Then I got in my Volvo, planning to go to Heather’s house to smoke some of her sister’s weed. Instead, I took a sharp turn toward Juniper Hill Road, where Susan lived, my wheels screeching over the sand-covered pavement.
Susan’s house looked unassuming when I pulled up to it—not the kind of house in which girls had sex in the living room.
I pulled into the driveway so fast that I almost ran straight into the garage. When I turned the engine off, I sighed, and my breath fogged up the window, like the sex scene in Titanic. I looked at my lap. I had Sandra’s clothes on—a violet-colored crushed-velvet dress and a pair of black pumps—maybe in the hopes that they would transfer some of her fuck-everything attitude onto me.
I wanted to take my adrenaline and hand it to someone else—someone who needed it, like Brad.
Instead, I rushed to the living room window, and saw Susan and her mother sitting on the couch, watching television. They weren’t touching, and each of them held a glass of blood-red wine. They stared at the television without blinking. Somehow, they hadn’t heard me coming.
“Susan!” I shouted, banging a fist on the window.
She looked up. So did her mother.
“Susan, come here!”
She didn’t. They both looked at me wide-eyed, blinking.
“Please!”
Her mother made a dismissive motion with her hand, asking me to leave. Susan leaned into her mother, like a child, burying her face in her mother’s red terry-cloth robe. I could tell from the dramatic music from the television that they were watching Lifetime, and that the volume was turned up too loud, like they were trying to drown out the world.
“I need to talk to you.” I kept banging my fists against the glass.
It just didn’t feel right, us not talking. I knew something had cracked between us, something that couldn’t be repaired, but without her, I wasn’t sure who I even was.
Finally, her mother got up from the couch and came over to the window. Because the house was so old, they had single-paned windows like I did, which you could hear through.
“Taylor,” Mrs. Blackford said sternly, looking at me through the glass. “Go home.”
“Susan!” I called again. “Susan!”
Susan looked guilty, but she turned away from me.
“I love you!” I knew I sounded crazy, but it didn’t matter. I was.
I’d read in Cosmopolitan that love turns you crazy.
“Go. Home.” Her mother’s voice was both stern and tired.
I wouldn’t.
Finally, Susan came over to the window too, bringing her wine with her.
“I’ll handle this, Mom,” she said, sliding the window open.
“I’ll do anything,” I said to Mrs. Blackford’s back at the same time that she said, “Close the window. It’s freezing in this house.”
I wondered what she knew. Probably not much. Probably nothing.
“What.” Susan’s voice was tired, but stern. She looked at me through the open window, her cheeks flushed.
“Please talk to me,” I said breathlessly. “I can’t keep it in anymore. I can’t hold in what we did in the fort that night.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Susan said, taking a long sip of wine.
“Bullshit,” I said. “You do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be avoiding me.”
“Close the window!” her mother shouted from the kitchen.
I stuck an arm through the window, grazing the front of Susan’s sweatshirt.
“Just, please.” My voice was desperate. “Can I just come in?”
“You need to leave me alone,” said Susan. Her face was stony, absent. I wished with every bone in my body that I didn’t still think she was beautiful, but I did.
I felt anger blooming in my stomach, a fire burning down trees and houses, entire towns.
“Look,” she said, her voice low. “I’m not going to talk about that night with you, or anyone else, and if you do, I’ll never forgive you.”
We stared at each other, a kind of challenge.
“You’re just jealous,” I finally said. “You’ve always been jealous, because you’ve always liked Brad and he always wanted me and not you.”
I prayed that Susan’s face would show me something, some indication that she loved me back, that it meant something to her, but all I could read was disgust.
“He loves me more than you, and he always will,” I added. “No one will ever love you like I do.”
She leaned in close, checking over her shoulder that her mother wasn’t in the room.
“You actually are a bitch,” Susan said. “Just like everyone says.” She wiped her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve, blinking back tears.
I was already crying, which I hadn’t realized. I’d never heard Susan call anyone a bitch before.
“So are you,” I said. “You’re just a different kind of bitch.”
“I never want to talk to you again.” Her voice was so sturdy, so sure. I felt like fainting.
“Close the window!” her mother yelled again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as Susan slammed the window shut, almost banging my fingers against the frame, but I don’t think she heard me. She disappeared into the house.
“I love you,” I whispered into the air. My words turned into a cloud, then disappeared.
I stood outside their house staring into their living room until I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. We’d sat on that couch together a million times, watching romantic comedies and sometimes the news, but only if it was juicy. I would have done anything to sit next to her again in the permanently indented spot where the springs gave in from too much use, to feel her body lean into mine, her head on my shoulder. I wanted to smell her.
I wanted to be anyone else in the world besides myself.
The Millennium
On New Year’s Eve, we sat around Scottie’s house, drinking and passing around a crooked joint.
Susan and Brad were together more and more frequently in public, and I knew that their closeness was at least in part to get back at me. In hurting them, I’d bonded them together. Brad was pissed-off at Scottie, too, so they showed themselves at the party but ignored the two of us. Still, Heather, PJ, Scottie, and the others clustered around me, like Brad and Susan were still in the solar system but no longer close to the sun.
“Two thousand years, man.” Scottie held a tallboy in his lap, his other arm slung over Heather’s shoulder.