Page 19 of Don't Tell Me How It Ends
“I had to get a tow earlier and ended up sort of fighting with the driver.”
Saying it out loud sounds ridiculous, but as always, Liv’s quick to offer me a pass.
“Did he deserve it?”
“He really,reallydidn’t,” I admit.
“Meh,” she decides. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at me—”
“Oh, I am,” I joke, assessing her ensemble again.
“In what world amIdating a rocker?”
“You’re right. Yours is worse.”
She rightfully ignores me.
“Andyou’reyelling at strangers,” she continues. “We’re like animals being released from captivity into the real world. None of us know how to act. But tonight, we don’t have to. You’re home and we’re together. And there’s alcohol,” she says, grabbing both of my shoulders and shaking. “So maybe for the next couple hours we let ourselves act like kids again and pretend life isn’t about to drop-kick us into the deep end.”
Liv links her arm through mine, moving us down the hallway once more, and I’m happy to follow. Because she really does know how to find the light.
—
At the end of the hallway, we spill out into the bar again, and the scene playing out leaves me mentally cataloging and reassessing every life choice that’s led me here tonight. You know that saying “You can’t go home again”? Turns out you can, it’s just depressing as fuck.
“I see the football team is stillpro-warm-booze-before-sundown,” I say, scanning and judging. Judging and scanning.
I haven’t had a chance to properly fix my face, when our forever cheer captain spots us in the crowd. Michelle Meyer has been on the top of every physical and social pyramid since shemoved to Connecticut’s Gold Coast in middle school. She’s the kind of person for whom the world will always make way. And now she’s making way right at us—or Liv rather.
“Ahh!” Michelle and Liv both scream in wordless greeting.
Michelle doesn’t waste any energy acknowledging my existence, as the giddy pair start volleying NYU-alum-specific inside jokes back and forth. I don’t appreciate anyone talking to my best friend like she’s their best friend, but I set my face onboredrather than brooding. I know better than to have a lovers’ quarrel in front of the other woman.
When Michelle finally trains her glassy vodka soda eyes on me, a lazy smile of recognition forms on her perfectly pink lips. She’s finally placed me. I wasn’t sure she’d get there. It’s not that I was unpopular in high school, but I was only cool by proxy. To Liv.
Michelle raises her drink, a finger lifted from her sweaty glass to point at me. “You’re Zola’s sister, right?”
Correction: cool by proxy to Livand Zola.It’s not news. My high school made space for exactly one transcendent Black girl at a time. Zola got there first.
“Weren’t you in Kentucky?” she continues, a gentle sway to both her stance and her words.
“Kansas,” I yell, over the music.
“Yeah, Kansas,” she says, nose scrunched by the apparent adorableness of the locale. “Same thing though, yeah?”
Liv enters the conversation before I can respond to the assertion that any place outside the Tri-State is all thesame thing.
“Kai’s gonna be a teacher,” she says, beaming. “I would’ve killed to have a teacher like her.”
My face heats under their spotlight as they watch me expectantly. The only thing I want to do less than teach for pay that borders on offensive is admit that truth out loud, in front ofMichelle’s Botox frozen Spock brow. There’s only one way out of this.Deflect, deflect, deflect.If there was money inthat,maybe I’d have a career path I could get behind.
Luckily, I’ve always got a tight five ready.
“And if that doesn’t work out, I saw they’re hiring at the Starbucks downtown.” I raise crossed fingers into the air and pause for the silent snare drum. “Taking down union busters with a discounted macchiato in hand sounds like a lovely little Tuesday.”
Liv’s face screws up in concern at my performance, but before she can respond, a cheer erupts from the crowd. A resurrected call-and-response time warp from the longest four years of my life. And just like that, I’m back at the big Friday night game watching Asher Hall on the field, whilehewatches these samewillhurkey for boozegirlies. Though that particular star quarterback is noticeably and unfortunately absent from tonight’s reunion.
The cheer teases out another darker flashback, but I don’t let that one play out. One mental breakdown at a time, please.
