You Know Me Well(38)

I’m not even sure he recognizes me—I can’t see why he’d recognize me—until he asks, “So, did everyone like the other photograph? Did it have the desired effect?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I mean, everyone was talking about it. Everyone but the guy I wanted the most to like it.”

He pats me on the knee, in a way that Katie would, not in a way that someone at Happy Happy would.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m really not that much older than you. And I know that when I was your age, this kind of advice would have gone in one ear and out the other. But I’m gonna say it anyway. Most lives are long, and most pain is short. Hearts don’t actually break; they always keep beating. This is not to diminish what you’re going through, but I’ve been there, and I’ve been through it. As that famous homosexual Winston Churchill once said, if you find yourself heartbroken, keep walking.”

“Winston Churchill was gay?”

“Well, no—I was just trying to add some levity there.”

I can’t say I feel much better. But I do feel a little calmer. So there’s that.

The photographer stands. Raises his camera back to his eye.

“One more, for posterity.”

I don’t pose. I let him see me as I am.

“Imperfect,” he says. “Which is perfect.”

And then, like everyone else, he asks the question of the hour: “Where’s your friend?”





14

Kate

I find him on the sidewalk, exactly where his text said he would be.

“I can’t believe you came,” I say.

“I can’t believe you didn’t.”

Even though we’re behind the gallery, the lights and voices from within it tell me that the party is still going strong almost four hours after it began. I saw Ms. Rivera and Ms. Gao getting back into a car when I got here, but I can hear Lehna’s voice and Brad’s and a laugh so shrill and joyless it must be Audra’s. I don’t even listen for Violet’s voice because I know Violet isn’t here. She’s somewhere else, waiting for me to make it up to her.

Brad’s voice booms from inside, announcing one hour left to bid on the auction.

“Can we go somewhere else?” I ask. “We can come back here later, but I can’t go in now.”

Mark stands up.

I look at him; he looks at me.

We are not the same as we were on Sunday.

He runs a hand through his hair and even the way it falls has changed. He isn’t a golden boy, charming a bar with his winsome looks and wholesome sex appeal. He’s wounded and damaged, tired and lost. If he were dancing atop a bar now, just as many people would watch him, but not a single one would smile.

I can feel the change in me, too, but I don’t want to think about it. It’s one thing to be wrecked by another person, entirely something else to be wrecked by yourself.

“Garrison showed up here looking for you.”

“Are you serious?”

“He took my picture and gave me advice. He may think he’s my fairy godfather.”

I smile in spite of myself, and then I think of Saturday night, of that mansion and all those people and the feeling that anything was possible.

“They aren’t ever going to ask us what happened,” I say. “If they haven’t done it by now, they never will.”

“I know.”

The car parked in front of us rumbles to life, shines its headlights into my eyes.

“What advice did he give you?”

“Some stuff about hearts. And that Churchill quote about walking through hell, only he made it about heartbreak.”

“Mr. Freeman loves that quote. Did you have him for history?”

“Yeah, sophomore year.”

“I love his classroom. All of those nice posters he put in frames instead of just tacking them on the walls like all the other teachers do. How he always has tea on his desk and the electric kettle that makes the room all foggy when it’s cold out. I never wanted that period to end. Even though we were talking about wars and betrayals and death, about all of these horrible things and how they repeat themselves, when I was in his room, everything somehow felt safe.”

Mark is watching me as I’m saying this as though I’m answering his question from earlier tonight. And maybe I am. Or, at least, I’m doing my best considering that I don’t know what the answer is.

What’s going on with you?

If I could put it into words, it might not sneak up behind me like it does.

I close my eyes.

Violet.

But it isn’t working anymore. She’s no longer an idea or a spell or a daydream. She’s someone whose mouth I’ve kissed. She knows I have issues and that I run away, and even though I should find comfort in the knowledge that she wants me anyway, I don’t.

I can’t find comfort anywhere.

“Let’s walk,” Mark says.

We pass the Japanese restaurant we went to with Violet. We pass a karaoke bar and a man laying out blankets in a doorway for shelter from the night, fast-food restaurants and a fancy jazz club, hipsters and beggars, a tattoo parlor and a church. And then the street becomes quieter, lined with apartment after apartment and no one but us and the rushing cars and the occasional person returning home.