Frenemies(22)

“You might try telling Georgia that it’s not cool to tell someone she’s going to ‘make them pay’ when they’re only trying to be nice, by the way,” Nate said, making the sort of face you make when you’re sharing a joke. Not that I thought anything was funny.

“You can’t possibly believe that Helen was trying to be nice.” My voice was flat.

“Helen has a different approach to things,” Nate said, but with that same conspiratorial smile. We know what a handful Helen can be, that smile said. It confused me, even as it invited me to share. “And what did you say to Henry? I know you weren’t exactly a member of his fan club, but when did you start hating his guts?”

“What?” I couldn’t possibly have a discussion about Henry with Nate. My mind actually blanked out at the very idea. “What are you talking about?”

“That Ashley girl doesn’t like you much, anyway,” Nate said with a laugh. “She wouldn’t stop bitching about you. But I keep trying to tell him that’s what happens when you date idiots.”

This affable version of Nate was the one I’d fallen for, not the sad-eyed guy who’d said incomprehensible things on Janis Joplin night. I felt a rush of warmth. Maybe he wasn’t as much a stranger to me as it had seemed.

“I thought you agreed with Oscar,” I said, smiling back at him. “Those who can, do. When it comes to moronic bimbos, anyway.”

“Sure,” Nate said. “But after a while, if you actually have a personality, you have to find a girl with a personality, too. Otherwise you’re basically just masturbating.”

We both laughed at that, and then a companionable sort of silence fell between us. The way it always had.

There was no way he and Helen talked like this. There was no way she got him the way I did. I opened my mouth to say so, but it was like he read my mind.

“Gus,” he began in a softer tone, the one that matched the look he sent my way. “You know I never meant to hurt you, right? Tell me you know that.”

“I know it,” I said quietly, although I wasn’t at all sure I meant it. I just wanted to stay in that shared space of agreement with him.

“You’re the kind of girl a guy takes home to his mother,” Nate told me with that same sweet smile. With vaguely sad undertones. “I always knew I could count on you.”

I smiled automatically, but then felt it falter. Because he’d kept me far away from his mother, and what had he counted on me for? To let him go?

“Wait,” I started, confused.

“I’m so glad you guys can talk,” Helen cooed from behind me. I jumped a little bit. Nate turned toward her but didn’t smile.

I clung to that.

“Helen,” I said, because for that single moment there, I’d forgotten about her. Or I’d wanted to.

“Seriously,” Helen said, smiling at me with great benevolence. “I want you and Nate to be friends, Gus. It’s really important to me.”

“Of course we’re friends,” Nate told her. “We’ve all known each other way too long, right? I remember studying for finals with you guys freshman year. That’s a long time.”

I noticed no one consulted me about my feelings on the subject of our continuing friendships.

But “Of course!” I said brightly when they both looked at me. Helen’s smile set my teeth on edge, but Nate looked so … hopeful. As if he and I were in on something. Together.

I couldn’t believe how very much I wanted that to be true.

“You can always count on Gus,” Nate told Helen, his eyes bright as they caught mine. He was repeating himself deliberately, I could tell. He was sending me a message. It made me feel hopeful, too.

“We’ll always be friends,” I promised like an idiot, and then stood there like a big, blue loser while Helen kissed my boyfriend.

Again.





chapter eight





Note to self: The next time you feel the need to prove just how funny you are, please endeavor to do so in a way that will not involve performing the Royal Blueberry Walk of Sartorial Shame across the Boston metropolitan area at two o’clock in the morning, to the delight of Boston’s numerous drunks, one of whom you’re pretty sure thought you were Pat Benatar. Furthermore, please recollect in future that the horrifying dress in question comes with a pair of shoes (pumps!) that are not only uglier than sin but desperately, blisteringly uncomfortable.

It was a week before Thanksgiving in Boston, and the gray Saturday was so cold the air practically shattered around me when I inhaled. I jammed my (embarrassingly ugly, yet warm) hat tighter on my head and wrapped my scarf around my neck an extra turn, and yanked Linus along on his leash. It was a short walk to the park at the Victory Gardens, where dogs romped around off leash and I could brood over my ridiculous life. Today the walk felt even longer than usual. Half because of the bitter cold, and half because my brain refused to stop turning over the events of the night before.

Event one: Helen. And everything she’d said and/or insinuated, which seemed to be repeating on an unpleasantly loud loop in my brain.

Event two: it was perhaps time to realize that not all things that made me snicker had to be acted out—which was to say, it was one thing to cackle with Georgia about the idea of wearing the blueberry dresses out, and another thing entirely to do it. The blueberry dress—I could see now—was a metaphor. It was time to retire the blueberry dresses.