Final Girls(23)

“Enough!”

I leap from my seat, tipping my wine glass, its contents gushing over the table. I sop it up with my napkin. White fabric turning red.

“Jeff. Bedroom. Now.”

We stand by the closed door, facing each other, our bodies a study in contrasts. Jeff is calm and loose, arms at his sides. Mine are a straightjacket across my chest, which lifts and falls in exasperation.

“You didn’t need to be so harsh.”

“After what she said to me? I think I did, Quinn.”

“You have to admit, you kind of started it.”

“By being curious?”

“By being suspicious,” I say. “You were giving her the third degree out there. This isn’t court. She’s not one of your clients, Jeff.”

My voice is too loud, ringing off the walls. Jeff and I both look to the door, pausing to see if Sam heard us. I’m sure she did. Even if she has managed to miss my increasingly shrill tone, it’s obvious we’re again talking about her.

“I was asking her pretty rational questions,” Jeff says, lowering his voice to make up for my volume. “Don’t you think she’s being evasive?

“She doesn’t want to talk about this stuff. I can’t blame her.”

“That still gave her no right to talk to me like that. As if I’m the one who attacked her.”

“She’s sensitive.”

“Bullshit. She was egging me on.”

“She was defending herself,” I say. “She’s not an enemy, Jeff. She’s a friend. Or at least she can be.”

“Do you even want to be friends with her? Until yesterday, you seemed perfectly happy having nothing to do with this Final Girls stuff. So what’s changed?”

“Other than Lisa Milner’s suicide?”

A sigh from Jeff. “I understand how much it’s upset you. I know you’re sad and disappointed about what happened. But why this sudden interest in becoming friends with Sam? You don’t even know her, Quinn.”

“I know her. She went through the same thing I did, Jeff. I know exactly who she is.”

“I’m just worried that if you two get close, you’ll start dwelling on what happened to you. And you’ve moved past it.”

Jeff means well. I know this. And living with me isn’t always easy. I know this, too. But that doesn’t keep his comment from stinging like a slap.

“My friends were slaughtered, Jeff. That’s not something I’ll ever move past.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

I lift my chin, defiant in my anger. “Then what did you mean?”

“That you’ve become more than a victim,” Jeff says. “That your life—our life—isn’t defined by that night. I don’t want that to change.”

“My being nice to Sam isn’t going to change anything. And it’s not like I have a whole army of friends beating down the front door.”

This isn’t something I plan to admit. My loneliness is something I generally keep from Jeff. I smile sunnily when he comes home from work and asks me how my day was. Fine, I always say, when in fact my days are normally listless and dull. Long afternoons spent baking in isolation, sometimes talking to the oven just to hear the sound of my voice.

Instead of friends, I have acquaintances. Former classmates and co-workers. Ones with husbands and kids and office jobs that aren’t conducive to regular contact. Ones I purposefully kept at a distance until they became nothing more substantial than occasional text messages or emails.

“I really need this, Jeff,” I say.

Jeff grips my shoulders, kneading them. He looks into my eyes, seeing something out of place, something unspoken.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I got an email,” I say.

“From Sam?”

“Lisa. She sent it an hour before she—”

Offed herself, I want to say. Finished what Stephen Leibman didn’t get the chance to do. “Passed away.”

“What did it say?”

I recite the email word for word, the text etched into my memory.

“Why would she do that?” Jeff says, as if I somehow have an answer.

“I don’t know. I’ll never know. But for some reason she was thinking about me right before she died. And all I can think about is the fact that, if I had seen that email in time, I could have possibly saved her.”

Tears form, hot in the corners of my eyes. I try to blink them back, to no avail. Jeff pulls me to him, my head against his chest, his arms tight around my back.

“Jesus, Quinn. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You had no way of knowing.”

“But you can’t let yourself think you’re responsible for Lisa’s death.”

“I don’t,” I say. “But I do think I missed my chance to help her. I don’t want to do the same thing with Sam. I know she’s rough around the edges. But I think she needs me.”

Jeff sighs a long exhalation of defeat.

“I’ll play nice,” he says. “I promise.”

We kiss and make up, tears salty on my lips. I wipe them away while Jeff lets go of me, jiggling his arms to release the tension. I give my shirt a tug and smooth out the tear-stained spot I left on his. Then we’re out of the bedroom, moving down the hall with hands entwined. A unified front.