him. And last time he just barely survived her. And this was supposed to be the night I finally told him the truth. I had waited so long for this.
“Sash?” Xavier said. He sounded so gentle and concerned. “Is that okay?”
Later I would think back to this moment, wonder if everything might have been different if only I’d given a different answer.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
I turned away, then pushed through the crowd. When I looked back, Xavier and Ivy had been swallowed up.
I got in line for the bathroom. I was a wild and desperate animal. I needed to do something, to stop this, to save him. But I had no idea what.
Gwen walked by, holding a drink. She gulped it down and put the empty glass on a table. She gave me a little wave as she headed toward the front door. I called out to her. “Gwen! Wait!”
Gwen came back. “Where are you going?” I said.
“Home,” Gwen said. She looked at my hands. “So . . . is that like a weird fetish thing or something?” She grinned.
I remembered when we were friends back in fourth grade, going over to her house. It was fancy and completely silent. Gwen lived there with her father, who was always at work, and her mother, who spent all day in bed. Gwen had said that this was because her mother was very popular and had a lot of friends who lived far away in other countries in other time zones and she stayed up very late at night talking to them. “That’s why she’s in bed,” Gwen said. “During the day she has to catch up on sleep. Also sometimes at night she goes to parties.” The story had seemed kind of strange to me at the time, but I had reminded myself my own mother did plenty of weird things. Who could really say why mothers did what they did?
Gwen’s mother passed away a few years after that. We weren’t friends anymore by that point, but I’d heard that she’d been sick for a long time, had spent years slowly dying. I understood then what the story had been about. The idea of my once friend inviting people over and then telling that lie to cover up what was actually happening made my chest hurt. I went to the funeral alone and sat at the back. I’m not sure if Gwen even saw me.
Standing there that night at Sloe Joe’s, I thought of Gwen’s silent house, her sick mother, of how easy it is to lose someone and how there are so many different ways for it to happen.
“She came here looking for him, you know,” Gwen said.
“She did?” That made it worse. But I wondered why Gwen was telling me this. “How did she even know he’d be here?”
Gwen shrugged. “She just figured, I guess. Haven’t you noticed how good she is at that?”
“At what?” I said.
“Getting what she wants.” Gwen gave me a half-smile. “Have a good night, girly.” She turned and headed toward the door again.
I stayed in line, breathing hard.
If Ivy bumping into him here wasn’t an accident, it meant she wanted something from him. Maybe she even wanted him back.
But that doesn’t mean she can have him, I reminded myself.
I imagined leaving the bathroom and finding him. He would be alone. “So where’d you know that girl from?” he’d say. “She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. What was her name? Plant? Root?” And he’d grin, at his own dumb joke.
And he’d take the whisky out of his bag.
And we’d go outside and finish it.
And we’d play our game again.
And finally, finally, I would tell him the truth.
Only when I got back from the bathroom, he was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t on the dance floor, wasn’t at the bar. Finally I headed out to the tiny concrete courtyard in the back where people went to smoke sometimes. There was a group sitting around a picnic table, passing a vaporizer. I turned toward the corner, and that’s when I spotted them. Xavier and Ivy, up against the wall, their eyes were closed. They weren’t kissing or moving or anything, they were just like that, holding each other tight.
I felt hot and sick, full of rage and terror.
I backed up quickly, before they saw me. I went through the bar, outside into the hot night, and then I was gone.
My heart pounded powerfully, painfully. I didn’t know then what I know now: be careful when your feelings are too strong, when you love someone too much. A heart too full is like a bomb. One day it will explode.
They say guys make stupid decisions with their dicks, but Xavier knew the very dumbest ones he’d ever made were the ones he made with his heart.
Ivy held his hand as she led him through the trees toward that place in the woods, midway between their houses, where they always used to go. She squeezed tight like she was trying to keep him from running away. He probably should have run – some part of him knew that – but his stupid heart kept marching him forward.
When he’d seen Ivy at Sloe Joe’s, he’d tried to remind himself that he was supposed to be mad, but all he’d felt was surprised, and maybe a little bit scared, and mostly just very, very happy to see her.
She brought him outside to the courtyard, and instead of saying anything, she’d just wrapped her arms around him and stayed like that. And then after a while asked him, please would he please come with her to their spot in the woods, and he said okay.
On the train, she’d leaned her head back against his chest and nestled into him like the whole last month of them being apart hadn’t even happened. When he caught sight of them together in the reflection in the glass, he saw that he was smiling.
Now they walked in between the trees where there was no path, but they both knew the way blackout drunk with their eyes closed. They’d come here together so many times, starting back when it was still winter but the smell of spring was creeping in over the melting snow. “It’s the time of year to fuck against a tree in the woods,” is what Ivy had told him when she’d brought him the first time. And then she’d taken off his gloves and put his hands up under her coat and sweater onto her warm skin.
Now, the air was hot and thick in that late-July way. And as he followed her, he tried not to think about the last time they’d spoken before this. He tried not to think about how he’d gone to a party in a neighboring town to hear his friend Ethan’s band play on a night Ivy had said she was busy with a family thing. But then he found her there, out back next to one of the kegs, wrapped up in a skinny punk-looking guy with a septum ring and a leather cuff on each wrist. And when she looked up and saw him seeing her, she didn’t even seem surprised. Almost like she’d expected to get caught, or wanted to. “Oh shit, is this the chump you’ve been texting me about?” the punk guy asked. And he laughed.
Xavier tried not to think about how he’d waited to hear from her after that, assumed she’d come to him full of apologies, like she usually did after she’d done something messed up, only this time she didn’t. And he tried not to think about how a week after that he’d gone back to their place in the woods, because it was late
