I still remember those smooth white tiles, how we threw off our coats and danced in and out of the deep end, laughing hysterically as one by one we lost our footing on the center’s slanted floor. Lloyd did pull-ups under the diving board. We discovered the stars overhead and clutched each other in delight of them. We were dizzy and drunk. The night screeched to a halt when I threw up into a drain, and Lloyd helped me clomp down to the street and obtain a cab home. But that happy little aquarium made the rest of winter survivable: a ceramic vault where the music boomed and swelled.
I’d gone on to develop an enormous crush on Lloyd, the jelly-kneed, stomach-flipping kind that only strikes every five years if you’re lucky. (I squinted at the emails again: of course Edie’s hadn’t asked if anything had happened between him and me.) I felt a little heart flip, remembering my intense infatuation. Then my mind jolted ahead to how it ended, and a sinking feeling rushed in to replace it.
But Greg—there’s someone I hadn’t thought of in a while. Edie’s boyfriend at the time, the reason nothing could happen between her and Alex on that magical January night. Greg and Edie had begun dating shortly after I met her; I couldn’t remember how they met, but there was something cute about it, something serendipitous that she got a kick out of sharing with people. Greg was older and intimidating, with a real job and expensive clothes and a condo by the water in Greenpoint. He rarely made appearances in Calhoun; Edie often headed to his apartment after a late-night show or dance party with the rest of us. Now I wonder what emotionally stunted thirty-two-year-old man wants to date an impulsive twenty-three-year-old with a bit of a drinking problem, but at the time, he was a catch.
What had happened to Greg? I searched for his name in my inbox and confirmed they’d broken up in February 2009, shortly before Edie had begun dating Alex and moved into his apartment (the apartment, SAKE, the one with Sarah and Kevin—plus me as an honorary roommate). That had been such a fun spring and summer, right before everything went wrong. The first summer of Real Life, a hot season pulsed into the year instead of twelve demarcated weeks before the next semester. We were adults, we thought, but still soused on the sense memories of summers past.
And my friendship with Edie had been everything. I remembered a rainy afternoon when we’d holed up in my bedroom, drunk on boxed wine and high on our mutual friend-crushes. We were playing Truth or Truth, killing time with probing queries: detailed sex questions, humiliating childhood stories. It was thrilling and personal, like staring into each other’s eyes.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she asked, setting her glass on my windowsill. I adjusted the pillow behind my back, squeezing it flat and pushing it around.
She realized I was stalling. “I’ll go first,” she said, turning to pour herself more wine. “My mom planned this big dinner for my eighteenth birthday. She was cooking all day—and she hates cooking—and she’d invited some family and close friends. It was all really unlike her; normally she’d just pick up a cupcake that day or whatever and I’d celebrate with my friends.” She took a long sip, then wiped her wine-stained lips. “So that morning she and I got into a huge fight—like, an all-out-screaming, plate-smashing fight. And I yelled ‘Fuck you!’ and stormed out of there. Then I proceeded to email everyone except my mom and tell them the dinner was canceled because I wasn’t feeling well. I stayed over at my friend’s that night, ignoring her calls, and when I came back, my mom didn’t say anything. Then my dad told me that she’d still cooked everything and set it all out and sat there while nobody showed up. She had no idea I’d canceled it.” She closed her eyes. “I mean, she is a bitch, but I still feel bad about that.”
I scooted over on the bed and rested my cheek on her shoulder. She tipped her head onto mine and we sat there for a minute, pop music playing in the background.
“I can beat that,” I offered finally. “It’s about my parents, too. Only I was younger.” And I told her the story they told me not to share,