Thirty

Henley

2017

I leave before Conner has the chance to throw me out again, reminding myself that he’s not the reason I’m here. Not really. It may have started that way, sailing the Hudson with Jeremy and his boyfriend on a Sunday afternoon. He and Jeremy are careful in public. To the outside observer, Gregg is my flamboyantly gay bestie. Jeremy is my heterosexual, but tolerant boyfriend. They’ve been together for three years and have had the kind of relationship everyone dreams of.

“You need to get laid before we do this thing,” Gregg said, looking up at me from where he was sunning himself on the deck.

“Our girl is saving herself for someone special,” Jeremy said, giving me a sly smile. “What’s his name? Carter? Conrad?”

“Conner.” His name slipped out like it’d been there all along, poised on the end of my tongue. “His name is Conner.”

“That’s right,” Jeremy pats me on my arm like a spinster aunt. “Conner. Our girl has been in love with him since before I met her.”

I smile, remembering. It’s what made our arrangement work. How we were able to fake a 10-year relationship. Jeremy is gay, and I’m in love with someone I can never have. We’re fake perfect for each other.

We’ve hatched all our best schemes on that boat. Our fake relationship to hide the fact he’s gay from his ultra-conservative family when we were seventeen. The fake pregnancy scare that became the talk of our social circle when we were eighteen. Our fake marriage to save his trust fund when we were twenty-five.

We decided on a long engagement. An iron-clad pre-nump because his father will insist. A huge, lavish wedding because his mother will want it. We’ll start to display marital problems halfway through year three. I’ll discover he’s cheating on me a few months later, triggering the infidelity clause in the pre-nump. We’ll see a therapist to try to save our marriage, and it’ll work for a while. Year four will be wonderful, but another round of cheating in year five will shatter the illusion of our fairytale romance. Disillusioned and heartbroken, I’ll file for divorce.

It’s all planned, down to the day.

We’ll marry when I’m twenty-eight and divorce when I’m thirty-three. Five years of my life for five-hundred million dollars. And then I can get away from my mother and start my life.

My real life.

“You need to find him and fuck him, girl,” Gregg says, looking at me over the tops of his sunglasses. “For real.”

“She doesn’t need to find him,” Jeremy says. “She knows exactly where he is.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Gregg asks, exasperated. “I’m being serious, Henley. You need to take care of your little problem before you, and Jer get married.”

My little problem, meaning my virginity.

I laughed it off at the time but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I know where Conner is now. I know who he is now. I won’t be able to say the same thing, seven years from now.

It was now or possibly never.

So, I called Ryan and planted the seed. Waited for an opportunity to present itself. When one of my professors from Sara Lawrence emailed me about the internship at Boston City Library, mere weeks before my mother’s annual trip to Paris, it seemed like divine intervention.

I applied and Margo, my favorite librarian, called me almost immediately. She’d recognized my name, and the first thing she said to me when I answered my phone was when can you start?

Now, I meandered my way through the neighborhood in the general direction of Boston City library. My internship doesn’t officially start until Monday, but I want to see Margo. Say hi. Get reacquainted.

Thankfully, my landmarks are still here. Tess’s dad’s garage, now Conner’s. Gilroy’s bar. The park where we used to play pickup baseball games, back when I was still allowed to play. My old apartment building. Even if they weren’t, even if I was blind, I’d know where I was.

I’m home.

The building looks shabbier than I remember. The concrete stoop crumbling away underage and use, the brick face of it dingy and in need of a power wash. The lower level has bars on the window I don’t remember. The door has a security buzzer, even though it was propped open with a chunk of cement, presumably from the stoop.

Standing on the sidewalk, I look up, aiming my face at the front of the building, searching for and finding what used to be our living room window. It’s closed now, like whoever lives there now has the good sense to keep it closed that my parents never did.

Conner keeps calling me Daisy. Last night it confused me. I didn’t understand. Thought it was a generic term of endearment he used with women like sweetheart or honey. A way for him to fuck them without getting bogged down with petty details like names.

But then I saw the copy of Gatsby tossed onto the table between us and I understood.

Daisy.

Not a term of endearment at all. Not even a way to disconnect from the women he’s been with. It’s a name that describes exactly was he thinks of women like me.

Vapid. Shallow. Materialist.

“You lose your limo?”

I look down, and there’s Tess standing a few feet away, looking at me like she’s staring at an animal in the zoo, a take-out box balanced on top of a pizza box in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. She must live around here.

“No,” I tell her, reaching into my purse to pull out a pair of over-sized sunglasses. I slip them on and offer her a polite smile. “I know exactly where it is.”

She laughs, but it’s not a friendly sound. “Then can I help you find something?” Her tone has gone weird. Like I’m no longer an animal in a zoo, but one who’s broke loose from her cage. She doesn’t like someone like me sniffing around Conner. Her neighborhood. Because people like me spell trouble.

“Boston City Library?” I say even though I don’t need directions. I’m hoping if I tell her I’m looking for a specific place, it’ll put her at ease.

It doesn’t work. “Hook a right at the corner. It’s five blocks up on the left,” she tells me, her warm hazel eyes narrowed on my face for a second before they bounce up the side of the building to land on the window she found me looking at.

“Thank you,” I tell her, wedging my clutch under my elbow, avoiding eye contact when she looks at me again, even though she can’t read my expression behind the enormous sunglasses I’m wearing. “Enjoy your evening.”

I’m less than a dozen steps away when she says it. “Oh my god.” I hear something hit the ground. The sharp, muffled pop of glass hitting the sidewalk. “Henley?”

My stride falters, all but confirming her suspicions, and she says it again.

“Henley.”

Something else hits the ground, slides across the sidewalk, a moment before I feel her hand close over my elbow, anchoring me instantly.

She stands there, fingers gripped around my elbow, pixie face tilted up to study my profile. I can pull myself loose. Play the haughty socialite. Brush her aside with an I have no idea who that is. I can do it, and she’d believe me. I can play the rich-bitch when I have to.

But I don’t want to. I need her. I need my friend.

Instead, I sigh, turning toward her while I push my sunglasses up on my head. “Hey, Tess.”

She gapes at me, her mouth hanging open like its hinge is broken, taking in the woman standing in front of her. Trying to reconcile the image with the girl she used to know. “What are you doing here?” she says, shaking her head at me. “Why didn’t you say anything earli—” Her eyes go wide, her gaze darting to the left, in the direction I’d just come.

Where I just left Conner.

The hand on my arm tightens, squeezing my elbow hard enough to hurt. Tess is looking at me, her eye round and disbelieving. “Oh, Jesus,” she says pressing her other hand to her forehead. “This is bad. This is really bad.”

“It’s not that big a deal.” Even as I say it, I know I’m wrong. I know I messed up.

“It’s not...” she laughs, but the sound of it is harsh. “You don’t get it. Con—” She stops herself, planting her hands on her hips. Takes a deep breath. Let’s it out slowly. Calm has never been easy for her. Once she gets worked up, she’s almost unstoppable. I remember that about her. “He’s not the guy you remember, Henley.”

I think about him. The Conner I used to know. Sweet. Brilliant. Fearless.

Nothing like the man I just left.

“I know.”

“No...” she wags a finger at me, giving me a little sarcastic laugh. “You think you know but you—” She stops talking again like she’s suddenly afraid of saying too much. Like she doesn’t trust me. Like there are things about Conner she knows and understands that I will never be a part of.

“I didn’t realize you two were so close.” I don’t like the way I sound when I say it. Jealous. Ugly.

“You left us both, Henley,” she yells at me, reading my reaction perfectly. “You were my best friend and you just got into the back of some big, fancy car and that was it. You were gone.”

Her words rip the indignation right out of me. “I’m sorry, Tess…” I say. “I should’ve come home sooner. I should’ve called, I just—” I don’t how to explain to her what it was like, being thrust into that kind of life so quickly. One second, I’m mopping up my father’s puke in a rundown walk-up and the next, I’m sleeping on silk sheets and wondering which fork to use at dinner. “Got lost.”

“So did he,” she says. “Losing you hurt me but it broke him.”

Him. Conner. Hearing her say it does something to me. Makes me desperate. Anxious.

“You think I wanted to leave?” I remember sitting in the back of Spencer’s car, my mother’s fingers digging into my knee, her sharp nails piercing my skin like claws. Don’t look back, she hissed in my ear. Ladies don’t dwell on the past.

“I have no idea what you wanted, Henley,” she says, her mouth pressed into a hard line while she swallows hard against whatever seemed to be choking her. “You left. I needed you, and you weren’t there.”

I see it now.

Like Conner, she looks different—but still the same. She’s still as tiny as I remember, her dark hair pulled up into a messy ponytail that’s more afterthought than hairstyle. Her heart-shaped face. Her cute button nose. She has tattoos now —a full sleeve covering her right arm. More peeking out between the waistband of her jeans and the hem of her t-shirt—but despite the ink, she still loos the same… but there’s a heaviness to her that wasn’t there when we were kids. Something happened to her. Something big and I wasn’t here for her like I should’ve been.

“Tess, I—”

“You getting married?” It comes out more like an accusation than a question. Hearing her say it makes me feel guilty. Makes me wonder if Conner told her.

“Well—”

“Stop. Don’t answer that.” She throws herself at me, her arms catching me around my waist, hugging me so hard I feel like I’m caught in a trash compactor. She’s always been a hard hugger. I remember that too.

How much I’ve missed it.

“Are we okay?” I ask when I feel her arms start to loosen. I need her. I didn’t even realize how much until now. As much as I need her, I know she doesn’t belong to me anymore. She belongs to Conner, and if I hurt him, she’ll never forgive me.

“Probably not, but I’ve decided I’m going to be selfish about this for as long as possible,” she says softly. “I stuck my nose in Cap’n’s business, and everything went to shit.”

I hug her back, laughing a little. “I have no idea what that means,” I tell her

“It means I’m glad you’re home.” She leans back just a bit, far enough for me to see her face. “How long?”

“Ten weeks,” I say, and she lets me go, steps back, giving me the once-over.

“It’s not going to take that long to find your dad,” she says, shaking her head. “It won’t even take ten minutes.

Hearing her say that makes me look up at our old apartment window again. I wonder if he still lives there. If he’s passed out next to the toilet. Who’s been rolling him onto his side, so he doesn’t drown in his own vomit. I have to fight the urge to storm my way up the stairs and find out. Instead, I offer her what I hope is a convincing smile.

“Actually, I’m serving an internship at the library.”

“You’re a librarian?” she says like I just told her I was a circus clown.

“Is that so hard to believe?” I say, oddly wounded by her reaction.

“Yes,” she answers, unfazed by my reaction. “I figured your mom would have you married off to some billionaire and planning fund-raisers by now.”

“What can I say?” I give her a shrug, even though she’s right. That’s exactly what I’ll be, a few years from now. A billionaire’s wife. Pampered and kept. Exactly the kind of life my mother has envisioned for me. “I live to disappoint.”