Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

Timing was everything — that was more and more obvious the older you got, when you finally understood that the universe wasn’t held together in any way that made sense. There was no order, there was no plan. It was all about what you’d had for breakfast, and what kind of mood you were in when you walked down a certain hallway, and whether the person who tried to kiss you had good breath or bad. There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order. Elizabeth understood why so many people believed in God — it was for precisely this reason, so they’d never have to close their eyes and think, What the fuck did I do to my life? She had a storm-cloud headache brewing, the kind you could see coming six miles away. Cumulous clumps of regret were already low on the horizon line, but she couldn’t stop herself. It wasn’t funny; none of this was funny. “I don’t think she’ll be jealous, Zo.” Elizabeth tried her best to smile, and then she tried her best to keep her eyes open. It had been such a long day. Sleep sounded good, especially since she was half sure that she was already dreaming. She gripped the lip of the table with both hands and set her forehead down between them.

A glass of water appeared in front of her, and Elizabeth drank it. Both Jane and Zoe were helping her up, and then pulling down the sheets on the fold-out sofa. She rolled over and said good night, but the words didn’t come out.

• • •

The sun was bright, and it took Elizabeth several minutes to remember where she was. The windows were in the wrong place; so was the door. Slowly, the previous evening came back to her.

“Oh, God,” she said, and yanked the sheet up to her chin.

“Hi.” Zoe was sitting at the table outside with a cup of coffee and her laptop. “Jane’s a late sleeper.”

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said, scooting up so that her back was against the cheap foam back of the couch. She rubbed her eyes. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. “I don’t usually drink that much.”

“I know,” Zoe said. “Come out here.”

Elizabeth rolled off the sofa bed. The floor was cool. She grabbed the knit blanket that she’d kicked to the floor at some point during the night and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was early — before seven, probably, and the only sounds they could hear were seagulls and waves. Elizabeth settled into the chair next to Zoe. “That hurt,” she said. “My whole body hurts. I’m too old for this.”

“Tell me again what you were saying last night,” Zoe said.

Elizabeth hid her face. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I was drunk.”

“Yes, you were. But I want to know what you were talking about.” Zoe leaned forward, her face serious but soft. “Tell me. Not the part about Andrew. The part about us.”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing — the fact that she’d kept the secret for so many years, or the fact that she remembered it at all. There were layers of shame, ending with the moment that she was sitting in, with the salt air and the smell of Zoe’s coffee, which smelled both completely delicious and like it might make her throw up. “Okay,” Elizabeth said, and she started at the beginning. When she was done — TJ, the hallway, the two of them on the stairs — Zoe was smiling.

“I do remember that,” she said. “I definitely was hitting on you. Pretty hard, too. If someone did that to Ruby, I would call it sexual assault. It’s appalling! You should have called campus security and gotten a ride home.”

“But you don’t remember Bonnie and Clyde ?”

“Not a second of it. That’s how beautiful you were, Lizzy.” Zoe reached over and squeezed Elizabeth’s cheek. “So, were you interested?”

“I was interested. I mean, I loved you! I love you! You were like a goddess to me! But I didn’t know about, you know, all that. I was too scared. And plus, there was Andrew.”

“Who was having sex with Lydia.”

“Who was having sex with Lydia! God!” Elizabeth let out a huge gulping laugh. “The irony.”

Zoe took a slurp of her coffee. “Isn’t it so funny, to think about whatever we were doing a hundred years ago, as if it actually mattered? I had so many girlfriends who I thought I was going to be with forever, you know, go on old-lady bird-watching cruises with when we were eighty, or whatever, and then we’d break up in six months. I can’t even picture their faces. And when I met Jane, I thought we’d be together for six months! And here we are. So. I don’t know.”

“I guess that’s the question,” Elizabeth said. “Does it matter at all, what happened a million years ago? Is it relevant? In some ways, I think of course not, it’s all ancient history, but then again, I don’t know. It matters to me that Andrew slept with Lydia, but mostly because of the way he’s acting now. And that night with you on the couch, it does mean something to me — otherwise I would have mentioned it a hundred times, whenever I wanted to tease you, you know? It’s hard to explain.” Elizabeth reached one hand out of her blanket and pinched the air, reaching for Zoe’s coffee cup. “You actually wanted to kiss me?”

“I sure did, babe,” Zoe said, and handed her the cup. She picked up her chair and scooted it closer to Elizabeth’s. She leaned over, giving Elizabeth a sweet, small kiss on the mouth. It wasn’t romance; it wasn’t sex. Elizabeth had given Harry the same kiss a thousand times, and her own mother, and Andrew, even stupid Andrew. It was just love.

“You’re my best friend,” Elizabeth said.

“Ditto,” Zoe said, and leaned back in her chair, smiling at the sun.

No one was anywhere. Ruby called her mom’s cell, her mum’s, the restaurant. They were still in Montauk, she assumed, but usually they checked in to make sure she hadn’t had a party or set anything on fire. They’d already had the fire, maybe, so why worry? In two weeks, Harry had to show up for senior orientation at Whitman, which was when the college counselors split everyone into groups and talked about the process — where eventually, as Ruby had discovered last year, you found yourself sitting in a semicircle with your friends, talking about the three schools you already knew you wanted to apply to. Harry would be fine — he’d be with the dorks, talking about how Providence really was a cool town, they’d all heard. He’d apply early. He’d get in. Ruby could already see the text message popping up on her phone, maybe a sheepish emoji face. He’d be happy.

But for now Harry was still asleep in her bed.

His hair had gotten longer in the last few months, which was starting to pull the curls down. There was a little spot of saliva on the pillow just below his lips, which Ruby thought was cute. Being with Harry was kind of like doing Teach for America or being a Big Sister or something — really making a difference in someone’s life by giving him or her some attention they might not get otherwise. A sex mentoring program. Not that she didn’t like Harry — she did, a lot. But Ruby was sanguine about the affair. It was a practice run. Everyone did it, whether anybody admitted it or not — almost all teenage love was a performance, with real emotions and real heartbreak. But it was a performance just the same. How else would you ever tell someone that you loved them and mean it, if you’d never said it before? When Ruby thought about Harry, she liked that they’d know each other forever. He wasn’t going to vanish like Dust, or any of her friends from Whitman, people who could just choose to go to college and completely change their personality overnight. Harry was always going to be Harry, and his parents were always going to live up the block, and they would always be in each other’s lives, and some year, twenty years or more in the future, they would all be together for Thanksgiving, and Harry would be married with kids who looked just like him, and she’d be really fucking glamorous and exciting, and they’d kiss each other on the cheek and think about this summer, and they’d go to bed with tummies full of turkey and memories of each other’s bodies.