Chapter 2

Quinn

“It was the strangest thing,” I whispered across the table at the Asheville bar, my voice high-pitched and strained after the second margarita. In the heat of September, I’d sipped too quickly—dehydrated and grasping after the pleasure of that sweet, bright green drink. “It was like, all of a sudden he wasn’t even there. We slept next to each other, but he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t kiss me. He didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Hmmm…” Emery, my best friend of five years, glanced away from my face and peered toward the back window. Flipping her long brown locks, she said, “So weird.”

“So I told him he had to leave,” I shrugged, biting my lip. “It almost destroyed me to do it. I felt like my heart would burst. And now, I found myself in this apartment, all alone.”

I laughed slightly, trying to find solace in Emery’s eyes. But she was acting strange, her eyes flipping around the room, unable to look into mine. In the previous few weeks, she’d grown increasingly distant—avoiding my hours at the lab we both worked at, not agreeing to go for drinks. When she’d heard that I’d dumped Chris, she’d agreed to head out for margaritas, but she’d been bizarre and shaken since we’d arrived, hardly acknowledging my predicament and making me feel like a whiny friend.

Clearing her throat, she tried to switch subjects. “Do you think you’ll continue in the lab? Since graduation, I’ve been talking to Mitch about getting a pay raise.”

“I’m not sure if I care about the work anymore,” I shrugged. Lifting my finger to the passing server, I ordered another margarita, already sensing the trauma of the coming hangover. Fuck it, I thought. “I mean, in school, I was fascinated with sleep study. And doing all this diet bullshit with mice is getting me down. I don’t want to spend hours in a lab just so some skinny housewife can lose five more pounds. I don’t care about it.”

Emery shrugged, turning her eyes toward her half-empty drink. “At this point, if someone’s willing to help me with rent, I’m into it.”

“Sure,” I stammered, my heart still aching with fear and sadness. “I don’t know how I’ll pay the rent with Chris gone. They say this first year out of college is supposed to be confusing, right? But I don’t think I imagined how confusing this could be. When we graduated, Chris said we’d be engaged by the end of the year. And now—I’m fucking single. And I don’t know. Should I give him another chance, Em?”

Emery’s eyes flashed toward me. She paused, biting her bottom lip in that way that told me she was nervous.

“What’s going on with you?” I demanded. “You’ve been acting weird all fucking night; all month actually. We graduated, what, two months ago? We threw our hats into the air together. And you told me that I got you through college or whatever. But now—you're—so distant. I need a fucking best friend, right now, Emery. I’m going through a breakup. You’re supposed to bring the chocolate, the wine, the Kleenex.”

Emery’s voice was low, raspy. “You should know the truth.”

“The truth about what?” I asked.

“About Chris.”

I paused for a long time. The server placed my third margarita in front of me, allowing me to guzzle half of it with a single shot. The tartness bolted down my throat. I waited, trying to dig through Emery’s brain—remembering how we’d met each other, matched in the same lab in freshman year. We’d giggled at the idiocy of the other ‘wannabe scientists’ and talked for long hours about the difference we were going to make in the world.

“I slept with Chris,” Emery whispered, barely audible.

Her words felt like a slap across my cheeks. I couldn’t rationalize it. When had Emery and Chris ever been alone together, without me?

“I’m sorry. What?” I replied. I felt as if I were falling down a long, horrible cavern, wishing I could just crash at the bottom—breaking all my bones in the process.

“It had nothing to do with you,” Emery continued.

“How could it not be about me?” I asked her, gasping.

“It was just an attraction we couldn’t avoid. We couldn’t continue knowing each other without, you know, trying it.”

“Trying it? Are you fucking serious!” I yelled. I sat there starring at my best friend in disbelief. The one friend I could always count on, but now she meant nothing to me. Scum was the first word that came to my thoughts.

“We just, you know, went for it. And then, it happened again and again.”

“Where?” I demanded.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” she asked, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like we did it in your bed or anything.”

“You did it in my bed,” I said raising my voice again. I lurched up from my seat. “You fucked my boyfriend, Emery. What about that isn’t alarming to you? What about that makes you so fucking casual?”

I felt the tears slip down my cheeks, boiling down my skin and toward my bright pink dress below. Why had I dressed so sultry—with my breasts nearly hanging out of the push-up demi-cup bra I’d recently purchased? In the back of my mind, I’d imagined Emery and I flirting with men at the bar, becoming ‘single friends’ again and finding new ways to plot the course of our 20s, together.

“I mean, Chris really misses you. So it’s not like what happened between us was all that important to him,” she muttered then, shrugging. “When you dumped him, he told me we had to stop. So we have.”

“Oh, my God. You’re in love with him,” I whispered, my heart banging against my ribcage.

“No. I mean, I don’t think so,” Emery stammered. Her eyes glinted up toward mine, almost begging for some forgiveness from me. “When you met Chris, I was jealous, Quinn. You’re so fucking pretty. Blonde, big boobs. All the guys look at you when you walk past them. But Chris and I, we’re better suited for one another. We connect, you know?”

My eyes slammed shut at her words, and I shook my head as I tried to process what she had just said. When I finally looked at her, I growled, “No, I don’t know you fucking bitch!” Taking a step back all I could see were images of the three of us together; celebrating graduation, buying furniture for Chris and I’s apartment. I had been such a fool.

With a spin, I turned from the table and walked from the bar, trying to center my brain. As I walked, I nearly slammed into the server, who was delivering drinks to a separate table. The drinks shifted left, then right on her tray, looking ominous. I scrambled back, my hands flashing left and right.

“I’m so sorry,” I said and bolted from the bar. I found my car in the parking lot and collapsed into it, crying out and stabbing my fists against the steering wheel, feeling the anger and resentment rise within me. This was the world I’d cultivated, grown in for the past four and a half years. And now, it was crumbling around me.

After taking the wheel, I drove as slow as I could back to the apartment I’d shared with Chris. After pouring myself a full glass of wine, I swept through the job ads of surrounding universities, knowing I couldn’t go back to the lab Emery worked at. When the job popped up for the one at North Carolina State University—a lab that associated itself with sleep studies, I applied almost immediately. Tossing my resume into the wind, I felt free, yet aching with fear. I’d never taken a step forward without my best friend beside me. I’d never made a move without Chris. And now—I had to lean entirely on myself. Alone, in a world that was already working it’s hardest to chew me up and spit me out.