by Megyn Ward
We’ll marry when I’m twenty-eight and divorce when I’m thirty-three. Five years of my life for five-hundred million dollars. And then I can get away from my mother and start my life.
My real life.
“You need to find him and fuck him, girl,” Gregg says, looking at me over the tops of his sunglasses. “For real.”
“She doesn’t need to find him,” Jeremy says. “She knows exactly where he is.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Gregg asks, exasperated. “I’m being serious, Henley. You need to take care of your little problem before you, and Jer get married.”
My little problem, meaning my virginity.
I laughed it off at the time but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I know where Conner is now. I know who he is now. I won’t be able to say the same thing, seven years from now.
It was now or possibly never.
So, I called Ryan and planted the seed. Waited for an opportunity to present itself. When one of my professors from Sara Lawrence emailed me about the internship at Boston City Library, mere weeks before my mother’s annual trip to Paris, it seemed like divine intervention.
I applied and Margo, my favorite librarian, called me almost immediately. She’d recognized my name, and the first thing she said to me when I answered my phone was when can you start?
Now, I meandered my way through the neighborhood in the general direction of Boston City library. My internship doesn’t officially start until Monday, but I want to see Margo. Say hi. Get reacquainted.
Thankfully, my landmarks are still here. Tess’s dad’s garage, now Conner’s. Gilroy’s bar. The park where we used to play pickup baseball games, back when I was still allowed to play. My old apartment building. Even if they weren’t, even if I was blind, I’d know where I was.
I’m home.
The building looks shabbier than I remember. The concrete stoop crumbling away underage and use, the brick face of it dingy and in need of a power wash. The lower level has bars on the window I don’t remember. The door has a security buzzer, even though it was propped open with a chunk of cement, presumably from the stoop.
Standing on the sidewalk, I look up, aiming my face at the front of the building, searching for and finding what used to be our living room window. It’s closed now, like whoever lives there now has the good sense to keep it closed that my parents never did.
Conner keeps calling me Daisy. Last night it confused me. I didn’t understand. Thought it was a generic term of endearment he used with women like sweetheart or honey. A way for him to fuck them without getting bogged down with petty details like names.
But then I saw the copy of Gatsby tossed onto the table between us and I understood.
Daisy.
Not a term of endearment at all. Not even a way to disconnect from the women he’s been with. It’s a name that describes exactly was he thinks of women like me.
Vapid. Shallow. Materialist.
“You lose your limo?”
I look down, and there’s Tess standing a few feet away, looking at me like she’s staring at an animal in the zoo, a take-out box balanced on top of a pizza box in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. She must live around here.
“No,” I tell her, reaching into my purse to pull out a pair of over-sized sunglasses. I slip them on and offer her a polite smile. “I know exactly where it is.”
She laughs, but it’s not a friendly sound. “Then can I help you find something?” Her tone has gone weird. Like I’m no longer an animal in a zoo, but one who’s broke loose from her cage. She doesn’t like someone like me sniffing around Conner. Her neighborhood. Because people like me spell trouble.
“Boston City Library?” I say even though I don’t need directions. I’m hoping if I tell her I’m looking for a specific place, it’ll put her at ease.
It doesn’t work. “Hook a right at the corner. It’s five blocks up on the left,” she tells me, her warm hazel eyes narrowed on my face for a second before they bounce up the side of the building to land on the window she found me looking at.
“Thank you,” I tell her, wedging my clutch under my elbow, avoiding eye contact when she looks at me again, even though she can’t read my expression behind the enormous sunglasses I’m wearing. “Enjoy your evening.”
I’m less than a dozen steps away when she says it. “Oh my god.” I hear something hit the ground. The sharp, muffled pop of glass hitting the sidewalk. “Henley?”
My stride falters, all but confirming her suspicions, and she says it again.
“Henley.”
Something else hits the ground, slides across the sidewalk, a moment before I feel her hand close over my elbow, anchoring me instantly.
She stands there, fingers gripped around my elbow, pixie face tilted up to study my profile. I can pull myself loose. Play the haughty socialite. Brush her aside with an I have no idea who that is. I can do it, and she’d believe me. I can play the rich-bitch when I have to.
But I don’t want to. I need her. I need my friend.
Instead, I sigh, turning toward her while I push my sunglasses up on my head. “Hey, Tess.”
She gapes at me, her mouth hanging open like its hinge is broken, taking in the woman standing in front of her. Trying to reconcile the image with the girl she used to know. “What are you doing here?” she says, shaking her head at me. “Why didn’t you say anything earli—” Her eyes go wide, her gaze darting to the left, in the direction I’d just come.
Where I just left Conner.
The hand on my arm tightens, squeezing my elbow hard enough to hurt. Tess is looking at me, her eye round and disbelieving. “Oh, Jesus,” she says pressing her other hand to her forehead. “This is bad. This is really bad.”
“It’s not that big a deal.” Even as I say it, I know I’m wrong. I know I messed up.
“It’s not...” she laughs, but the sound of it is harsh. “You don’t get it. Con—” She stops herself, planting her hands on her hips. Takes a deep breath. Let’s it out slowly. Calm has never been easy for her. Once she gets worked up, she’s almost unstoppable. I remember that about her. “He’s not the guy you remember, Henley.”
I think about him. The Conner I used to know. Sweet. Brilliant. Fearless.
Nothing like the man I just left.
“I know.”
“No...” she wags a finger at me, giving me a little sarcastic laugh. “You think you know but you—” She stops talking again like she’s suddenly afraid of saying too much. Like she doesn’t trust me. Like there are things about Conner she knows and understands that I will never be a part of.
“I didn’t realize you two were so close.” I don’t like the way I sound when I say it. Jealous. Ugly.
“You left us both, Henley,” she yells at me, reading my reaction perfectly. “You were my best friend and you just got into the back of some big, fancy car and that was it. You were gone.”
Her words rip the indignation right out of me. “I’m sorry, Tess…” I say. “I should’ve come home sooner. I should’ve called, I just—” I don’t how to explain to her what it was like, being thrust into that kind of life so quickly. One second, I’m mopping up my father’s puke in a rundown walk-up and the next, I’m sleeping on silk sheets and wondering which fork to use at dinner. “Got lost.”
“So did he,” she says. “Losing you hurt me but it broke him.”
Him. Conner. Hearing her say it does something to me. Makes me desperate. Anxious.
“You think I wanted to leave?” I remember sitting in the back of Spencer’s car, my mother’s fingers digging into my knee, her sharp nails piercing my skin like claws. Don’t look back, she hissed in my ear. Ladies don’t dwell on the past.
“I have no idea what you wanted, Henley,” she says, her mouth pressed into a hard line while she swallows hard against whatever seemed to be choking her. “You left. I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
I see it now.
Like Co
nner, she looks different—but still the same. She’s still as tiny as I remember, her dark hair pulled up into a messy ponytail that’s more afterthought than hairstyle. Her heart-shaped face. Her cute button nose. She has tattoos now —a full sleeve covering her right arm. More peeking out between the waistband of her jeans and the hem of her t-shirt—but despite the ink, she still loos the same… but there’s a heaviness to her that wasn’t there when we were kids. Something happened to her. Something big and I wasn’t here for her like I should’ve been.
“Tess, I—”
“You getting married?” It comes out more like an accusation than a question. Hearing her say it makes me feel guilty. Makes me wonder if Conner told her.
“Well—”
“Stop. Don’t answer that.” She throws herself at me, her arms catching me around my waist, hugging me so hard I feel like I’m caught in a trash compactor. She’s always been a hard hugger. I remember that too.
How much I’ve missed it.
“Are we okay?” I ask when I feel her arms start to loosen. I need her. I didn’t even realize how much until now. As much as I need her, I know she doesn’t belong to me anymore. She belongs to Conner, and if I hurt him, she’ll never forgive me.
“Probably not, but I’ve decided I’m going to be selfish about this for as long as possible,” she says softly. “I stuck my nose in Cap’n’s business, and everything went to shit.”
I hug her back, laughing a little. “I have no idea what that means,” I tell her
“It means I’m glad you’re home.” She leans back just a bit, far enough for me to see her face. “How long?”
“Ten weeks,” I say, and she lets me go, steps back, giving me the once-over.
“It’s not going to take that long to find your dad,” she says, shaking her head. “It won’t even take ten minutes.
Hearing her say that makes me look up at our old apartment window again. I wonder if he still lives there. If he’s passed out next to the toilet. Who’s been rolling him onto his side, so he doesn’t drown in his own vomit. I have to fight the urge to storm my way up the stairs and find out. Instead, I offer her what I hope is a convincing smile.
“Actually, I’m serving an internship at the library.”
“You’re a librarian?” she says like I just told her I was a circus clown.
“Is that so hard to believe?” I say, oddly wounded by her reaction.
“Yes,” she answers, unfazed by my reaction. “I figured your mom would have you married off to some billionaire and planning fund-raisers by now.”
“What can I say?” I give her a shrug, even though she’s right. That’s exactly what I’ll be, a few years from now. A billionaire’s wife. Pampered and kept. Exactly the kind of life my mother has envisioned for me. “I live to disappoint.”
Thirty-one
Conner
I’m gonna deal with this the way I deal with everything else. I’m going to drink myself blind and fuck myself stupid. If that doesn’t work, I’ll pick a fight.
Or five.
Friday night at Gilroy’s, there’s any number of drunk assholes, begging to have the shit knocked out of them. Of course, it only works if I get my bell rung a few times before I clean house, so a bar brawl is more of a last resort than Plan A.
Sunday dinners with my folks always go better when I don’t roll through the door looking like Quasimodo.
I know how that sounds. Dangerous. Destructive, bordering on self-abuse. It’s all of those things, but outside of lobotomizing myself with one of Mrs. McGintey’s crochet hooks, it’s all I’ve got.
Fishing my watch out of the toolbox, I strap it on and set the alarm for seven. Tess got it for me a while ago, after coming in on a Monday and realizing I’d spent my entire weekend under the hood of a car. Not really a big deal until you factor in that I didn’t eat, sleep or even use the bathroom for nearly 48 hours.
After that, she slapped this piece of shit on my arm and told me it was either that or she tells my mom about my episodes—like I’ve got dementia or some shit.
It was the only real fight we’ve ever had.
And I lost.
I hate wearing it. Makes me feel defective. Like I can’t manage my behavior without help.
Which, if I’m looking at myself objectively, is true.
I can’t.
Not without tools.
I need this piece of shit watch to squawk at me in a few hours because that’s the only way I’ll be able to pull myself out of my own head and function like a real, live human. So, I can remember to move on to the next task and the next and next until, so I don’t end up starved and dehydrated in front of my computer or under the hood of a car.
At night it’s worse. I don’t sleep. Every time I start to drift, my goddamned brain starts banging around my skull like a fucking marching band. Last night was the first real sleep I’ve gotten in months—maybe even years—and by real, I mean not a Jameson induced coma.
I lift the hood on the Windstar and get to work. My brain starts to slow. Within minutes I feel solid again. Grounded. Some people meditate. Run.
I re-build engines.
I was seventeen and had been hanging out at the garage every day for a few months when Tess’s dad finally emerged from the under the hood of a car and said, you know how to rebuild a carburetor? When I shook my head no he said, Wanna learn?
I didn’t but I said yes anyway because I was afraid if I didn’t at least try to make myself useful, Tess’s dad would stop letting me hang out with her, and I needed her. I needed Tess. After Henley left, I didn’t fall apart. I disintegrated. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I needed Tess.
I still do.
So, I said yes, and Mr. Castinetti put a wrench in my hand. Like everything else, it came easy. It clicked. Within a day or two, I was tearing engines apart and putting them back together in a few hours. Soon, I was spending all my free time here, even when Tess was gone.
Another tool in my arsenal of self-management.
Booze.
Blood.
Women.
The goddamned watch strapped to my wrist.
The car I’m working on.
Tools I use to keep myself together. To keep myself numb. Solid. Some of them more destructive than others.
Drowning myself in whiskey and pussy is plan A. So much of both that Cap’n will have to form a goddamned search party to find my ass.
Even as I think it, my dick—usually a willing, if not enthusiastic, participant actually tries to crawl in on itself. Just the thought of fucking anyone but Henley makes me nauseous. Makes me look back on the way I’ve been functioning for the past eight years. What I see makes me want to put my head through a goddamned wall.
I’ve known she’s back in Boston for a less than six hours and I couldn’t get hard for someone else if I had a dump truck full of Viagra and an army of lingerie models engaged in a bi-curious pillow fight right here in front of me.
Jesus Christ.
I’m fucked.
Completely and totally fucked.
Thirty-two
Henley
2009
May
“So?”
I look at Tess, walking beside me before aiming my gaze down the sidewalk. “So, what?” I say, even though I know what she’s asking.
“Don’t you dare, so what me, Henley O’Connell,” she hisses at me, stopping in her tracks to jab her finger into my ribs. “I saw what I saw. How long have you and Conner Gilroy been—”
“Stop.” I slap my hand over her mouth before she can say it. I don’t know why. There’s no one around to hear her. The stretch of sidewalk between her dad’s garage and Conner’s house is deserted. Maybe because if she says it out loud—that Conner is my boyfriend—I’ll realize how stupid it sounds. That there’s no way it can actually be real. No way he could actually want to be with me.
She slaps my hands away. “Then spill,” she says, lifting her finger from my ribs to
stick it in my face. “Tell me what’s going on—and how long it’s been going on for. Now.”
“Can we go back to your house first?” I look around like there are people lurking in the bushes. “Please—I’ll tell you everything, just not here, okay?”
She glares at me for a moment before shrugging. “Fine,” she says, continuing down the sidewalk, without looking to see if I’m going to follow her.
Walking up to her father’s garage, I can see her dad in his coveralls, using the hydraulic lift to hoist a car into the air, cigarette between his fingers. When he sees us, he hits stop on the control to cut the noise.
“I need that tune-up on the Ford done by tonight,” he says, setting the control down to reach into his back pocket to pull out an old blue bandana. “Owner’s coming first thing tomorrow to pick it up.”
“I’ll get it done, Dad,” Tess says, not stopping on her way across the stained concrete, pulling me along after her.
Her dad opens his mouth but then closes it without a sound, pushing it flat against whatever he was going to say. “Okay,” he says instead, nodding his head while rubbing his hands clean with his bandana. “Hey, Henley.”
“Hi, Mr. C,” I manage to get out while Tess is dragging me up the stairs to their apartment. As soon as she slams the door shut, I hear the hydraulic lift start back up. Crossing the small living room, I stand in front of the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the garage. I can see Tess’s dad, bandana stuffed back into his pocket. Cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Eyes squinted against the smoke.
“You should be nicer to your dad,” I say without turning around. It’s just the two of them. Tess’s mom died when she was little.
“He’s a pain in my ass,” she grumbles behind me. I can hear her jerk the fridge open. Rummage around inside. “I can’t even take a few hours to be a real girl without him bitching at me about something.”
“He’s sober,” I say, watching the way Tess’s dad stubs out his cigarette on his boot heel. He tosses it into an old coffee can on his workbench before getting back to work. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do anything but work. “He works hard, and he loves you.”
