By the time I see their lights coming up the drive, I’ve nearly finished the bottle of wine. When I jump up I realize that I’m actually quite tipsy. (Déclassé, as Maman always said, while she primly poured herself an exact half glass at dinner.) I am quite skilled at deception, though. Four years of documenting my every move online has trained me in the art of looking sober (insert: happy/thoughtful/excited/contemplative) when in fact I am very much not.
So I dash to the door, take a breath to chase away the dizziness, slap my face once—hard—and then step out onto the front portico to greet them, my cheek still burning.
There’s a winter chill in the air, a layer of damp that clings to the stones of the house. I’ve grown so thin that even my size 0s feel loose on me—cooking for one is just too depressing, and besides the grocery store is so far away—so it feels like the cold is penetrating straight into my bones. I stand shivering in the shadows as their car picks its way carefully along the slick drive. It’s a vintage BMW with Oregon plates that are splattered with mud from the highway. The car slows down a hundred yards out. It’s hard to make out their faces through the mist and the evening shadows, but I just know that they’re craning their heads to take it all in. Of course they are. The pines, the lake, the mansion—it is so much, so much that it sometimes hurts me to even look out the window. (Those are the days that I just climb back in bed and take three Ambien and pull the covers over my head. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Then their car pulls forward and parks, and I can suddenly see them clearly through the windshield. They’re taking their time, laughing about something, which stirs up a nest of longing inside me. Even after a whole day of driving together, they’re in absolutely no rush to escape each other’s company. Then she leans across the car and kisses him, long and hard. It goes on and on. They must not see that I’m there, and suddenly it’s rather awkward that I’m spying on them like some sort of Hitchcock voyeur.
I step backward into the shadows of the overhang, thinking I’ll slip back inside and just wait for them to ring the bell. But then the passenger door flies open, and she steps out.
Ashley.
It’s like the chilly forest has come to life around her. The silence to which I’ve grown so accustomed is shattered with a blast of music from the car stereo. (The climactic aria of some opera that Maman surely would have recognized.) Even from twenty feet away, I can almost feel the close, car-heated air still clinging to Ashley’s skin, as if she’s brought her own personal ecosystem with her. She stands with her back to me and flexes, a smooth little yoga stretch with palms to the sky, then turns and catches me standing there watching her. If this bothers her, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she smiles at me with mild pleasure, as if she’s used to being observed. (And of course she is: She’s a yoga instructor! Her body is her raison d’être. Something we share, I suppose.)
There is something feline about her, something poised and watching: Her dark eyes scan the space around her, as if measuring the distance necessary to leap. Her hair is a glossy pelt, pulled back into a long tail, and her skin is a smooth olive that absorbs the light. (Perhaps Latina? Or Jewish?) She is unsettlingly pretty. Most of the beautiful women I’ve known over the years would flaunt this—the hair, the face, the body would all be enhanced, amplified, and exposed—but Ashley wears her looks as casually as the faded jeans that grip her curves. It’s as if she couldn’t care less about being stared at.
So of course I’m staring. (“Stop staring,” I hear Maman in my head. “You look like a trout when you gawk like that.”)
“You must be Vanessa!” She’s halfway toward me, extending her hands to grip mine. And then suddenly I am being pulled into a hug, and my face is buried in her hair, which smells of