Beach Read(7)

“No, it looks like you’re the one sitting in the dark alone at his own party,” I said, “but when I rang the doorbell to ask your frat brothers to turn down the volume, they couldn’t hear me over the Jell-O wrestling, so I’m asking you.”

He studied me through the dark for a minute—or at least, I assumed that was what he was doing, since neither of us could actually see the other.

Finally, he said, “Look, no one will be more thrilled than me when this night ends and everyone gets out of my house, but it is a Saturday night. In summer, on a street full of vacation homes. Unless this neighborhood got airlifted to the little town from Footloose, it doesn’t seem crazy to play music this late. And maybe—just maybe—the brand-new neighbor who stood on her deck screaming foot job so loud birds scattered could afford to be lenient if one miserable party goes later than she’d like.”

Now it was my turn to stare at the dark blob.

God, he was right. He was a grump, but so was I. Karyn and Sharyn’s vitamin-powder-pyramid-scheme parties went later than this, and those were on weeknights, usually when Jacques had a shift at the ER the next morning. Sometimes I’d even attended those parties, and now I couldn’t even handle Saturday-night group karaoke?

And worst of all, before I could figure out what to say, the Grump’s house went miraculously silent. Through his illuminated back doors, I could see the crowd breaking up, hugging, saying goodbyes, setting down cups, and putting on jackets.

I’d argued with this guy for nothing, and now I’d have to live next to him for months. If I needed sugar, I was going to be shit out of luck.

I wanted to apologize for the sad-boy angst comment, or at least for these goddamn pants. These days, my reactions always felt outsized, and there was no easy way to explain them when strangers had the bad fortune of witnessing them.

Sorry, I imagined myself saying, I didn’t mean to transform into a crotchety grandmother. It’s just my dad died and then I found out he had a mistress and a second house and that my mom knew but never told me and she still won’t talk to me about any of it, and when I finally came apart, my boyfriend decided he didn’t love me anymore, and my career has stalled, and my best friend lives too far away, and PS this is the aforementioned Sex House, and I used to like parties but lately I don’t like anything, so please forgive my behavior and have a lovely evening. Thank you and good night.

Instead, that knife-twisting pain hit my gut, and tears stung the back of my nose, and my voice squeaked pathetically as I said to no one in particular, “I’m so tired.”

Even silhouetted as he was, I could tell he went rigid. I’d learned it wasn’t uncommon for people to do that when they intuited a woman was on the verge of emotional collapse. In the last few weeks of our relationship, Jacques was like one of those snakes that can sense an earthquake, going taut whenever my emotions rose, then deciding we needed something from the bodega and rushing out the door.

My neighbor didn’t say anything, but he didn’t rush away either. He just stood there awkwardly, staring at me through the pitch-dark. We faced off for easily five seconds, waiting to see what would happen first: me bursting into tears or him running away.

And then the music started blaring again, a Carly Rae Jepsen banger that, under different circumstances, I loved, and the Grump startled.

He glanced back through the sliding doors, then to me again. He cleared his throat. “I’ll kick them out,” he said stiffly, then turned and went inside, a unanimous cheer of “EVERETT!” rising from the crowd in the kitchen at the sight of him.

They sounded ready to hoist him up into a keg stand, but I could see him leaning over to shout to a blonde girl, and a moment later, the music fell silent for good.

Well. Next time I needed to make an impression, I might be better off with a plate of LSD cookies.





3


The Pete-Cute





I AWOKE, HEAD THROBBING, to a text from Anya: Hey, babycakes! Wanted to make sure you got my email re: your glorious mind and the summer deadline we chatted about.

That period reverberated through my skull like a death knell.

I’d gotten my first true hangover when I was twenty-four, the morning after Anya sold my first book, Kiss Kiss, Wish Wish, to Sandy Lowe. (Jacques had bought his favorite French champagne to celebrate, and we drank it from the bottle as we walked the Brooklyn Bridge, waiting for the sun to rise, because we thought it seemed hugely romantic.) Later, lying on the bathroom floor, I’d sworn I’d fall on a sharp knife before I let my brain feel like an egg frying on a rock in the Cancún sun again.

And yet! Here I was, face pressed into a beaded throw pillow, brain sizzling in the saucepan of my skull. I ran to the downstairs bathroom. I didn’t need to throw up, but I was hoping that if I pretended I did, my body would fall for it and evacuate the poison in my gut.

I threw myself onto my knees in front of the toilet and lifted my eyes to the framed picture that hung from a ribbon on the wall behind it.

Dad and That Woman were on a beach, dressed in windbreakers, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, the wind pulling at her pre-white blonde hair and pushing his only-just-graying curls flat against his forehead as they grinned.

And then, in a more understated but equally hilarious joke from the universe, I spotted the magazine rack beside the toilet, which contained exactly three offerings.