“Andy.”
“Let me ask you something, Andy. How do you feel about whales?”
“Whales? I like them.”
“Excellent. You’ll do, then.”
She noticed the helmet beside him.
“Yours?” she said.
She had never ridden a motorcycle, had never even known anyone who owned one. Once when she was driving Blue back to college after a holiday, a guy had pulled up beside them on a bike and performed tricks for them. Blue had laughed at him, called him a tool, but Maya loved the various ways men tried to impress her, the humor, the peacocking. Now she looked at the helmet and imagined the night blowing through her, the muscle and roar of the engine beneath her, her worries shrinking to the size of the rearview mirror, disappearing behind her like tailpipe smoke.
“Take me for a ride,” she said suddenly.
“Yeah?”
She glanced over at the girls, her lifelong best friends, her most important people. None of them looked back.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He laughed and motioned to the bartender to pay the tab.
BLUE
Blue was wondering how the hell she wound up alone at a table with Renee. She’d been so preoccupied with her anger she barely even noticed Maya leave. Now she and Renee were stuck inside this stroppy silence that Blue had neither the desire to sit in nor put an end to by way of conversation. The waiter was taking too long with her drink. And she was starving—a gnawing emptiness where her hope of Jack had lived. She eyed the bread basket. She could eat it all, including the wicker. In fact, she would’ve gone right ahead and done just that if Renee hadn’t ordered a salad. She didn’t need the judgment. Besides, now that her high was wearing off, she was pulled back to how she’d felt earlier when she looked in the mirror...saw the bumps and swells of her body in all the places society insisted only smooth lines should be. She’d always vowed never to be one of those women who worried about her weight and yet here she was, because for one fleeting instant the hope of love had beckoned, and like all women, she’d been taught that only the beautiful and skinny could receive the call. And Blue was not either of those things. Oh, she’d learned that lesson in the hardest way possible.
She often thought of the cruel trick society played on women, inundating them with messages that they weren’t enough and then telling them they could fix it by starving themselves, knowing that, like Harlow’s monkeys, people needed love and comfort even more than food. And all along what women carried, what they perceived as excess weight, was merely the shame they’d been force-fed before they could identify its taste.
It made her angry. It made her hate.
And still some part of her bought into it.
Across from her Renee reapplied her lipstick and then glanced around at the other diners with that tranquil half smile that had been her camouflage since they were teenagers.
Blue imagined the curse of beauty was the constant maintenance. It was like driving a Mercedes. No point in having it if you didn’t keep it clean and polished, if you weren’t advertising it. But who had the time or energy? It could flatten a person. She’d already seen it happening to Renee at the end of high school—how she’d started disappearing into her prettiness, making it the centerpiece of who she was, the thing society told her she should be and nothing more. It had become at once her defense and her deepest vulnerability.
Renee shifted uncomfortably, the silence clearly getting to her. Blue knew it was only a matter of seconds before Renee broke it. She did a countdown in her head from three.
“It’s so pretty here,” Renee said the instant Blue hit one. “I’d forgotten.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Blue said. She picked up the list of specials, pretended to study it.
“I always loved the nights. They feel so...promising or something. I don’t know.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So...can I ask how you are?”
“Great,” Blue said flatly from behind the menu. “Never better.”
“Good,” Renee said. “That’s good. You look good.”
“Thanks.”
The silence stretched. She made no effort to fill it. Renee sighed, began drumming her fingernails on the table. Anything to fill the void. Over the top of the menu, Blue could see her desperately scanning the restaurant for rescue.
“So, um...how’re your parents?” Renee said finally. “They good too?”
“My mother’s in Paris. I assume she’s fine.” Now Blue put the menu down, looked directly at her. “My father’s been dead for three years, so I wouldn’t know how he is. Hot, probably.”
“Oh.” Renee’s eyes had that wet shock to them, like an open cut just before it bleeds. “I didn’t know.”
“How would you?” Blue said.
For years after their falling out, Blue had waited for Renee to reach out to her. All she’d wanted was an apology, acknowledgment of what had happened, a sign that Blue was a loss that Renee was not willing to incur. She kept hoping. And was angry at herself for hoping. And still hoped, because so often the only person who could heal a wound was the one who caused it. Eventually she burned out her emotions on the cycle and stopped thinking about it entirely, which in some ways felt worse—the emptiness where feeling should be. Then when her father died a few years ago, all that hurt resurfaced. Who else but the friends you’d grown up with would understand the complicated feelings around losing a father who was, at once, not a good father and also the only one you had? Renee should have been there. She should have at least known about it. Called. Or sent flowers. Even just a card. Something.
Blue stood abruptly. She couldn’t sit in this anymore. Some vaporous feeling was swelling, threatening to saturate her like a cloud turning to rain. “I’m getting a drink. The waiter is taking too long.”
As she headed to the bar, she saw Hannah still outside with her phone to her ear, her red hair wild as ocean spray, her white summer dress trembling in the breeze. She made such a sad portrait. Blue considered going out to her. But then Hannah looked up, lifted her free hand to wave and returned her attention to her call. Blue glanced back at the table, at Renee looking stranded as a shipwreck.
Whatever. Good.
The bar was loud and crowded. She carved a path to the bartender and raised her hand to alert him. He was handsome and surfer-tousled, looked like a wealthy college kid on summer break.
“Scotch and soda and a shot of tequila, please.”
He rested his forearms on the countertop. “Can I see your ID, young lady?”
“What? Oh...” She went for her wallet, a pleasant blush heating her face.