Yolk(89)

“Fuck, Jayne,” she says after a while, blinking rapidly, eyelashes fan-dancing. “I hate this.” She exhales slowly. I hand her a cocktail napkin, which she touches to the corners of her eyes. Her fingernails are shellacked in an oystery color. “But at least semen is an antidepressant, I think. It’s also basically all protein, right?”

“Totally.” I have no idea if this is true.

“Promise me you’ll have kids.” June blots her nostrils and inspects the contents of her napkin.

“June.”

“You’d be a good mom,” she says. A lump forms in my throat. “Everyone fucks everyone up, but you’re so fucked up already, you’ll be understanding about stuff like that.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re a good teammate.” She clears her throat.

I think about the two of us. Our tiny cult.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to talk to Mom about any of this?”

June shakes her head and extracts the olive at the bottom of her glass. “They have enough going on.” My sister places the furry olive pit on her napkin.

I think of Dad’s lump of dough, parceled off and tossed into deep-freeze time-out so that the rest of the family can thrive. I wonder if that’s what June’s been doing all along in plain sight. Hiding her vulnerabilities so as not to be a burden.

When her second drink arrives, she takes another healthy slug.

“Wish me luck,” she says, heading back toward her friends. “Gotta get my organ basted.”





chapter 41


Patrick walks in as I’m giving June a thumbs-up. Heat prickles my scalp. When we lock eyes, he smiles. I take a sip of my drink to know where to look and what to do with my hands and face.

My heart hiccups against my diaphragm.

“Hi,” I say once Patrick’s too close to ignore. The effort in my smile makes my left ear pop. All of this is intolerable. My chest is a too-small shoe for the blood-filled foot of my heart. I feel like I’m going to pass out.

“Hey,” he says, smile faltering slightly.

I take a step toward him and offer my cheek as I squeeze his shoulder. “Guess I can’t get rid of you, huh?”

He slides his beanie off, and his hair is messier than usual. Plus, he’s got a good bit of scruff going on. His cheek is cold from outside, and he’s as rumpled as I’ve ever seen him.

He leans in, flashing his teeth with uncertainty. “Actually, wait, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

I’m close enough to feel the heat of his neck on my lips. “It doesn’t matter,” I mumble, pulling back. “I said, um, whatever.” I flap my hands near my face unbecomingly. “Sorry.”

“Is it June’s birthday?” he asks.

“What?”

“June…? She made it sound like it was her birthday.”

I shrug. “It’s just a regular get-together.”

“You want to sit down?” he asks.

The things I do for my sister.

My thoughts go scribbly with pent-up bitterness as I pick a small round table and pull out a seat.

I’ve had three cups of coffee today and little else. I couldn’t possibly hate myself faster.

He unzips his leather jacket as he sits and sets it on the back of his chair. The image of the two of us in matching sweatpants feels both so long ago and so far in the future that I’m racked with a sense of vertigo.

He runs his hands through his hair again. He looks tired.

The past few weeks come hurtling into memory, a deranged carousel of indignities that frankly have so little to do with him. The cockroaches at home. June’s rage at Dairy Queen. My inaccessible, unknowable parents. Rae’s thin thigh. Calling Jeremy after everything that happened. The actor’s mouth on mine. The hot scrape of old-man tongue.

I’m lit bright with shame when the kaleidoscope of images refracts all the way back to me groping Patrick in that disgusting bathroom, so slobbering, needy, and frightened.

Of course he has a girlfriend. And she doesn’t even have social media. I checked. It’s just one more way she’s better than me.

I pull my phone out as if to peruse important emails. My arms may as well belong to somebody else.

Patrick clears his throat. “So, I brought her a present.” He shows me a tastefully matte shopping bag.

That he went out of his way to buy something for my sister fills me with small, hard, mean thoughts.

“How touching. She’ll love it,” I hear myself saying woodenly. “You should go say hi.” I point to the back corner, where June’s meaningfully grabbing the shoulder of a baby-faced brown-haired guy that she’s towering over. She’s making huge hand gestures. They must have changed the Spotify playlist because indeterminate U2 blusters all around us.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, pushing his chair out and glancing back to the bar. “I’ll get us drinks first?”

“Sure. A Bombay martini. Up. With two olives. Um…” I try to remember the rest of the order. “Yeah, that’s what I want.”

“So, no vodka soda.”

I shake my head, disgusted with the part of me that shimmies giddily that he remembered my drink from last time.

I watch him walk away. His shoulders rise as he leans against the bar. He hitches his foot on the bar railing, and the way his sweatshirt rides up a little in the back, the way the break of his jeans falls on his pristinely clean sneakers, just the way everything seems so effortlessly boy and attractive and unperturbed finally ignites some sense of unfairness. He’s so fucking okay. Just so fucking aboveboard and respectable with his stupid thoughtful gifts and his insouciantly mussed hair.