second one to actually move away, after Sarah, relocating to Nashville late that year. The gun had been his, a vintage thing he kept in the living room (typically) unloaded, and the guilt surrounding it must have gotten the better of him.
Now he was a grown-up, too. I filed through his most recent photos, annoyed that there weren’t any of his husband. Kevin. Who’d have thought?
Edie was the quiet star of every photo she appeared in, bony and freckled and so sure of her beauty. I stared at a picture of the two of us until tears gathered in my eyes; I’d both hated and adored her, and for months after she died, I’d felt in my chest a black hole of grief, a sudden gaping absence. She smirked at me from the screen: She had a little gap between her front teeth and long red curls that spilled over her back and shoulders. Edie was the ringleader, the princess whose every wish came true, not because it was also our command, exactly, but because she stated her wants and the very universe seemed to bow to them. When she giggled, when you were in her smile with her, it was magic. And when you weren’t…
Well.
The problem, I realized, was that the date on the photos showed when they were posted, not when they were taken. I browsed around in the right era, the one after Edie’s death, but couldn’t find any of that night, anything that could prove my attendance. Which made sense—what a strange, gauche move it would have been, in the midst of our mourning, to toss up a photo of August 21’s debauchery. I couldn’t remember the band’s name or think of how to find other pictures from the show. Frustrated, I kept scrolling, hoping they’d pop up in another image, tagged.
Our little clique was outside in so many photos, drinking out of massive Styrofoam cups in McCarren Park or smoking on fire escapes, stoops, roofs. I remembered that summer, the last one with Edie, how all the bands we saw blurred into a cacophony of synth and Sarah wore that crazy Day-Glo hat everywhere and I was on a vodka gimlet kick. Not pictured: the violent bouts of crying alone, the change in cabin pressure if Edie was unhappy.
I clicked on a photo of the five of us, goofing around in a sculpture park on a weekend trip to Philly. Alex had his arm around Edie, smiling calmly. Edie was looking at something outside of the frame, squinting to see. Sarah and I were posing dramatically, arms up toward the heavens, and Kevin had climbed onto the vaguely humanoid sculpture behind us and wrapped his arms around an appendage.
It won’t last, I told them as tears again coated my eyes. Then, because it was late and my anger had simmered into a tired ache, I snapped my laptop closed and went to sleep.
* * *
The next morning, I forgot my headphones for the subway ride to work and listened instead to the din of tired people commuting. I heard a sniffle and looked down at a young woman seated in front of me, tears pouring freely down her cheeks. Poor thing. I dug in my bag, then handed her a tissue. She shot me a grateful look and pushed it against both eyes at once.
Wedged against a well-dressed man holding a Kindle millimeters from a woman’s cheek, I debated. I should throw myself into work. Then an about-face: Fuck work, all I want to do is think about Edie. I was still undecided as I spun through the revolving doors into my building’s lobby, a minimalist entry with wavy metal and burbling fountains, all silver and glass and Impressive Business Is Done Here. “I’m really lucky to still have a job in magazines,” I’d told Sarah enthusiastically, fifteen hours before hurrying in to fact-check an inane six-page feature on CBD-infused cocktails.
I bumped into Damien, the magazine’s video editor and my closest (no, only) work friend, as I headed toward my office. He launched into an elaborate tale of how he’d spent his evening with the police because an idiot UPS worker had left his package outside his brownstone, where it had promptly been stolen, and now he needed a police report to have his insurance cover it, but the cops were acting like he expected them to find the package, and the worst part was that it was a beautiful coffee-table book about