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Already, I can recognize the voices singing along to “Winner Takes It All,” with George playing the piano, the same one he learned on at his grandmother’s house growing up. I take a deep breath on this side of the door. It’s not that I don’t want to see them, or that I’m mad at George for not telling me. It’s the energy; I’m drained from seeing Pop, I’ll drain more once I open this door, hug RJ and Annie and Lacey, if my ears are correct; once George corners me in his galley kitchen and gets the truth out of me. Then there’s work tonight, the overnight shift that doesn’t require me to talk to a lot of people but does require me to stay awake and alert for none of the reasons that I used to.
So I breathe here, on George’s quiet apartment landing, squeeze the loaf of fresh French roll maybe a bit too hard. But it feels good, at least. I open the door just as they hit the second verse and the ABBA is quickly abandoned for squealing and RJ taking my coat and Lacey petting my hand and George slipping the loaf from me and whisking it into the kitchen, where a pot of his mother’s spaghetti sauce bubbles. We eat on the couch and living room floor. George insists I am the one to take his new “adult” beanbag chair since it’s comfortable and allows me to stretch out my leg, even though it’s not bothering me right now. They have pink sparkling wine, celebrating RJ’s new part in a Tennessee Williams play at the Walnut Street Theatre. George slices a lemon for my water.
It’s nice even if it is tiring. My friends don’t expect me to talk much but then they usually don’t, and I get by answering only direct questions. Eventually, Lacey curls up on the floor next to me, resting her head on my lap, and the weight of her friendship is familiar and comfortable.
“We’re going to go out tonight,” she says. There’s a sparkling wine and oysters special on Sunday nights at the local queer bar.
“I’ve got to work. I should leave soon,” I say, checking the time on the clock above the empty dinner table.
“Help me clean up first,” George says, stacking plates.
Here we go.
I dutifully follow behind him, collecting champagne flutes, and when I enter the kitchen, he turns on me. “You didn’t stand her up, did you?” he asks.
I blink, confused for a moment. “No.” I thought Lulu would have told him by now what a terrible date I was. “I wouldn’t do that.”
He starts loading the dishes in the dishwasher and I flip the faucet, letting the sink fill with water. “She didn’t...” I start. “You haven’t heard from her?”
He leans against the counter beside me, his forehead scrunched in concern. “Did you two make a pact to keep me out? An anti-meddling task force?”
“A...what? No. George. I haven’t told you anything because there’s nothing to tell.” I pull a pot off the stove and dunk it in the sudsy water.
“You didn’t like her?” He sounds affronted. He gasps. “She didn’t like you?” Now he sounds aghast.
I shrug. The tips of my ears feel too warm under his gaze and I itch to get away from this conversation, but after yesterday’s attempt at an intervention, I know I won’t get away with that. Whether or not Lulu liked me isn’t really the point. “Maybe dating wasn’t the right strategy,” I say. “For getting me back out there.”
“Don’t give up yet,” he says. “I know a guy I could set you up with. He works in special collections at the library.” He pops his brows like “sexy librarian.”
“It’s not a gender thing. It’s a me thing. I just...” I sigh as I scrub at the pot. There’s no sauce left on it; at this point I might rub a hole through the metal. “I need you not to rush me, OK?”
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, squeezing my forearm until I stop scrubbing. I turn to him, drying my hands on the dish towel he passes over. “How would you feel...” George asks slowly. “About being a part of a study?”
I check the time on his microwave, cookbooks and little orange bottles filled with his ADHD prescriptions sitting on top. “Do you have another survey for me to fill out?” As part of his research for his PhD, George is always sending us surveys to fill out, usually about the correlation between mental health and queer communities. “I don’t know if I’m going to have time. I have to leave for work in half an hour.”
George shakes his head and pulls a stack of papers off the kitchen table by the big bay window. George’s parents set him up here in his sophomore year and as he’s gotten more financially stable he’s taken over paying the mortgage. I’ve had many a breakfast in that little nook, squeezed in next to George and the heater underneath the window, tasting the recipes he’s tested over the years.
“I’m running a new study. It’s cross-disciplinary, the medical school is involved, sociologists, too.” He makes a face likeugh; George hates working with sociologists for methodology reasons I’ve never quite grasped. “Basically, it’s a study to find out why adults, specifically millennials, have such a hard time making friends.” He holds up the flyer on top of the stack for my perusal.
I laugh, a quietha. “If I knew the answer to that life would be a lot easier.” I know what he’s going to say before the words leave his mouth.
“You should apply,” he says, like it’s that easy. Like the terror invoked by the thought of walking into a room full of strangers isn’t one of the reasons I’m like this to begin with.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.” Sometimes it’s easier to just go along.
“I’m serious, Jess. I think it might be good for you to meet new people.”
“I thought y’all were pissed I wasn’t hanging out withyouanymore. Now you want me to find new friends?” I’m being petulant, I know, arguing for the sake of it. To get out of whatever new self-improvement project George is trying to assign me.
“First of all, I’m not pissed at you.” He pauses. “Anymore. You’re a different person than you were before the accident. Maybe you need to meet different people; maybe they’re necessary for this different you to flourish.”
The living room is silent, our friends clearly eavesdropping on us. I sigh. “Should I join the study?” I ask, projecting my voice to them on the other side of the wall. There’s silence, then shuffling, a giggle. A sock puppet with a disturbingly human-shaped mouth peers around the corner and George cackles with laughter.
“We just want you to be happy, Jess,” the sock puppet says in RJ’s squeakiest voice.
Annie snorts and Lacey bursts into another song, playing the piano badly, and I think, even if I am a different person now, who could ever want for better friends than this?
Eight hours later, the words on the page of my hardcover swim together. Call it confirmation bias or coincidence, but after listening to Lulu’s explanation of the history of witchcraft, I’d found a book about the witch craze in a pile of my grandmother’s things in the crawl space. Both of my grandparents were big readers and they passed along their love of reading to me, even if I don’t have as much time for it anymore. I’d spent a few minutes flipping through it, after giving up my search for the electric hedge clippers I knew Pop had stored somewhere before he moved out. The cover was clearly meant to shock the reader, with the painted image of two women hanging by their necks over a burning pyre, but the information inside is too dry for a night shift on security duty. I readjust the book light clipped to the cover, but it doesn’t help. Close my eyes and let the printed words dissolve behind my eyelids. Lulu’s explanation was far more compelling than this. I think I might leave the history to her. I scan the parking lot outside the security car’s windshield.
