ours. Eli is talking to me but I can’t hear him above the rage that’s ringing in my ears.
“And say what?” I say.
“Tell him the truth,” she says.
“I have told him the truth,” I say. “That’s the problem.”
“You have to tell him how you feel about him, Emmy,” she says.
“He already knows that,” I say. “And here he is, with Millie. Can you blame him?”
“If you think Travis wants to go out with Millie, you’re out of your mind.”
“He’s here with her, isn’t he?” I say, and now that this possibility of Travis hooking up with Millie is real to me again, I decide nope. George is right, I can’t handle this. No way.
“He’s here with like seven people, so stop being an ass,” Sonia says. “For five minutes.”
Millie and Travis are walking back into the kitchen where the beer is, and they haven’t seen me yet. I guess this enormous soccer player I’m dancing with is blocking me from their view. But I see them as Millie grabs Travis’s arm, and I can’t deal with this. If I was sober, I’d probably just leave and not be a witness to my own tremendous life fuckup.
But I’m not sober, so what do I do? I stomp my way into the kitchen, shoving past the hopping bodies under the Kmart disco ball and Christmas lights in March. Millie has Travis cornered by the back door. She’s leaning in really close—her hand is on his arm and he’s making eye contact with her, listening intently—and fuck. This. Fuck it. Travis sees me, finally, and he looks some mixture of glad and pissed off all at once and I guess I can see how I would inspire that type of reaction. I don’t know what to do now. Should I turn around and forget the whole thing? His eyes are right here on mine and I can’t read his face, but when I see Millie lean in to say something else to him, I can’t turn around. I don’t even care if Millie is going to be pissed, I walk right up to them and tell Travis I need to speak to him. Right now. Millie gives me some look I can’t read and he hesitates, then tells Millie he’ll be right back.
He follows me upstairs where there are a few bedrooms and a bathroom. This is a soccer party so everyone upstairs is smoking weed, but there’s an empty room so I walk right inside and flop down on the bed, sort of maybe forgetting that I’m in this really short dress and it’s just ridden way up my thighs. I pull it down as Travis stands there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, judging me. Asshole.
“Are you drunk?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
“Who’s driving you home?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Somebody.”
“Who?”
“Who knows?” I say. “I only know like twenty people here with cars.”
“Fine,” he says, practically growling at me. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I’ve started planning the summer tour,” I say, sitting up. My head is a little spinny but that doesn’t stop my mouth, oh no. “I think we should probably plan to head out to Seattle. I’m pretty sure Cole can get at least a three-week break from work . . .”
“Are you kidding me?” he says. “This is what you want to talk about?”
“You’re graduating in May,” I continue to drunk-babble, and of course this isn’t what I want to talk about but I can’t handle the other thing I want to talk about, so I’m just moving to safe, or what I think is safe territory. I dig my heels into safe territory here. “We need to make a big push this summer. If we can get some gigs in Seattle, maybe we can make a Sub Pop contact. I think Ron’s cousin . . .”
“Emmy,” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“What?”
He cocks his head to the side like he’s trying to figure me out but ha, good luck with that.
“I got an Eagleton Fellowship,” he says.
“What.” I say it like that, not like a question because I know what a fucking Eagleton Fellowship is—it’s a graduate program at Rutgers in public policy. But, I still don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. I feel like I need to clean my ears or something because no he did not just say he got an Eagleton Fellowship. No he didn’t.
“I got into graduate school,” he explains.
Here’s the part where