One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(48)

What happened!?!?!?

Made out with some slut in the bar downstairs, I wrote. “Slut” didn’t sound like me, I realized as I read it back. It was a word I used when I was trying to sound like someone else.

Why?? Explain?! he wrote back.

As I held up the phone to show the others, it started ringing in my hand.

“Don’t pick up,” said Josh. “He’ll hear that we aren’t really partying.”

I sent it to voicemail and texted him:

Reception sucks.

He texted back:

Emailing you—too long to text—hold on …

Five minutes later I got an email with no subject:

Hey! I’m emailing you because this is really important and I hope you really read this and think about it. The first thing you need to do is be honest with yourself. Why did this happen, what does it mean, how do you feel about it, and what do you want to happen next. Don’t shortchange this or gloss over it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. This part will feel hard, and it should—it will actually be harder to be honest with yourself than it will be to be honest with her. Once you are 100% sure you know how YOU feel, we can talk about what you do from there. I can’t tell you what to do. But as long as you are honest with yourself, we can figure out what is really going on in your heart, and then I will be there to come up with words and actions that are true to that. Anyway. So sorry this is going on. I want you to do the right thing, but first & foremost I want you to know that I am always there for you and always on your side. Stay okay and SEE YOU SOON!!!





—W





I showed it to the room. Everyone read it.

“He could have texted that,” said Dave.

An hour later Willie texted the group:

Flight’s canceled. SUCKS!!! They put me on the first flight tomorrow & I leave first thing in the morning. Arriving tomorrow noon. Have fun without me. HANG IN THERE GUYS!!!


The next morning we woke up early, arranged the room again, and then got another text from Willie: more delays, in combination with some mileage game he was playing, meant that he was now going to arrive on the same flight as he had originally planned, which would get him in at 8:10 p.m. Still worth it!!! he wrote to the group. Trust me, one night is going to be PLENTY!!!! Then he sent a separate text to me: Hanging in there? I answered that I was.

Now we had to figure out how to spend a whole day in Las Vegas. I texted Sarah—the real Sarah, the best thing in my life, an honorary member of this friend group, close to all of us, a person on whom I had not cheated and never would. Sarah was finishing up her senior year and would then most likely be moving to New York to live with me. She was objectively, by all accounts, in every relevant way, cooler than I was, and would know things like this.

Hmmm … Ali Fisher says her sister went to a place for her bachelorette party called Marquee that was actually kind of amazing in the daytime. Also just fun to hang out in the casinos? How is it? How’s the Willie stuff? I started to write back when she started to write more. Wait—is there something called the Beach Club in your hotel? I said yes. Ali Bell’s boyfriend Lorenzo says he can get you guys in today and that it’s AMAZING.

I ran it by the group. It turned out that all of us had been secretly intrigued by the excessively but effectively seductive signage for the Beach Club but had assumed it was the kind of place that wouldn’t let guys like us in, at least not without a hassle or long wait or being shoved in some miserable general population holding area for an interminable length of time first.

“Sure, if we’re really on the list,” said Dave.

We really were. And the Beach Club was, as Sarah’s friend Ali had promised, amazing. The DJ was great—one of those DJs that surprises you that there have been so many hit songs in your lifetime. There was a lot of bright skin in bright colors, the sun was intense and even, the mixed drinks were the perfect mixture of whatever ingredients had been mixed. I had the actual, literal thought that I was lucky to be alive. I even caught myself wondering whether we’d be on good enough terms with Willie the next day that we could come back here: if we all ordered non-alcoholic drinks, it might still be fun, maybe? The alcohol, it seemed to me, was actually the least important aspect of this experience, maybe? But then again, maybe that was just the alcohol talking?


How are you holding up?

Willie had texted me while I had zoned out. It took me a second to remember what he was referring to.

Okay, I responded. Thanks so much for caring. I’ll be okay.

Have you decided what to do? How you feel? What you want?

No, trying not to think for now. Just zoning out. It’ll be okay.

It will. See you guys in a few hours!!

At around ten past four, it occurred to all of us independently that the afternoon had peaked. “I might want to actually take a nap,” said Josh, and we all quickly and enthusiastically agreed. We headed back to the rooms to rest up and made plans to meet back at Party Central at eight and run through the plan once before Willie arrived.

I wasn’t used to drinking in the afternoons, and the drinks, probably like all great mixed drinks, turned out to have been much stronger than they felt at the time. I didn’t fall asleep until 7:15, and when my phone finally went off at 7:45, I had an unbearable, excruciating headache.

I splashed water on my face and arrived at the room a couple of minutes past eight. I found everyone else in the same state or worse—thudding headaches, eyelids sticking and stinging from leaving their contact lenses in, all from that sun and those drinks that were chased by those awful, worst-idea naps.