Big Summer(16)

“And Tess Holliday!” Drue continued. “And Lola Dalton!” Tess Holliday was a top plus-size model; Lola Dalton was a comedian who’d actually retweeted a video I’d made about how, for plus-size women, getting a sports bra on was the workout before the workout.

“How’s Darshi?” she asked, her voice bright and upbeat, as if the three of us had been besties. As if Darshi hadn’t been one of her favorite targets back in the day.

“She’s doing very well. Finishing up her dissertation at Columbia, actually. We’re roommates.”

“Wow. That’s really great.”

“What do you want, Drue?” I was glad to hear that my voice was pleasant but businesslike.

She rubbed her hands against her thighs again, and smoothed her hair, giving me another look at her ring. “I need people,” she said softly. “People to be in my wedding.”

I schooled my face into blankness and fixed my eyes on a point just above her head as Drue kept talking.

“My fiancé… he’s got all these friends… he’s got, like, eight groomsmen, and I don’t have that many. I don’t have anyone, really.” Her voice cracked. Her chest hitched. Her eyes gleamed with the sheen of tears.

I turned away. “What about the gruesome twosome?”

Drue made a small, familiar gesture, one I’d seen her employ a dozen times, always in relation to some guy she’d been seeing, a flick of her hand that meant I’m done with him. When I kept staring, she sighed. “Ainsley’s in Tokyo for some job thing,” she said. “And Avery isn’t interested.”

There was a story there, I thought as Drue pulled in a deep breath and sighed it out. “I haven’t been perfect,” she said. “I know that. And I’ve missed you.” Her eyes shone with what looked like sincerity. “I’ve never again had a friend like you.” She tried to smile. When she saw my stony expression, the smile slid off her face. Looking down, she said, “The wedding is going to be covered everywhere. We’ll be in Vogue, and Town & Country, and we’re hoping for the Times’ Vows column. And it’s going to look ridiculous if I’m up there all by myself.” Her eyes welled with tears.

“You don’t have anyone?” I heard myself ask.

“I’ve got two cousins, and one of them is pregnant.” She used her hands to sketch an enormous belly in the air. “She might not be able to make it to the wedding. And my assistant said she’d do it. Stuart’s got a sister. And I asked one girl from college, and one girl from grad school. They said yes. Probably because I said I’d pay their airfare.”

Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I thought. As if she’d heard me, Drue started to cry for real. “I haven’t been a good person. Maybe I don’t even know how to be a good person. And I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I was awful to you, but I don’t have anyone else, and you were the only one…” She gulped, then wiped her cheeks, and looked at me with her reddened eyes. “You were the only one who ever just liked me for me.” In a tiny, un-Drue-like voice, she asked, “Will you be in my wedding? Please?”

I curled my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into the meat of my palms, and stared at her in a way I hoped managed to communicate my utter incredulity at the very thought that I’d ever participate in her wedding. Drue bowed her head and swayed forward, close enough for me to smell her shampoo and perfume, both of them familiar, both immediately taking me back to the cafeteria at Lathrop, and her bedroom, where I’d spent dozens of nights sleeping on the trundle bed on the floor next to her. There was a guest room, of course, but on the nights I spent there we always ended up in her room, together.

“Daphne, I know I was awful. I’ve been in therapy.” Her lips quirked. “I’m probably the first one on either side of my family to do that.” Her laugh sounded rueful, the kind I’d never heard from her before. “WASPs don’t get therapists, they get drunk and have affairs.” Another sigh. “High school was not a good time for me, and I took it out on other people.”

Part of me was dying to ask for details, to try to make some sense of what she was telling me. I had so many questions, but I forced myself to keep quiet and warned myself not to trust her, not to open the door and let her hurt me again.

“My parents haven’t been happy for a long time. I don’t know if they ever were happy, but when we were in high school, it was…” She shook her head. “It was bad. My father would go on business trips for months at a time, and when he’d come home, they’d have these knock-down, drag-out, screaming fights.” She picked up her fork, broke off a tiny bit of cake, and mashed it flat with the tines. “My father had affairs. Lots of affairs. Remember how we used to go to Cape Cod in the summers, and then we stopped?”

“I figured it had something to do with that mansion your dad bought in the Hamptons.”

Drue managed half of a smile. “Do you know why we bought that house? My mother’s parents told us—told him—that we couldn’t come back to the Cape.” She waited until, finally, I asked, “Why?”

“Because every summer, my father would sleep with some family’s au pair or babysitter, so my grandmother finally put her foot down.” She touched her hair, toyed with her fork, recrossed her legs under the table. “My parents didn’t have a prenup. So if they’d split up, my dad would’ve fought my mom over the money she had when they got married. It would have been ugly and expensive for both of them, so I guess they just decided to, you know, tough it out.” Drue wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “It was awful.”