“Think I could scare your dad and stepmom into letting us leave early?”
He sighs. “They love you, you know this. They always ask about you.”
“Sure. Tokenism at its finest. Plus, better no money than new money.”
James winces. “I’d say they mean well, but they don’t.”
She looks up at him. He looks miserable. No matter how much he reassures them, she knows: Being here only reminds him of his mother.
James barreled into her life in the spring semester of freshman year, dropping into the lecture hall seat she’d been saving for Jackie.That’staken, she’d hissed.And your friend is late,he’d grinned.I’m Jamie, just transferred. Great to meet you.She thought she had his number immediately: tall, hot, overprivileged white boy; she was skeptical of him, he was shamelessly flirtatious with her; smarter than expected, despite the athlete friends, the obnoxious old Harvard sweater, the clear wealth. When she heard him shout her name across the packed bar crowd at 1020, she thought she also knew exactly how the night would go, and it almost did: leaving together fast, making out in his dorm room, lips tasting of gin, her hands tight in his hair, his smile against her teeth, his grip on her hips, until he’d pulled her shirt off, knocking over his lamp as he threw it aside, sending all his nightstand clutter flying: stacked books, ragged receipts, coins, his half-empty beer bottle spilling over a fancy, thick cardstock invitation. A black-and-white photograph of a pretty woman: huge, beautiful grin; familiar blond hair;in loving memory of—
Fuck,he’d muttered, trying to grab everything fast.Sorry—
Is that your mom?Lili asked, suddenly very sober.
Sorry, I don’t—I don’t really want to do this,he’d said.I don’t mean to be an asshole, but can you—
They always do these in black and white,she observed, staring at the invitation, ignoring his clear cue to leave.It always felt worse to me. Did she die recently?
He hesitated, wary.Yeah, he said, after a few moments.A couple months ago.Although his expression was carefully blank, she caught the hard swallow of his throat.
Are you going to go to the memorial?
He snorted.I’m not sure you’re supposed to ask that. Aren’t you all meant to treat me like I’m glass?His tone was very bitter; it was familiar.
I didn’t go to my parents’ memorial, she said, sitting back down on his bed.I mean, I wasn’t really given the choice, I was little—but I don’t know if I would have gone, if I could have.
He stared at her hard; uneasy, reevaluating. He looked very young.
She could have left. Instead, she stayed. She put her shirt back on, and they’d started talking. They didn’t stop talking, even after they had both fully sobered up. It had been freezing—end of January, middle of the night—but they went to go get pizza from the shop on 111th, before walking city blocks. His mother had died in the fall, cancer. They’d foundout just as he’d gone off to college in Boston, and it had been fast. By the time he’d figured out his transfer back to the city for Columbia in the spring, she’d passed.
Lili didn’t talk about her parents, as a rule; how did talking about it do anything but relive it? But she told Jamie a little bit more than she’d told anyone else, that night: how they died, how she’d found out. Down into the Upper West Side, they kept walking as they talked, skirting the edges of the park, through Bryant Park and the Flower District; they made it all the way downtown, markets in Chinatown starting to open, stopping at the water. She could see her breath in the cold air, and the sky was lightening in the morning.
When Monday class came around, she saved him a seat. His responding grin was the brightest she had seen yet. He’d been one of her closest friends ever since. When she introduced him to Jackie, and then Amina, she felt such acute, deep comfort—people that were hers—steady ground beneath her, that she could actually breathe, a little.
It still stuns her. Having found friends who felt like some faint, possible echo of family: Jamie, Jackie, Amina. Even if they didn’t necessarily feel the same way—she doesn’t know, it’s a difficult topic to broach—that closeness, more than she’d ever known growing up in Mill Valley, was a gift; it sometimes feels like a trick. One she tries not to burn out too fast, to lean on too hard, to trust too much of her weight against.
“Come on,” Lili says now, grasping his hand with a smile. “Let’s get drinks.”
Pulling him after her, Lili weaves through the crowd. People break into warm greetings when they recognize James, associates of his father, friends of his stepmother, parents of his old Dalton classmates, but Lili is determined to get them to the bar.
“Two Negronis, please,” she asks the bartender.
“Up,” James adds. Standing behind her, he settles his hands on her shoulders. “Very up.”
“That’s the spirit,” Lili says, patting his hand.
“One hour. One hour, and then we’re going home, and watchingThe Big Short.”
She snorts. “I still don’t get how that’s your comfort movie. Should we do a lap—”
“Lili, dear!” Across the room, she hears a voice—Meredith, Jamie’s stepmother—call her name. “James!”
“Fuck leaving early,” James breathes suddenly. “This is my Super Bowl.”
“What?” Confused, Lili turns, taking a sip of her fresh Negroni. She looks for his stepmother’s blond hair in the crowd of too-white smiles, third wives, and age gaps, when a familiar face snags in her periphery.
It’s like hearing her favorite song at a party she thought she would hate: the sight of Aleksandr across the room.
