Afterparty(39)

“I don’t get to complain. I told her it was fine.” We’re zipping down Sunset, and I’m glad we’re in the car and he has to watch the road.

“You told her it was fine because . . .”

“Do not, I mean it, do not go all shrinkish on me.”

It’s not that I don’t know the because.

Because telling her how much I like him and how I’ve been hiding it from her since Day One seems like the ultimate humiliation. Because being her best friend is complicated, and because (other than this) she completely gets me.

He says, “It was the beginning of a sentence. Ems, you also told her that you like him. Doesn’t some kind of girl code come into play here?”

“Girl code? Is that what your patients tell you?”

“Trying again. If you like him, and you told her that you like him, and it wasn’t fine for her to go with him, why do you think you told her it was fine?”

“I don’t know.” At this point, I’m wishing that I hadn’t told him anything, because he won’t let go

He says, “Sure you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

I just want to reach over and honk the horn, or pull the wheel out of his hands and steer into something loud and crunchy, and drown out the conversation.

I say, “I know you hate her. I know you want me to say this is the end of life as we know it, but that isn’t it. She was drunk. He was drunk. She probably didn’t even realize it was him the first time.”

I don’t expect him to respond to the “you hate her” part. Which he doesn’t.

He says,” That paints a very attractive picture.”

“Megan thinks I should wash my hands of both of them.”

“Sensible girl, Megan. Who is this boy?” He says the word “boy” as if it’s a federal crime to be one.

I try to think of how to reframe Dylan as the teddy-bearish kind of harmless boy who doesn’t scare the shit out of your father, the sweet, respectful kind who wears a tie without the roach-clip tie tack, but I don’t make much progress. So then I pick out the upstanding citizen bits. Music lover! Religious Convo! Really high GPA!

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say.

But it turns out, I don’t.

“I’m thinking how unfortunate your best friend fell for him too.”

A clear invitation to a complete losing-control moment.

“Unfortunate! It’s a f*cking disaster! I don’t know how I’m going to live through it.”

“Emma!”

“Sorry! A total disaster. A total unmitigated freaking disaster.”

He says, “It was the living-through-it part that struck me.”

“Stop it! I don’t have suicidal thoughts and I sleep through the night and I enjoy eating cheesecake, all right? I am not clinically depressed or suicidal or insane. I just want to kill Siobhan, is all.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


ALL I WANT TO DO is hide, and all anybody else wants to do is keep talking.

Megan calls to apologize. Repeatedly. “That was so insensitive of us!”

“No it wasn’t.”

She says, “Maybe you’re right. Because it will totally cheer you up to see Prince Charming stick his hand down my blouse.”

“Joe stuck his hand down your blouse?”

“Of course not,” Megan says. “Your dad was there. Those two cute middle-school girls and a rabbi and fifteen women dying to talk to authentic Catholics were there.”

“Like Los Angeles isn’t crawling with large numbers of Catholics.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re so argumentative. I called to say sorry.”

“I don’t want to argue. I want to scream.”

Megan says, “You just have to ride it out. How many people has she been with already this semester? How long do you think she can keep this up?”

I say, “Yeah, and I don’t see how it can actually get worse.”

“I’m sorry about the food bank. You’re the genius who got us there together. I didn’t mean to upset you like that.”

I say, “I’m fine. Just don’t tell me how cute and adorable Joe is for a while.”

“Whatever you want.”

Siobhan, meanwhile, calls to complain. “Does he really think I want to go listen to that bitch Mara and her goth girl band sing in a bowling alley in the Valley?”

I put the phone down and start hammering a pillow.

“What am I supposed to do?” she says. “He’s sweet, but he’s so demanding. And he doesn’t want to go anywhere nice.”

“Isn’t Disney Hall nice?”

“Not nice like a nice building, nice like fun. Nice like cool. Nice like everyone there isn’t fifty years old and they drove in from Anaheim. And do you know how long it takes to get out of there when you refuse to use a handicap placard? While listening to his incessant complaining.”

“He’s an incessant complainer?” I can’t stop myself.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “Although for someone who hates school and everyone at school so much, he spends a lot of time hanging out with juveniles in Lakers hats.”