“I hate thinking of you doing everything on your own,” said Lydia.
“You planning on abandoning me?” The redhead raised an eyebrow.
“No, of course not!”
Nell shrugged. “I have you, Vaughan, Rosie, Boyd, Joe, Eric, and his parents all dying to help. Relax. We’re covered.”
“Fine.”
With a broad smile, Nell rested her head against Rosie’s shoulder. “We’re lucky, really. Me and Lydia Junior.”
Eyes wide, Lydia laughed. “You would not name the baby after me.”
“I might.” Another shrug. “Sure, it’ll be rough if he’s a boy, but he’ll get used to it. It’ll be character building.”
“Very funny.” Lydia gave her a sour smile.
“She won’t even give us a hint about what she’s thinking about for a name,” said Rosie, tipping back her glass of wine and taking another mouthful.
“Hell no,” said Nell. “You can all know after the fact. Then everyone just has to suck it up and accept it. Tell people beforehand and everyone puts their two cents in. I’m not having people go, ‘Oh, I guess that’s a nice enough name … for a serial killer.’”
“We would never say that.” Brows high, Lydia seemed almost insulted.
“Vaughan would.”
“Yes, well, your brother’s an idiot.”
“You’re in love with him,” Nell pointed out.
“I’m an idiot too. Have you not noticed?”
Rosie and I chuckled as I eased back into my chair. Praise the Lord, I was actually relaxing around strangers. Valerie would be so proud if she could see me socializing like a normal person. Take that, anxiety. The world could be so noisy and full of static. It was easy to get lost and confused. But maybe dealing with it was just a matter of practice.
“So, Alex. Tell us all about yourself,” ordered Nell.
“Yeah,” Lydia piped in. “What are your friends at home like? What do you do for a living?”
“And what’s the deal with you and Joe?” Rosie waggled her eyebrows.
Crap. Three sets of eyes focused on me, waiting. Doubt didn’t creep back in, it fucking moon-walked onto the stage. My mind was an empty corridor, lined with locked doors. Behind those doors were all the different things I could say. Torture, thy name is polite conversation with strangers.
No, fuck this. I was queen of my own fate. There’d be no letting Joe down, not tonight. I swallowed hard, wetting my Arizona-dry mouth.
“Um, well … I’m a graphic designer,” I began.
They all smiled, nodded, encouraging me to go on.
I could do this.
* * *
Rain had started falling when we decided to drive back to the hotel. Since the men could no longer sit outside and things were so awkward between Pat and Nell, the night ended rather abruptly.
“You have an okay time?” he asked.
There was something soothing about the sound of the windshield wipers. The hazy way the streetlights looked through the raindrops.
“Yes, I did.” It had taken me a while to get comfortable with the ladies’ interest in me as Joe’s latest paramour. And of course they cared about Joe. Also, they were women so they wanted the nitty-gritty. I gave it to them, up to a point. We had a few more drinks, a couple of slices of pizza, and a pleasant time was had by all. Including me, surprisingly enough. Sharing yourself with people, the right people, felt good. To make new friends also felt good. Maybe there was something to this saying-yes business after all.
“They were nice.”
“Good.” He smiled.
“Actually they were better than nice,” I continued. “They were cool as hell.”
A pause.
“I said I’d tell you about my issue with bathrooms.” Fingers fidgeted in my lap. Maybe this was my night for sharing, for getting it all out there. Miraculously enough, I’d shared with the women and lived to tell the tale. This was bigger, but it needed to get out of me. Courage would be required, but I’d already indulged in a little Dutch courage back at the party. It would have to be enough. “If you want to know.”
Side-eyes.
“It’s not pretty,” I warned. “I feel like I want to share it with you, though…”
“I’d like to know.”
I licked my lips, nodded. “Val and I have been tight since we were kids, you know that. I talked about it in my emails. She had a sex change after high school. It’s not my story to tell, so I don’t normally talk about it with others. But if I’m going to tell you about this…”
“Okay.”
“We went to a pretty conservative school. Queer kids were given a hard time. Way worse than any of the crap I copped for just being awkward and generally uncool.” I shoved my hands beneath my thighs to still them. “When Val was Vince, it was pretty obvious he was into guys. And why should he have to hide it, right?”
Back and forth went the windshield wipers.
“Anyway, some testosterone-fueled bastards decided to hurt him,” I said, keeping my voice nice and calm, trying to distance myself from the images inside my head. It didn’t work. “People can be so cruel, thoughtless. Clueless about consequences. Especially kids. They ganged up on him, beat him up in the boy’s bathroom.”
“Fuck,” muttered Joe.
“Black eye, busted lip, bruised ribs. He was a mess.”
His grip tightened on the wheel. “Assholes.”
“Yeah.” I gave him a ghost of a smile. Stupid. This was nothing to smile about. “Val’s parents were pretty useless, not really present. He got along better with mine. I convinced him to stay at my house that night, so I could look after him, try and cheer him up. We watched movies, ate popcorn, and kept putting ice on his face to keep the swelling down. Once my parents went to bed I raided their liquor cabinet, and we did a couple of shots each. Medicinal, you know?”
Joe just looked at me.
“Val seemed to be doing okay, as okay as someone who’d been through something as horrible as that could be. He said he was going to the bathroom. God, you should have seen the way he moved. It looked so painful. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone as much as I did those assholes.” For a moment, I just breathed. “Val had been gone awhile and I got worried. The bathroom door was closed but not locked.”
I turned to Joe, all of the same old thoughts and questions cluttering up my mind. “I figured maybe he was crying, needed some time to himself or something. But that wasn’t it. He was lying unconscious in the bath, blood everywhere. One wrist had been cut lengthwise, deep. But I guess he couldn’t quite manage the other. That’s what saved him. Well, that and the ambulance came quickly, fortunately. I just held his wrists together, screaming for Mom.”
“You saved him,” he said quietly.
Slowly, I shook my head. “It should never have happened, I should have known he was on the edge. Should have seen something.”
“How?” he asked. “You got mind-reading skills I don’t know about?”
I snorted. It was better than crying. “Anyway, we stayed at the hospital until they had him stabilized; then Mom made me go home. There was a lot of blood on me and it was all still in the bathroom too so I cleaned it. Didn’t seem right to leave that to my parents.”