Please, for the love of God, let it go.
Let Rhodes go. Let the past go.
Let. It. Go.
“You can’t keep making everything about … her,” I say, and bat her hands away from my face. She blinks once, twice, then returns to the dishes.
I don’t have to say her name; it hangs around my neck like an albatross in perpetuity.
“We don’t even have a year left,” Sarah says. “It’s going to be November soon. We have eight months together, tops. Quit making me split my time.”
“I’m not making you split your time.” It’s easier to have this conversation without looking at Sarah, so I turn my back to sling a bleach-soaked washcloth up onto the counter. I work at where I imagine the man’s fingerprints to be, as if I’m clearing a crime scene. “I’m making you choose.”
“Choose. Really?” I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to know she’s scoffing at me. “She’s my roommate, I can’t just—”
“I got fucking arrested, Sarah! I lost my scholarship because of her! You can absolutely ask the school for a new roommate.”
It’s the right thing to do.
It had been less than forty-eight hours since The Incident the first time I said it when Sarah showed up on my front porch crying off her eye makeup onto her hands as if we were all equally victim to some great existential plight. She’d been grounded for the rest of the school year and the entirety of the summer; Rhodes’s family had gone radio silent, and rumor had it both Rhodes and Griffin were being shipped off to one of those high-end rehabilitation centers set up in a McMansion with a live-in caterer the minute classes were over.
They all managed to get away, and the worst of their problems was dealing with their parents.
I hadn’t heard from the Savannah College of Art and Design yet, but I knew the other shoe would eventually drop: They’d read about it in the newspaper, or the school would be required to inform them, or someone would read about it on social media and tip them off. My parents wouldn’t take my computer away because I used it for homework, but I spent the entire summer on house arrest.
Rhodes, Griffin, and Sarah left me behind, and I had the most to lose.
I don’t like the way Sarah watches me as if I’m about to rip her face off. I don’t like this conversation, and I don’t like the fact that by not choosing, she’s making a decision every day to choose someone, the very person who hurt me.
“She doesn’t choose you, you know.” I snatch off my apron and toss it onto the counter. My shift doesn’t end for an hour, but I can’t stand to look at her anymore. Dad’s supposed to come get me, but I think I’d rather walk home. “Do you really think her mom needed her help cleaning out the garage at 6:30 this morning? Why did Griffin come get her? Why didn’t he stay—aren’t y’all ‘besties’?”
“You’re just jealous, okay?!” Sarah’s voice echoes off the walls, and her face goes from ghostly white to fire-engine red. “You’re jealous. You’ve always wanted to be friends with her—”
“I’ve never wanted to be friends with her—”
“And I honestly think it blows your mind that she’d choose me and not you.”
“Fuck off, Sarah.” I march exactly ten paces to the ancient punch clock that hangs on the wall, snatch my card from the top, and slam it into the slot. The date and time prints across the card with a satisfying cha-chink, and I drop it back into the metal organizer that hangs by the old rotary phone I have no idea how to use. “You can fuck right off with that. I have never wanted—”
“You know why I still choose Rhodes?” Her eyes are the brightest topaz-honey-hazel I’ve ever seen, smudged with dark eyeliner spilling over to stain her cheeks. “Because she doesn’t ask me to choose anyone.”
“She doesn’t think she did anything wrong,” I say. I plant two hands on the counter and hoist myself over.
“That makes two of us,” Sarah says.
It’ll be an hour before Dad’s idling in the parking lot to pick me up from my shift.
Hell will freeze over before I call and actually admit to him that I left work early over an argument with Sarah. I already know exactly what he would say: Vrionideses are known for their work ethic! You have to think of the name you’re making for yourself.
Consider what you want people to think when others speak of you.
Think of the way I’ve worked to establish a name for this family, too, and ask yourself if you’re adding to my work or taking away from it.
I shove earbuds into my ears and crank up the music on my phone as loud as it will go, in hopes that it will drown out the guilt clawing at my subconscious.
The boulevard that stretches in front of Sylvia’s bustles with activity in both directions; the sky overhead feels low enough to touch, with clouds threatening rain, snuffing out what’s left of the light with sunset around the corner.
Two by two, streetlights flicker on and a cool, resin-scented breeze tosses the curls around my face. It’s going to rain soon.
I have an hour alone—Dad thinks I’m working, and Sarah won’t have the nerve to come hunt me down for another day at least. I might as well be invisible, and the thought is delicious.
One hour in the back of a coffee shop with Hearts and Spades is more than I could ever ask for. The one on the corner—a sedate, locally owned place that’s been around since the nineties—is perfect.
I duck inside just before the first drops of rain hit the sidewalk.
With a swipe and a tap of my thumb, the Slash/Spot app—and Alice—is waiting and ready.
Before I know it, I’m pouring my heart through the screen and out into the stratosphere.
* * *
I-Kissed-Alice 11:22a: I posted H&S update 48 before I left for therapy this morning
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:18p: I don’t know what’s fucking wrong with me
I-Kissed-Alice 6:18p: hello to you too
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:19p: hey. sorry.
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:19p: Every time I work with bff, it turns into an argument
I-Kissed-Alice 6:19p: oh. uh oh. What happened
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:19p: we argued
I-Kissed-Alice 6:19p: don’t get tart with me
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:20p: sorry.
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:20p: Just. Like. I should know by now, right? I need to just. Idk. Refuse.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:20p: my therapist always says ~arguments are invitations, but you can decline them~.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:20p: or something.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:21p: idk how the saying goes, but you get my point
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:21p: how has that worked for you
I-Kissed-Alice 6:21p: well, considering the fact that 75% of my problems with people are because I’m too afraid to piss them off to say anything at all, I don’t really think that’s my issue. But theoretically I think I understand how that could be the case.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:22p: catharsis, and stuff.
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:22p: in the moment, that’s all there is: screaming at someone. It’s like popping a zit.
I-Kissed-Alice 6:22p: def know about *that* life. There isn’t enough Accutane on the planet
Curious-in-Cheshire 6:23p: I should probably text dad and tell him I finished work early. Gotta go.