something to drink besides water, and when I lug two cases of seltzer to the counter—one standard, one spiked—I feel a little like I’m getting away with something. Years have passed since I last bought booze.
“It’s not for me,” I assure the clerk as I slide him my ID. “It’s for my friend.” But he didn’t ask, nor does he care.
At home, I load Gin’s seltzers into the refrigerator, counting the weeks since we last hung out one-on-one. I went over to hers the day after Rishi proposed, but I don’t think we’ve had a proper life catch-up since. I tick off the necessary updates in my head—Dad’s replacement in The Handful and the memorial concert, plus Aidan’s slipup at the studio and, in non-dead-dad-related news, the folk EP I just finished mixing. I pin each story to the squishy corkboard of my memory, hoping we’ll have time forthem all, then check my phone to see if there’s any word on Gin’s location. Instead, I’m greeted with a text from Mom.
Mom
Hey Alice. Any word about your availability to help clean out the Outpost before the memorial concert?
My stomach bottoms out.Shit.I distinctly remember checking my calendar, but I must’ve forgotten to text Mom about it.
Alice
Sorry, yes! I’m available.
Mom
Great! What about rescheduling dinner?
Just then, my screen flashes to an incoming call from the front gate. I buzz Gin up, then pocket my phone. Mom can wait a little bit longer.
I slide open the dead bolt just in time to watch Gin trudge up the third and final flight of stairs. She’s fresh from work, looking every bit the fun music teacher in jeans, a green-polka-dotted blouse, and dangly earrings shaped like the treble and bass clefs. They jostle and swing as she shoves a garment bag into my arms.
“Your clothes from the engagement dinner,” Gin explains before I can ask. She breezes past me and toes off her ballet flats. “I got ’em dry cleaned.”
“And here I was congratulating myself on pretreating that wine stain on your dress.”
“That’s perfect. You just…you know me.”
It’s universally known that no one spends more time at the end of the extra mile than Gin Bennett. Yes, she’s liable to spill half a glass of wine on herself at the start of her engagement party, but she’d go to the ends of the earth if that’s where your favorite dry cleaner was. How is it that I gave her the clothes off my back and I still feel like she’s the one doing me a favor?
I stow the dry cleaning bag while Gin begins a self-guided tour of the concert posters framed down the hall. Most are vintage from the early days of The Handful, but a single Cold Sweat poster hangs in the center from my final headlining show. I listen for Gin’s wind chime laugh when she lays eyes on my latest DIY effort: an entire living room wall collaged with vintage covers ofRolling Stonemagazine.
“You’re crazy for this.” Gin twirls a finger toward my masterpiece. I track her gaze as it jumps from the old oak record cabinet to the leafy monstera plant I’ve proudly kept alive. “This place looks great,” she says, then wonders aloud, “How long has it been since I’ve been over?”
“Since, uh.” I swallow. “Not since right after the funeral.”
For a too-long moment, it’s dead air between us. Gin chews her lip, then softly asks, “Was that when I brought the lasagna?”
I have so few memories from those first few weeks without Dad, but the day Gin stopped by is one I won’t forget. I can still hear the rustle of the trash bag as she walked laps around my apartment, deconstructing my depression nest one crumpled tissue and rotting takeout box at a time. It was humiliating, having my ex-girlfriend bring me dinner and clean up my mess, but it was also the first time in weeks I felt any way other than sad. It was the strangestswirl of shame and gratitude. At least someone other than my mom and The Handful gave a shit.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “When you brought the lasagna.”
