movies and hatred of designer fashion. The two of them once had a lot in common—they were both artistic, extroverted and energetic—but since Vassar, Stephanie had changed dramatically. Of course, Emily hadn’t spent enough time with her to know this firsthand, but she assumed as much from Stephanie’s social media posts. If Stephanie wasn’t posting about the dangers of vaccinations, she was posting about how meditation could cure cancer or how the only good decision a young person could make is to quit her job and live in Bolivia for a year without doing any research first. After Stephanie got her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she went backpacking in Europe and presumably had sex with a flock of rich hippies named Travis or Jared in hostel beds for a year and a half. She had neglected to find another job since returning to the United States. It had been six years. Of course, such important life-changing experiences were a lot easier when your parents paid your rent and subsidized your shrooms habit.
“Emily, is that seriously you?” she squealed. “How are you? You didn’t tell me you were back!”
Emily never told Stephanie when she was back home—because, naturally, they barely knew each other anymore—but every time Stephanie got any whiff of Emily’s return to New York on social media, she eagerly asked her if she wanted to meet up for coffee in Brooklyn. She never stopped to consider that Emily’s parents lived in Westchester.
“Oh, I’ve just been so busy with the wedding stuff.”
“When’s the big day?” she asked, her electric-green-lined eyes widening. She had gotten a nose piercing. That was new.
“Oh, just...in a week,” Emily croaked.
“A week? Oh, so, like, it’s a small ceremony with just you and your parents?”
“Um...not really. We have a few other people coming.”
Emily watched it slowly dawn on Stephanie that she wasn’t invited to the wedding. Eight years ago when they met up in Chelsea, Stephanie had promised Emily that she would give a kick-ass speech at her wedding. It seemed intrusive and weird even then, especially since Emily was single at the time. She racked her brain for all the consoling things she could say to Stephanie—for example, that her parents were limiting her to inviting five friends. Of course, the real reason she invited so few friends was that she didn’t have many friends. Her mother had actually urged her to invite more and said that she feared that she was self-sabotaging by “pushing people away” because it was implausible for a woman her age to have only two close female friends. Surely, her mother assumed, Emily had other friends she was intentionally alienating.
“I didn’t realize you wanted to come,” she said to Stephanie. “Also, we don’t have a raw vegan option for dinner. You’re still raw vegan, right?”
“Yeah, but it could still work out! Especially since I’m currently fasting, except for alcohol, so you wouldn’t even need to provide a dinner for me. I’d even bring my own craft whiskey. Can I still come anyway?”
Emily desperately wanted to turn to David and share incredulous looks, but she knew that doing that would plunge them both into fits of laughter. It would be just like the time they were riding the 47 bus downtown in San Francisco and a middle-aged man wearing nothing but a clown wig and leather harness got on, his soft, leathery penis flopping around like a very large skin tag. Everyone pretended not to notice, because that was the go-to San Francisco reaction to a lunatic. Emily, however, had made the mistake of mischievously glancing at David. He began to laugh, and so did she, and before long the naked clown was serenading both of them with a surprisingly competent rendition of “Every Breath You Take.”
Emily smiled tensely. “Um... I mean... I can talk to my parents and see if they’re okay with it, but they’re being really strict about it. They’re paying and they’re on a tight budget, so it’s kind of their rules.”
“Well, I won’t even eat anything, so I don’t think anyone would even notice me. What day is it again?”
“Next Saturday.”
“Oh,” Stephanie looked down at her hands, as if discovering them for the first time. She shrugged. “Saturday is actually no good for me. I’m going to a reconstructed Druid bonfire that day. Poop! This totally sucks! There’s no way we can do another day?”
“What, like, reschedule my wedding?”
“Oh, of course not! What was I thinking? You probably already paid all the fancy caterers and whatnot. Can we hang out a different day?”
“Let’s totally do that next time I’m in town,” she said with no intention of returning to New York for at least a year. Next holiday season, she would definitely try to go on vacation with David alone, to somewhere warm and peaceful where she could wear a bikini and a breezy cotton kimono. Slighting both sets of parents for the holidays seemed easier than slighting only one—at least they couldn’t be accused of favoritism. The previous year, they had visited his parents, because they had seen her parents the year before that. With her parents in Westchester and his in Fairfield, Connecticut, they could easily visit both in one trip, but whichever family paid for the ticket seemed to feel horribly insulted if they spent even a few minutes seeing the other family. Emily learned that the hard way when she visited her own family for the holidays and made the mistake of seeing David’s parents for lunch one day. For the rest of the week, her mother lamented that they were “stealing” her and deliberately trying to destroy what little Emily’s parents had left of a family. This somehow devolved into the accusation that David’s Catholic father was trying to steal her away and convert her to Catholicism because “for them it’s not enough for Jews to be only two percent of the population, they want us at zero percent.” The holidays had gone from something Emily enjoyed celebrating as a child—in a secular, Claymation-movie-based sort of way—to something she dreaded each year.
“What about Friday?” Stephanie asked. “Are you free to chill at my place?”
“Your place in Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, it’ll be low-key. We can just chill for an hour or so.”
“I mean, I’m staying with my parents in Westchester. Also, that’s the day of the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, you know...it’s kind of a busy day.”
“I’m sure you have an hour free. Come see me! I never see you anymore!” She jutted out her lower lip like a kid begging for a rainbow slushy.
“Well, actually it would be like, three or four hours if you include the commute.”
“Figure it out! Don’t be a party pooper! We can smoke a little weed, drink the home brew that my neighbor made and watch Nosferatu. It’ll be rad.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She squeezed David’s hand, as if to send a distress signal, but he already knew she was distressed and seemed to have no intention of intervening.
“Sweet, let’s totally do that!” She tried to high-five Emily. “Shit, my Uber is here. I have to go.”
“No worries, I’ll see you later.”
Emily waited until she was gone and turned to David.
“Why does she even like me? What about me is even likable to a person like that?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but her interest in you is just as confusing to me as it is to you.”
“We’re
