There are two silences in my phone, and I lie there thinking about it.
The first is his. I’ve got nothing from Stanley. Not a word, not a dot, not a what the hell happened. This is confirmation.
The second silence is my father’s. And this one I could break. I could pick up the phone right now and type the thing he wants. Handled. You can stop worrying about his career. I ended it. He’d be pleased with me, and I’d have done the thing he asked, fixed the thing he flagged, earned the small clipped good I have spent my whole life arranging myself to receive.
I start typing it. It’s handled. You don’t have to—
And my thumb stops.
Because a small part of me balks at the sentence on the screen. I’m about to report to my father that I have dismantled my own happiness for him like a soldier reporting a completed order, like that’s a normal thing for a person to do, like that’s love. I look at the half-typed sentence and think better of it. I delete it.
Gianna texts me at nine.
Gianna:Hey, you vanished after the game. You good?
And then, a minute later, because she’s Gianna.
Gianna:Bringing coffee. Don’t argue. Outside in 20.
I lie there holding the phone, and I could cry, because I have friends now. Real ones. For the first time in my adult life, there is a person driving over with a coffee because I seemed off, and I cannot tell her one true thing about why.
I can’t explain the breakup without explaining the relationship, and I can’t explain the relationship without saying it was fake from the beginning. The single real thing I gained out of this whole disaster are these friends, and it’s fragile, sitting on the exact same fault line as everything else. To be honest insidethe friendship, I’d have to blow the friendship up. So I’ll do what I do. I’ll give Gianna a partial truth and a working face and let her think she’s helping, and I’ll lie to the kindest person who has ever brought me coffee.
Gianna fills the doorway first, three coffees in a cardboard tray and a bag of something from the good bakery, already talking before she’s all the way inside. Lucy is behind her, carrying a second bag with that watchful warmth she carries everywhere. They let themselves in like they’ve done it a hundred times. They haven’t. It’s the second time Gianna’s ever been in my house, but it feels like the hundredth.
“Okay,” Gianna says, handing me a coffee, dropping onto the end of my bed like she lives here. “I’m just going to say it, because I’m bad at not saying things and worse at sitting on them. I know it’s not real. You and Stan.” She winces. “I’ve known for a few days. Benson told me — well. Benson didn’t tell me. I got it out of him, which is a different thing and not his fault, so don’t be mad at my brother.”
The coffee stops halfway to my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she rushes on. “I’m sorry I know, I’m sorry if it’s weird that I know, I debated not saying anything and pretending, but that felt worse — like I’d be the one lying to you then, in your own bedroom, while you’re clearly going through something.” She pulls a knee up. “So. I know. And I don’t care. We’re here for you.”
I look at Lucy.
“I knew before Benson said a word,” Lucy says, settling into my desk chair. “I was standing right there at the party. I know what a real thing looks like and what a performance looks like, and that kiss wasn’t a performance.” She takes the lid off her coffee. “I saw both your faces. That was your first one, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, I did not know then,” Gianna cuts in. “For the record. I found out way after.”
Lucy ignores her. “Wasn’t it?”
I nod, the coffee halfway to my mouth.
“So you guys know,” I manage to say, mortified.
“We’re not judging,” Gianna adds. “We totally get it.”
Lucy nods.
“And Stanley has been different,” Gianna says, making a face. “He’s…you know.”
Lucy watches me as I smirk. Gianna and I look at each other and laugh.
I say, “But he’s not like that when it’s just us.”
Gianna nods. “We heard about what Halifax offered him.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
“That’s huge.”
