Frenemies

by Megan Crane

  And if Helen could do it, so, by God, could I. I was going to get up, go out there, march into that party, and have a good time. Even if killed me.

  I surged to my feet and pulled my good winter coat from the closet. I inhaled the sweet tang of my perfume and the crisp scent of my shampoo that hung around me like a cloud. I felt my hips sway, accommodating the high, dangerous heels. I felt good.

  I locked my apartment behind me and set off down the hall toward the best party I would ever attend, because I was going on my terms and my—

  “What,” came the back-curling, querulous voice from behind me, “is that racket?”

  Irwin.

  Talk about bringing my power walk to a screeching halt.

  I pivoted around and glared at him. He stood in his doorway, scowling at me, his tatty bathrobe around him like a nasty blue cloak.

  “I’m walking down the hall.” I stated the obvious.

  “Are those your shoes? Making that ungodly noise?”

  Sure enough, out came the notebook and the pen, and he began scribbling.

  I felt my chin jut out, which was never a good sign.

  I opened my mouth to get good and petty, and then stopped.

  This, right in front of me, was a golden opportunity to act like a grown-up for a change. Storming about, assigning nicknames, leaping through windows to get away from the guy—none of that was particularly mature behavior, and more to the point, it didn’t work.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. This was so surprising for Irwin that he stopped writing and looked up at me, his mouth a perfect, astonished “o.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry my shoes are so noisy,” I said calmly. Pleasantly. “But I’m not sure how I can go about walking down the hall without making some noise.”

  “Er, no,” Irwin said in a completely different voice. The hand holding the notebook dropped down to his side as he watched me—a bit as if he expected me to turn into Sydney Bristow, haul off, and kick him back through his door.

  “There’s too much hardwood,” I continued. “They should really put down some kind of carpeting, but I don’t think the owner cares. And why should he? He lives out in Western Mass.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” Irwin said. He peered at the floor. “It gets so slippery with all the slush and snow, too.”

  “It takes them forever to get around to mopping,” I commiserated with a sigh. “And I know my dog doesn’t help.”

  Irwin tutted at me. “It’s the owner who needs to be more on top of things.”

  I gave him a big, conspiratorial sort of smile.

  I didn’t think he would go for it, but he did—his lips curved up. I thought it looked a little rusty. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover it was the first he’d smiled in months. Maybe years.

  “I think I might write the owner a letter tonight,” Irwin said, puffing out his chest.

  “I think you should,” I told him, and it was more smiles all around.

  And when I sauntered out into the frozen night in my noisy stilettos, I didn’t just feel like a goddess.

  I felt like a grown-up.

  chapter eighteen

  A grown-up feeling I got over pretty quickly once I arrived at the party, which was held in an apartment in Cambridge packed full of holiday merriment and a whole lot of people to match. I could do just about anything with my friends at my back—saunter around in a royal blueberry gown, for example. But I wasn’t much for sauntering when I was alone.

  It didn’t matter that Harry Connick Jr. was crooning in the background, or that a group of people I knew from college were in all likelihood together in a pack somewhere—probably the kitchen. High school had felt that way too—I’d known that my whole junior high class must be somewhere, but I’d still felt exposed the moment I walked through the door.

  Exposed as well as vulnerable, disliked, and ignored, all of which were my own thing and only in my own head, I knew. That didn’t change the fact that I felt that way. I eased my way along the edges of the living room, helped myself to a drink, and tried to blend in with the decorations on the Christmas tree until the bad teenage feelings went away.

  I had great plans to surgically excise the quaking, complaining teenager within someday. If I could just get rid of her and her thousands upon thousands of issues—Do I look fat? Am I ugly? Will anyone ever love me? Will I always be alone? Is she fatter than me? How ugly am I? Are they making fun of me?—I was convinced I would immediately become the sort of casual and laid back adult person who was forever smiling and was genuinely unconcerned with the size and/or shape of her body.

  I wasn’t holding my breath.

  However, I was not dressed to hide my head in shame. I had a rule about stilettos, and it was this: I didn’t wear them unless I planned to kick ass in them. Stilettos were for striding and sauntering, never skulking.

  I straightened up from the wall and tossed my head back. I reminded myself that I had a mission. I made my way through the crowd, smiling at the faces I recognized—the faces I would have to think about cultivating further, if I was truly as friendless as I felt—and kept my eyes peeled. It took about six seconds of reconnaissance work to locate Nate and Helen in the kitchen. I settled myself near the bar set up in the living room and then I waited. About ten minutes later, Nate wandered out on a refill run, as I’d known he would.

  His eyes met mine and he smiled.

  “Gus!” he said, as if he was delighted to see me. I felt relief trickle across my skin, and smiled back.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I told him. “I really wanted to talk to you.”

  “Things got a little out of control,” he replied. He shook his head. “You know how she can be.” The look in his eyes invited me in, to join in the conspiratorial laugh at Helen’s expense. I don’t know why I didn’t.

  “That night,” I said instead, getting right to the point. “All those messages. What did you want to talk about?”

  “I still want to talk about it,” he said, still smiling. “But I’m not sure this is the place, you know? I don’t want to be interrupted. It’s too bad you weren’t around that night.”

  My stomach twisted in remorse. He had been so close. He had been right outside while I was playing out revenge fantasies with his roommate. I couldn’t believe that was it for us. I had to believe there’d be a second chance. I had to—or all of it meant nothing. We were just something he could end whenever he felt like it.

  “You can give me the CliffsNotes version,” I suggested. “So I know what we’re dealing with.”

  Nate opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again when Henry came up beside him, smirk at the ready.

  “A librarian encouraging the use of CliffsNotes?” Henry mocked me. “I’m shocked to the core.”

  I had to take a moment to let the impact of seeing him ease a little bit. I was always so surprised by how blue his eyes were, and how easily he held himself. It was easy to get caught up in the way he looked at me, particularly when it occurred to me that he wasn’t off-limits any longer. It made my knees feel a little wobbly. I had to shake it off, and focus.

  “Another beer?” Nate asked Henry, for all the world as if Henry hadn’t just interrupted an important conversation. I was still reeling from realizations I wasn’t ready to investigate too closely, so I decided to concentrate on one thing at a time. First I had to figure out what had happened with Nate. It had consumed me for too long to give up now. Only when I did that could I think about what a Henry who wasn’t off-limits might mean.

  “Nate and I were sort of talking,” I told him. I didn’t like the look that came across his face then, nor the tightness around his mouth.

  “A trip down memory lane?” he asked. I wasn’t at all fooled by the light tone. “I can think of a few fantastic moments to add to that.”

  “Except no one asked you for your contribution,” I snapped at him.

  “I have a great memory,” h
e snapped right back. “I bet I can remember every single time you—”

  “Told you to shut up?” I finished for him. “Here’s another one to add to the collection. Shut up, Henry!”

  My voice had gone up at the end there, which I noticed only because I could hear it echoing in my ears. Henry and I glared at each other. He looked like he wanted to personally kill me.

  “What’s up with the two of you?” Nate asked, reminding me that he was there. I jerked my attention away from Henry to see Nate studying us, his dark eyes flicking from Henry’s face to mine and then back again.

  “Nothing,” I said, trying desperately to sound blasé. “Henry’s just being his usual obnoxious self.”

  “While Gus has taken it to a whole new level,” Henry replied.

  “And I’m about to take it somewhere else,” Helen snapped from Nate’s elbow, where it seemed to me she appeared in a flash of smoke, but that could have been the hysteria flooding my brain.

  “Baby!” Nate said in the same tone of delight he’d used before. On me.

  The exact same tone.

  “Don’t you ‘baby’ me!” Helen snapped. “What the hell are you doing?”

  With her ire focused on Nate, I had a moment to breathe and take in the scene. The bizarre love triangle that was really more of a love rectangle. Henry looked furious—and it was all directed at me. Helen was ripping Nate a new one. I thought I should feel something about one or both of these things, but all I could think about was the fact that Nate had used the exact same tone with me.

  Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what his plan was? Georgia had asked. Was he just going to keep seeing both of you?

  The answer hit me then, like an unexpected wave of icy cold water across the bow. I actually took a step back.

  Right in front of me, Nate was appeasing Helen. I recognized the tilt of his head, the encouraging smile, the twinkle in his dark eyes that told her she was the only one who got him. I recognized it because I’d seen them before. Directed at me instead of her. I recognized that easy, conspiratorial, intimate voice, too. I’d heard it on my voice mail.

  This was what Nate did.

  I was just a puppet on a string.

  And the worst part was that everyone knew it—had always known it—except me. Henry was right there, watching it. Watching me.

  It was why he’d let me in the house that night.

  The truth of it made my stomach lurch again, this time dangerously. I had to get away. I looked around wildly, and—

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” I heard Helen snap, and then I felt her fingers on my arm.

  “Let go of me,” I said when I half-turned to glare at the offending hand. She must have leapt across Nate to grab me, but I couldn’t bear to look in his direction just then. Much less in Henry’s. Helen let go, but she stepped closer to me.

  “We need to talk,” she said, those anime eyes dark.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, and broke for the front door.

  I made it through the crowd, threw the door open, and was halfway down the stairs inside the apartment building before I realized I would need my coat. Because it was December and bitterly cold. I turned back—and practically tripped over Helen.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I yelped. “Are you following me?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, breathing hard from what I assumed was the mad dash she’d made across the apartment in my wake, and then it was as if something swept over her body. She seemed to shiver a little bit, and it took me a moment to understand that she was furious.

  She made that fact even more clear by tilting back her head and letting out a frustrated scream.

  I practically leapt out of my skin.

  Seriously—she screamed. And this was no fishwife screech, either. It was a full-on banshee howl.

  I was in shock. Her voice echoed off the walls, and I expected the neighbors to leap out from behind their doors, possibly brandishing weapons.

  Unfortunately, no one intervened.

  “I can’t take this anymore!” she cried, her hands rising up in the international sign for total exasperation. “I have had it with you!”

  Needless to say, I was taken aback. She was sick of me?!

  “It’s always Gus this and Gus that,” Helen fumed. “Gus is so cool! Gus is so smart! Gus is so funny!” She glared at me. “Henry thinks you’re hilarious. Nate wants to know why I can’t have a sense of humor about my clothes, like you did with that disgusting bridesmaid’s dress.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I snapped at her.

  She shrugged, her mouth pulled low in the corners. “I’ve tried everything I know how to do, and you’re still mean to me.”

  I had to fight to remain calm.

  “Helen, I hate to point this out, but when you started dating Nate? He was already dating me. Forgive me if I wasn’t inspired to hold hands and declare us best friends forever.” Not that I wanted to think too hard about Nate just then.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be the outsider,” Helen retorted. “You have Amy Lee and Georgia, and the three of you have gone out of your way to leave me out since college. You think I don’t see the looks? The rolled eyes? I know what you think of me.”

  “And again,” I said, still fighting my temper. “You claimed to be a friend of mine and then you stole my boyfriend. You stalked me. You completely lied about the conversation we had so you could play more head games. What do you expect me to think of you?”

  “That’s just your excuse.” She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me. “You’ve been making fun of me since the day we met.”

  “Hardly,” I retorted. “You were the one who thought she was cooler than everyone else.”

  “You thought I was cooler than everyone else,” Helen retorted. “And God help me if I didn’t live up to it!”

  “If your stealing Nate was designed to make me think less of you,” I threw back at her, “congratulations. I don’t think you’re cool anymore.”

  “You know what?” Helen let her hands drop to her sides. “I don’t know why I bother. I can never win. I’m the one who always calls you and begs for the scraps of your attention, and meanwhile I’m lucky if you bother to call me of your own volition more than once a year.”

  My mouth fell open, because she was right. That’s not how I would have described our relationship, of course, but still.

  “You never gave me any indication that you’d be interested in my calling you more often,” I said, feeling defensive.

  “Of course not,” Helen scoffed. “Because I’m not a person. I don’t have feelings like anyone else. Whatever. Girls like you always play these stupid games.”

  “Girls like me?” I didn’t like that at all. There weren’t any girls like me. There was that girl, sure, but no girls like me.

  “Oh yes,” Helen said. Her eyes darkened. “In boarding school it was Jessie Unger. Everyone loved Jessie and she hated my guts. It didn’t matter what I did, she still hated me. She and her friends called me names and made up rumors about me.” Her gaze sharpened on me. “You think I don’t know what Georgia and Amy Lee say about me?”

  “Did you steal Jessie Unger’s boyfriend too?” I asked pointedly.

  Helen made a noise in the back of her throat.

  “Boys are easier to get along with than girls,” she said. “They don’t judge you, or whisper about you behind your back while they’re nice to your face. They either like you or they don’t.”

  “You flirt with them, Helen! That’s why they like you!”

  “Like you don’t flirt.” She shook her head. “Oh, please. You try to entice men with your I’m so smart and funny thing, but that’s not flirting? What is?”

  Any leash I had on my temper snapped with that one. And unfortunately for Helen, I had a lot of ammunition.

  “Hmm, let me think—” I pretended to think for all of six seconds. “How about wailing about possibly getting stung by a bee
in December so other people’s boyfriends fawn all over you and carry you back to the car?”

  “I can’t help it if I’m allergic,” Helen snapped.

  “Or how about the way you have to lean so close to every male who crosses your path? You have to lean in, and then gaze at him, and then look away while moistening your lip.” I acted it out for her, with a complimentary flip of the hair, as I had done many times before for the amusement of my friends. “What the hell is that?”

  “I can’t believe you study me!” Helen cried. “And like you’re one to talk. ‘Oh Henry! You’re so evil!’?” She mimicked me in a high, grating falsetto. “?‘Every girl in Boston fawns all over you, but I’ll make myself different by hating you! Evil, nasty Henry! Notice me, Henry!’?”

  I actually saw a haze of red before my eyes, and had to blink to clear it. I also took a few deep breaths.

  “Fine,” I told her. I didn’t want to touch anything she’d said with a ten-foot pole. Or, for that matter, a large steel girder. “Maybe we’re both in glass houses here.”

  Helen seemed to deflate a little herself. She looked away, and I watched her catch herself just as she went to do that lip thing.

  “See?” I said, pointing. “You lick your lip! You do it on purpose!”

  “Um, hi, I’m not flirting with you, Gus. ”

  “You flirt with everyone, Helen. You’ve been doing it since you were eighteen.”

  “Anyway, it’s automatic,” she said, but she didn’t do it again.

  We stood there for a moment, and the wretched absurdity of the situation rose up and threatened to choke me. Here Helen and I were, standing on a staircase, fighting over a guy I might have just realized wasn’t worth it. If I didn’t escape this situation that I’d helped make, I might be the first person in the history of the world to actually implode. I felt it coming, boiling up inside me like the stomach flu.

  And with it, the unwelcome thought that none of this had ever been about Nate. Not really.

  “Okay,” I said briskly. “This has been unpleasant and I guess I’m going to go—”