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“You’re always busy. Think of some other excuse, because I’m never going to take that one from you.”
“I hate parties.”
“Yeah, but this is my birthday. You’ve got to make sacrifices for your friends on their birthdays.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“There’s a party at Minnehan at eight, so we’re going to kick ours off at ten. It’s at the house—you know where I’m living?”
Where Caroline’s living. Of course I know.
“I can’t make it. Sorry.”
“Try.”
I glance at him. He’s not smiling now. He’s got his hands shoved in his pockets, his dark eyebrows drawn in against the wind and maybe against whatever it is he’s feeling right now, which is strange because Krishna usually makes out like he doesn’t feel anything.
“I can’t leave my sister to go to a house party.”
“Can’t you find someone to watch her?”
Laurie and Rikki have offered more than once. “Even if I could, what am I going to tell her, ‘Look, I know you hardly see me and you haven’t got any friends or anything, but I’m going to be at this house party tonight for some guy you’ve never met’s birthday, don’t wait up’?”
“I’ve met your sister.”
“When?”
“Caroline brings her by. She’s cute.”
Irrational jealousy grips me. Jealousy of Frankie for having seen Caroline’s place. Of Krishna for hanging out with my sister while I’m at work.
“Look, I don’t think it’s gonna happen. But happy birthday, all right?”
He stops. Just stops walking right in the middle of the path, and I keep going for a few steps, but it turns out I can’t leave him there like that.
I’ve been trying to leave him since I left Putnam last spring, and every time I cut him out of my life I feel crueler, but I’m accomplishing nothing. It’s like he’s impervious.
Except I know he’s not impervious.
Krishna hasn’t got that many friends. Not real friends. The number of guys Krishna has ever spent a night at home with, drinking and watching basketball and doing more or less nothing—I’m pretty sure it’s just one.
The number of guys who know what his home life is like, his asshole father who thinks if he doesn’t take over the family company in India he’s a complete failure as a human being—also one.
I stop moving.
“It’s not all right,” he tells me.
“I know.”
“I’m not sure you do. You’ve been back in town two months, and it’s not fucking all right, the way you’re acting.”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it?”
“You think I wouldn’t, if I could see some way to? You think I’m enjoying myself? I’m raising a ten-year-old, working thirty hours at the fucking window factory, taking classes, and trying to clear all my incompletes from last semester, and I can’t put things back the way they were, okay? I can’t. It’s not possible.”
His face is grave. “Caroline seems to think it’s possible.”
