I'd Give Anything(53)
“False pretenses? Wait. Are you a spy?”
“I’m not a spy.” I sighed. “Can we sit down?”
“This doesn’t worry me at all. Not at all.”
I laughed, and we sat, and the dogs came over and sat with us.
“When I was a senior in high school, my friend Gray’s dad died,” I said.
Daniel drew in his breath sharply and then opened his mouth, as if to say something, but I lifted my hand to stop him. I needed to tell my story. I reached for Dobbsey and twined my fingers in his soft fur.
“Someone set our school on fire, and Gray’s dad was a firefighter. He died trying to put the fire out.”
In a voice that seemed to come from far away, Daniel said, “I remember that fire.”
I nodded. “It was awful. Anyway, at the time, there was a lot going on in my life, family stuff, and I tumbled into a depression, a bad one. And I wasn’t there for Gray. I abandoned him. I was a terrible friend. And he and Kirsten and our other friend CJ, they were so mad at me for that, and I can’t blame them. I completely failed Gray.”
I considered adding: And my brother and myself and the husband I hadn’t met yet and should never have married. But obviously, this was too much to confess to Daniel all at once. Or maybe ever. So a silence fell, through which Daniel waited patiently, as if he sensed there was more, as if he knew to leave it space to go unsaid. Daniel was turning out to be disconcertingly adept at reading me. I picked up Dobbsey and kissed him on the top of his head.
“It ended our friendship,” I said, at last.
“But Kirsten’s your friend now,” said Daniel.
“Yes, Christmas break our first year of college, I couldn’t stand not seeing her. I went over to her house and she opened the door and we looked at each other, and she nodded and said, ‘Okay. Okay,’ and we cried and hugged, and after that we were friends again. But she was my friend for years before we got to know the other two. She was more mine than she was theirs, and we just couldn’t stand not to be friends. But Gray and CJ probably still hate me.”
“It was a long, long, long time ago,” said Daniel. “And now they’re coming to your party.”
“Kirsten’s party.”
“At your house. Maybe this is you opening the door and Gray and CJ walking through it,” said Daniel.
“Maybe. I hope so.”
Daniel said, “Listen, what time will the party be over?”
“Nine thirty. Ten at the latest.”
“I don’t think it’s my place to show up at that party. But how about if I come over after and help you clean up?”
“Clean up the house or the pieces of my shattered heart and self-esteem?”
“I bet it’s going to be much better than you think. But both, if necessary.”
“Does this mean you still like me?”
“Yes. You are extremely likable.”
“What if I die of awkwardness at the party, though? If that happens and you’re not coming until after the party, then I won’t get to see you.”
“If you die of awkwardness, I’ll kiss you and you’ll wake up,” said Daniel.
“And if I don’t die, you’ll kiss me anyway.”
“I’ll kiss you no matter what,” said Daniel.
I would not have predicted that a party would be a good place to meet old friends who now possibly, understandably, despise you, much less a party you are hosting, much less one celebrating the engagement of your dearest friend (which obviously ups the joy and lightheartedness stakes a thousandfold), much less one at which your fifteen-year-old daughter is in attendance, a leggy, vivid presence, so grown-up-looking in her short dress and as avid and hyper-tuned-in as a rabbit, awaiting the arrival of your old friends—the kids from my journal—the way she once awaited the materialization of her favorite boy band at the stage door after the show. Hosting a party is nerve-racking, period, and I’m no party-planning expert, but I’m guessing that tossing twenty-year-old grief and betrayal and regret into the evening is not what the experts recommend.
But it actually turned out to be okay. I felt like throwing up for the entire four hours. I almost broke down crying at least three times. But it’s hard to fear retribution or to hope for a grand reconciliation or even to be completely aware of the past casting its long, raggedy shadow when you’re worried that the caramel cementing your profiterole mountain together is insufficiently sticky or that the light under one of your chafing dishes keeps going out or that the supposedly unscented candles you have burning all over the downstairs actually smell like pink rubber erasers.
And the thing about a party is that it goes on. It gathers its own momentum and just goes, carrying you and your guests along like a tide. A party stops for no one and nothing. Not even for the instant when you are standing at your dining room table, pouring cabernet into a decanter, and you hear the laugh of your first love break not over the music and chatter but beneath it, a rumble of thunder in summer, a low guitar strum that you would recognize anywhere.
When I walked out into the living room, Gray’s back was to me. He was talking to Avery, who stood starry-eyed, bouncing a little on her toes the way she did when she was four, and holding his coat to her chest as if she were embracing a person. Gray was narrower than I remembered, but the set of his shoulders—ever so slightly bowed—matched exactly the image I’d been carrying around in my head for twenty years. Not his nearly black hair, not the sound of his voice or the way he moved, but the mere slope and angle of him threatened to undo me. I forced the tears back just in time. He turned around, our eyes met, and he lifted his hand to wave. Time didn’t stop; the rest of the guests did not blur or recede; the music playing did not crescendo. But there was Gray Marsden, waving at me from across my living room, a half smile on his face. I waved back, and then, Kirsten appeared with Tex by her side, and Gray swooped her up in a hug. Before the party enfolded them entirely and I turned to go back to the dining room, I glimpsed a shortish man with a tan face and a head of black curls giving me a look of cool appraisal and knew it must be Evan.