Frenemies(54)
“The ugly truth about Nate is that he cheated on you and only left you when you caught him in the act,” Georgia said. “Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what his plan was? I mean, what if you hadn’t caught him? Was he just going to keep seeing both of you?”
I gaped at her for a moment. Then shook it off. “You don’t have all the information,” I hastened to tell her. “It’s not that cut-and-dried.”
So I told her everything. About what he’d said to me on Janis Joplin night. Those strange, yearning moments at the Park Plaza. The Night of Seven Voice Mails. About when he pretended I was a guy so Helen wouldn’t suspect anything. About last night’s ridiculousness.
“Wait a minute,” Georgia said. “Is this seventh grade? She called you from his phone?”
“I keep trying to tell you people that she’s the crazy one here,” I pointed out. “Not me.”
“I don’t know if she’s crazy,” Georgia said with a sniff. “I’ve hated that bitch since the nineties. Since I laid eyes on her in our hallway freshman year and saw exactly what kind of girl she was. But it’s obviously crossed her mind that if she could steal Nate from you, he’s the kind of man who can be stolen.”
“I think maybe he’s just trapped,” I told her. “You know what Helen’s like. You know how convincing she seems to be to men, for whatever reason.”
Georgia sighed. “I think you want him to be trapped, because that way, there’s an excuse for how he’s stringing you along.” She held up her hand when I started to argue. “Believe me, Gus, I know about this kind of thing. I’m the poster girl for this kind of thing. You spend fifty percent of your time making excuses for some guy’s shitty behavior and the other fifty percent of your time fantasizing about how great things could be if only.”
“Nate isn’t Jared!” The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Georgia’s eyebrows rose, and I felt myself flush. “I just mean, the situations are different,” I said quickly. “I knew Nate for years before we started dating. We were together for almost four months. Okay? I’m not trying to be all Amy Lee about it.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice was brisk.
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s seriously fine,” Georgia said. “Jared was a loser and I was overdramatic. End of story.”
When it came to Amy Lee herself, however, Georgia was less forgiving.
“Sure she had some points,” she said, stabbing at her plate with her fork. “She was probably right, in fact.”
I let out a breath.
“I thought so too,” I confessed.
“But that’s how she expresses herself to her two best friends in the world?” Georgia continued. “That’s how she takes us aside and lets us know that she has some concerns? By talking down to both of us, in front of someone else, at a party?” She shook her head. “She’s always thought she was better than us. This is the same thing as that time she was all up on her high horse about how everything was so much different for her when she met Oscar because she had a good-looking boyfriend. Please. As if the men we liked were trolls?”
“Okay, sure,” I said, remembering what was definitely not Amy Lee’s finest hour. “That was so long ago, though. She seemed a little too serious this time.”
“Of course she was serious,” Georgia said, and then sighed, and I saw sadness flood her face. “The fact is, Amy Lee had the good fortune to trip over her husband at the age of twenty-three.” She made a face. “She gets the option to have adult choices.”
“This is a little unsettling.” I stared at her. “I prepared myself the whole way over here for you to tell me that I’m the * in this scenario.”
“I have a very serious bone to pick with Amy Lee,” Georgia replied. “And believe me, I plan to pick it. But I don’t think you did anything wrong. Sneaky and behind my back, yes, but I can sort of see why you’d feel you had to. I had the killer crush for so long, of course you were afraid I’d go ballistic.”
“I miss her,” I confessed. “I’m not used to her hating me, Georgia. I’m used to talking to her three times a day.”
“She doesn’t hate us,” Georgia said.
“She told us to f*ck off.”
“She doesn’t hate us,” she repeated, but it sounded more wistful this time. She shook her head, and then met my eyes as if together, if we concentrated, we could make it true. “She’s confused, obviously, but she doesn’t hate us, Gus. How could she?”
That question haunted me later that night, when I was once again in prone position on my couch, glowering at the ceiling.
Amy Lee had always been different from Georgia and me. We’d gone to BU for any number of reasons, most of them ridiculous (I had fantasies of my life in Boston, Georgia thought the TA she’d met on her tour was hot) whereas Amy Lee had plans. She’d enrolled at BU as part of the Goldman School of Dental Medicine’s seven-year plan. Three years of regular arts and sciences classes, then four years of dental school. While we floated from this to that, and Georgia even changed her major twice, Amy Lee remained focused.
She’d always found us a little bit exasperating, now that I thought about it. For a long time I thought Georgia and I provided Amy Lee with a bit of much-needed chaos and levity in her otherwise extremely goal-oriented world. There had been a time she’d loved us for that. I didn’t want to admit that time might have ended. No matter how much I wanted to make her apologize for that scene in front of Henry, I wanted her friendship more.