Friends Like These(3)
“I can’t believe you’re getting married,” I said, looking over at Jonathan. His intense brown eyes were fixed on the road, lips pressed together. Oh, that had come out wrong. Negative almost. I reached over and put a hand on his. “I mean, I’m happy for you.”
That was true— I was happy for Jonathan. He deserved to finally be with someone worthy of his generosity. Because Jonathan could be too generous, even with us. I’d warned him countless times: giving people too much all but guarantees they’ll never really love you.
Jonathan smiled, but it seemed a little forced. “I’m happy for me, too.”
“When is the actual wedding, anyway, and where?” I asked, digging for my phone in my oversize Hammitt bag— nice but not too flashy.
Flashy was tactless when you worked at a foundation. Bates was right about that. I typed out a quick text— Miss you already— and hit send. Bates had been working so hard this past week. It made complete sense that he hadn’t invited me back to his place after dinner last night. Still, it was hard to shake the queasy feeling I’d woken up with. Especially now that I hadn’t heard from him all day. It didn’t help that I was already on edge. I still couldn’t shake that anonymous email. I just needed to stop fixating— it was the only solution.
“We haven’t set an exact date. In May or June, I think.” Jonathan waved a hand. “And in the city probably. You know my parents: God forbid they leave Manhattan.”
“You think May or June?” Stephanie asked from the back seat, finally off the conference call that had kept us largely silenced up front for nearly an hour. “You’d better get the details nailed down, Jonathan, or the New York City wedding machine will eat you alive.”
I was a tiny bit jealous at the thought of Jonathan planning a wedding. Bates and I had only been together four months— way too early to be thinking about a proposal, obviously. But maybe I was hoping for a little forward momentum. That was the problem with getting so much of what you wanted— you just ended up wanting more.
“Peter and I like to be spontaneous,” Jonathan said.
“That makes sense,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it exactly did.
“How much farther is your house anyway?” Stephanie asked. “Because no offense, but it’s like a submarine back here. Did you know you were paying more to get your passengers extra carsick?”
Stephanie had been razzing Jonathan ever since he pulled up in the brand-new Tesla. The expensive car was somewhat out of character. Jonathan didn’t usually advertise his wealth, which even by Vassar’s privileged standards was eye-popping. Jonathan’s father believed that earning money was far more important than letting people know you had it. Which I think was his real issue with Jonathan: he wasn’t ambitious enough, especially compared to his completely lovely, but thoroughly hard-charging older sisters.
“We’re less than fifteen minutes away.” Jonathan adjusted his hands slightly on the wheel. He was definitely worried— about the weekend, about Keith. We all were.
“Okay, but I’m warning you, I haven’t eaten all day.” Stephanie’s low blood sugar had a way of turning her prickly but always funny observations into barbs that actually drew blood.
I looked down at my hundred-dollar acrylics, resting on my perfect weekend slacks— Theory, on sale from Saks. In college, Stephanie had sometimes scolded me about being too focused on appearances— expensive things, beautiful people— and maybe I had been a little superficial. But back then I didn’t quite look the way I did now, and all I could ever think was: What a privilege to be above caring about such things. Sometimes I still felt that way. I mean, look at Jonathan— he didn’t care about making money because he didn’t have to.
I focused again on the view out the window. In every direction, trees and more trees, their gnarled trunks and branches full of spectacular leaves crowding out the sun. Lovely, but a little ominous. I put my phone back in my bag.
“We should use the time we have left to, you know, strategize,” Jonathan said. “Derrick and Keith can’t be far behind us.”
“Strategize?” Stephanie scoffed.
When I glanced back, she was sunk low in the back seat, the sleeves of her fashionable suit jacket pushed up, heels kicked off. Her arms were crossed tight in a pretty good impersonation of a sullen child. Stephanie had always been as tall and striking as a supermodel, though, and going natural these days only enhanced her large amber eyes, high cheekbones, and light brown skin. But Stephanie’s beauty had always been of the absurdly unattainable variety: pointless to covet. Though sometimes, I still did.
Jonathan eyed Stephanie in the rearview. “If this is going to work, we really need to be a united front.”
“We’re united, we’re united,” she said. “Keith obviously has to go to rehab. There’s no doubt about that.”
“And we’ll get him to go,” I said, sounding way more confident than I felt. After all, I’d been the one who’d talked Keith into it the last time. I saw the look in his eye when he said it was a one-time-only deal. He’d meant it.
“Wait, what the hell is that?” Stephanie pointed a long finger between us at the left-hand side of the windshield.
Set up on a hill back from the road was an ancient-looking farmhouse that had completely collapsed in on itself. What remained was a hull of splintered boards, broken windows, peeling picket fencing— all of it left there to decompose. Almost as menacing was the run-down building in front, low and rectangular and tilting to the left, like a short stretch of makeshift motel rooms jerry-rigged from plywood and other scrap. People were living there, too, from the looks of it: some kind of light inside, a door slightly ajar. There were clothes strewn about outside and a big pile of garbage at one end— bottles, cans, food containers.