Gin gasps. “You’re datinghim?!”
“Stop, no!” Chrissy blushes. “We’re just talking. But he was so cute, right? And I’m trying to stop dating people I work with.”
I’m smearing my ears with sunscreen, but they still burn at the mention of Chrissy’s job, which I still haven’t figured out. “Whoarethe people you work with?”
“Coworkers. Duh.” Chrissy shoots me a look like I’m the crazy one here. “Anyway, Gin, not to be annoying, but are we getting plus-ones for the wedding?”
Gin’s laugh is practically carbonated. “Seriously? Would you really invite…wait, what’s the guy’s name?”
Chrissy’s lips shrink down to a sour-lemon pucker, her eyes wide and darting left to right. “This is so bad.” She winces. “I’ve just been calling him Waiter Boy.”
“You don’t know his name?!” Renee swigs her hard kombuchabefore slamming it down on top of the mini fridge. “I watched you text this boy when the flight took offandwhen it landed and you don’t even know hisname?”
“I’m gonna figure it out!” Chrissy says.
I choke back a laugh. “Before or after they putWaiter Boyon the seating chart?”
Gin guffaws. Her cheeks are beginning to flush, but I’m not sure if it’s the sun or the booze. “Wait,” she says. “Waaaaaaaaitaminute. Chrissy. Have you slept with him?”
“Oh my god, NO! Can you imagine?” Chrissy lazes back on the sectional and releases a loud, seductive moan. “Ohhh, Waiter Boy.” She convulses for effect. “Don’t STOP, don’t STOP, Waiter Boy!”
Someone from a neighboring cabana whistles and yells back, “You tell him, girl!” Personally, this would send me into hiding. Not Chrissy. She jolts upright and takes a dramatic bow. The unison cackle that explodes out of our cabana could drown out two Madonna-spinning DJs and a crowd twice as loud.
“Oh my God.” Gin doubles over, hanging on to her own knees for dear life. “Do we have to go into hiding the rest of the weekend?”
“I’ll still associate with you in public.” Renee shimmies her shoulders toward Chrissy. “That is, if Waiter Boy brings a friend.”
The Waiter Boy jokes spill into the fourth round of drinks, and my only contribution—subbingwaiterforskaterin Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi”—is an enormous hit. The girls shriek-sing the chorus repeatedly, and when the DJ finally puts it on, their victory howl is deafening, devolving into laughter and booty shaking and Chrissy filming every second of the fun. I sway my shoulders and smile when she turns the camera on me, but I can’t matchtheir energy. I’m weighed down by this sad, shrinking feeling in my belly that I wish would either go away or swallow me whole. I haven’t been in a situation like this—me the sober one while everyone else is drunk—and I’d forgotten that I only started liking parties when I started drinking too much to remember them. I miss the person I could be when I drank. Not mean, aggressive Blackout Alice but the bubbly, brazen person I would become after the first two or three drinks. But I could never stop there. I’ve only ever been able to drink too much or not at all. Sober, I feel a little like I’m peering through the glass of an aquarium I can’t jump into. When Avril gets to the bridge of “Sk8r Boi,” Gin struts toward me, arms outstretched and a mischievous glint in her eyes. She takes my hands and tugs me up onto my feet for the last verse and chorus. I try to dance. I try to sing. I even lock eyes with Renee a few times and test out a watery smile. I’m still trying. With Renee. With everything. For Gin.
Somewhere between the sixth and seventh rounds of hard kombuchas, I turn into the annoying sober friend. It is sweltering, and Renee’s minute-by-minute itinerary leaves no space for a trip to the emergency room.
“Plot twist of the century,” Chrissy jokes while I pass out a third round of waters. “Blackout Alice making us hydrate? What’s next? Is Willie Nelson gonna tell us to quit smoking weed?”
Gin laughs and shushes Chrissy, all in one breath. “She’s Sober Alice now.” Her head turns before her eyes do, lids weighed down over a clownish grin. “That’s why you’remotheringus. Right, Alice?”
Even through her drunken haze, Gin must see the hurt flicker in my eyes, because her smile slips and she chugs her water, apologizing by way of sobering up. Or so I think until she stands and clears her throat.
“Speaking of Willie Nelson,” Gin says. “Did you know that Alice Pierce once performed with the man himself?”
My cheeks burn, and no SPF can save me. “Gin, please.”
“No, no.” She holds one finger aloft. “The people deserve to know one of the coolest stories of all time. The Handful was playing Willie’s birthday party, right? In Texas? Thisbigshow, and we were right out of college. We got to be backstage, and Alice Marie Pierce.” She burps. Grins. “Makingherstory, slammed a beer andjoinedthem. Sheshared Willie’s mic. And Alice’s dad had to be, like,No no no, it’s okay, security—that’s my daughter.”
Chrissy crackles with laughter, and Gin fumbles for her phone, insisting she can find a video. If it’s possible for a person’s soul to turn red, mine is blazing. I glance toward Renee, whose mouth hovers just above the lip of a spiked seltzer can. She’s not laughing. She’s not even smiling. A shadow passes through her eyes as they flick toward me, and then—
“Cannonball contest!”
It’s a total Hail Mary, and for a split second, I’m not even sure I’m the one who said it, but I kick off my flip-flops and take off at a sprint. My feet scald on the concrete. My cheeks burn in embarrassment. I can’t take another minute of this damn heat.
I jump, a clean cannonball breaking through the water, which isn’t nearly as cold as I need it to be. I feel safe beneath the surface with the muffled bass beats, then even safer when a second cannonball splashes beside me, then a third and a fourth. We bob up to the surface one by one, their drunken laughs just as loud as the music. In this moment, even sober, I feel like a part of the group.
By the end of our pool day, Chrissy is the color of a boiled lobster, and three out of four of us are very drunk. Renee stumbles through the sliding glass door of our room, then flops down onthe bed in her still-damp bikini, blond hair splayed out behind her like a mermaid.
“Sleepy?” I tease.
“Exhausted,” Renee slurs. “I’m so…I don’t even remember if tonight is Disco-Cowgirl night or Dress Like Your Favorite Martini.”
“The martini one,” I remind her.
