“You left me.”
“It was stupid and selfish and messed up. I get it. I let you down in a way I can never be forgiven for. I failed you. Totally and completely. And I hate myself for that. And I have
to live with that.”
“Good. I hope it keeps you up at night,” Blue said. She felt
hijacked by hate, everything ugly around her, in her. And yet she kept amplifying it, justifying her hatred in her mind in
the hopes that it might finally find release. Because here she was, thirty years old and incapable of the kind of soft, vulnerable love that didn’t nip in fear, incapable of being loved in her own soft places, of being in a relationship with a man, of loving herself. And as far as she was concerned, it was Renee’s fault just as much as that scumbag’s who ground her into the
dirt. If Renee hadn’t left her, Blue wouldn’t be so broken. If she’d just said she was sorry afterward, allowed Blue to confide in her the horror, Blue wouldn’t have felt so abandoned, her ugliness confirmed.
“It’s always the same with you, Renee, even now as I con-
fess something I’ve been holding inside for twelve years—you
have to make this about you. Even now you’re only thinking
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about yourself.” Blue didn’t even know if this was true but she didn’t care, didn’t give an ounce of concern about anything
but unburdening herself.
Renee’s tears stopped instantly as if she’d been slapped to
her senses. Her voice took on a wobbly sort of anger, daring
herself to allow it.
“Really? I only think of myself? Ever? What about every-
thing I ever did for you before that moment? Why can’t you
remember anything but that?”
“Because for me there is no other moment! ” Blue screamed.
The air seemed to ripple with the force of it. They both stood there in the wake of it, in the shock of all that rage. Then
Blue slumped with the exertion. She had hoped to feel bet-
ter, finally free of it all. Instead she was just empty and dried out. Alone. Ashamed. She turned away from Renee’s gaze.
Maya stepped between them. “Okay, listen, you two,” she
said. She addressed Renee first. “I get why you ran. It was an impossible predicament. But it was weak and uncool that you
never talked to Blue about it.”
“Thanks, I’m aware,” Renee said.
Maya turned to Blue. “And it’s weak that you have defined
a person—your best friend—by one moment, because it’s eas-
ier to hate than to accept someone’s different ways of coping and to be powerless to change them. We all fail each other.
We fail ourselves.”
“Great, so you all agree that I’m weak,” Renee said. “Good
to know.”
“At least you’re just weak. I’m weak and ugly,” Blue said.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Maya said, throwing her hands up.
“Wait,” Renee said to Blue. “You know it’s not true—what
he said. You know you’re not ugly, right?”
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Blue looked at her, then past her, past the streetlights, the restaurant lights, the summer moon. She hated that she believed
it. She knew it meant that that scumbag had won. But no mat-
ter what she told herself, no matter how much she didn’t care what some psychopathic dirtbag thought of her, she couldn’t
escape the greasy psychic film he’d left on her, the way it made her feel turned inside, like rotten fruit. The way it leaked out and drove people away. “Sometimes I wish he had killed me.”
“Blue!”
“I don’t even know why he didn’t.”
“Maybe he heard the sirens,” Hannah said.
Blue looked up, surprised. She’d actually never considered
that before. But that kind of made sense. The sirens are what stopped him from…well…everything. The sirens that were
there because Renee had run to a neighbor’s and they’d called 911. She felt something shift, a piece of missing information altering the narrative. It changed things. Not a lot. But a little. Still. “If it wasn’t true, what he said, I wouldn’t be alone.”
She sat down on the curb, the weight of that thought too
heavy to bear. “It isn’t fair,” she said to Renee. “You have it all and I’m still back there. Alone and scared. I lost my best friend. I lost everything. And now, on top of that, I ruined
my one chance with Jack.”
It was too much. Too much.
Renee sat down beside her. “Listen to me. Look at me. I need
you to hear this. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry I hurt you. It’s the last thing I ever wanted to do. I have missed you every single day for the last twelve years. And hey, if it makes you feel any better, my life’s actually not that great either. If you want to know the truth, I didn’t get pregnant on purpose. And as for my ‘perfect East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 289
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relationship,’ I think Darrin is cheating on me.” She swallowed.
“I haven’t been able to admit that out loud until now.”
“Wait, what?” Maya said.
Renee laughed, an almost hysterical yelp. “Yep. With the
neighbor! I found texts. And my first husband cheated on me
too. Two days after our wedding. And I still stayed. He was the one who left me. And you know what? Deep down I think I
deserve it. Or at the very least expect it. Because…who could love me? I mean, I don’t even know who ‘me’ is. Like, what
are they even loving in the first place? And whatever, so what.
I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m just saying…”
Blue stared at her. They all did.
“I didn’t know that,” Blue said. “Obviously.”
“That bastard,” Maya added. She sat down beside them and
sighed. “Since we’re playing whose life is worse, I’m losing my house because I sort of forgot to pay the property taxes and I can’t get a loan because I’ve blown my credit so bad, and on
top of that, I don’t feel like I have you guys either.”
“Wait. What?” Blue said.
Maya squeezed her eyes shut against whatever Blue was
going to say next.
“I’m going to kill you,” Blue said.
“Please do,” Maya said. “And just to be clear, I know you’re
not going to give me a loan, so don’t worry, I’m not asking.”
They all turned to Hannah.
“I feel pretty good,” she said.
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A damp mist was settling over the night, wisps of fog slipping off the bay like souls. Cars pulled in and out of the lot, passing treacherously close to them.
“Let’s go home,” Hannah said. “We can talk about it all
tomorrow.”
Blue flicked her lighter on and off. “I don’t feel so hot,” she said. “I might’ve had one too many.”
“I know that feeling,” Maya said. “Only with Cheetos.”
Hannah watched Blue take a last hopeful glance at the
restaurant as if Jack might return, saw a dark, sober anguish flash across her face. Poor Blue, she thought. Regret is such a tireless wound.
“You okay?” Hannah said. “Maybe tomorrow you could
send him a text. I bet he’d understand if you apologized.”
“Maybe,” Blue s
aid, though Hannah could tell she didn’t
mean it.
They climbed into the car and Maya pulled out of the lot.
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The fog was so thick now, rising smoky from the street like
the exhale of a winter breath. They pulled over twice to let
Blue puke and eventually rolled up to the house and filed out.
Blue went straight upstairs and was passed out within minutes.
Hannah put an empty bucket on the floor beside Blue’s bed,
a glass of water on her nightstand. As the others got ready for sleep, she lingered in the darkness of Blue’s room.
She wanted to say something about fear and regret. About
forgiving yourself for making mistakes born of trauma. About
how the more broken you’d been, the more things you were
likely to break, like a computer rewired to self-destruction.
She wanted to tell Blue it only made it worse to turn on yourself about it, to be without self-compassion. But what were
words? She knew they would never reach the place where it
mattered. She pulled the blanket over the now snoring Blue.
“You went,” she whispered. “Remember that. At least you
went to see him. And that was very brave.” She nodded to
herself. Knew that even if Blue could hear her, it wouldn’t
comfort her, that she wouldn’t be able to see this night as anything but a catastrophe. It was always easier to see small successes when they belonged to someone else.
Hannah moved back into the room she shared with Maya,
climbed under the covers and stared into the swell of darkness.
She wondered what it would be like to go on a date again,
if it was as daunting as it seemed. Not that she’d ever go on one, she just wondered.
In the morning she heard Blue tiptoe in and then bang her
knee on the edge of the bed. “Ow!” Blue hissed.
Hannah sat up.
“Sorry!” Blue said. “I was just seeing if you were awake.”
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Her shoulders were drooped, her expression like a basset
hound. “I’m so humiliated.”
Maya stirred, sat up yawning. “What time is it?” She looked
between Hannah and Blue.
“I’m having flashbacks of what an asshole I was to Jack,”
Blue groaned.
“Hey now,” Maya said. “Some girls play hard to get. You
were playing hard to like. It’s just a twist.”
Hannah and Blue stared at her.
“I’m just saying maybe he likes the challenge,” Maya said.
“Sheesh.”
“I think I’m going to throw up again,” Blue said suddenly,
sprinting out of the room.
A moment later there was banging on the bathroom door.
“Renee,” Blue said. “Open up, I’m gonna hurl.” A pause. Shit,
“Are you puking in there?”
Hannah and Maya exchanged a look. They heard the thun-
der of feet down the stairs, the front door flinging open, Blue running out. The guttural bleat of retching coming from both
inside the house and outside it.
“Is Blue…in the driveway?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know, maybe the front lawn?” Maya said.
They listened more closely.
“Driveway,” Maya said. “You can hear it hitting the peb-
bles.”
Hannah gagged.
From the bathroom, a loud retch from Renee.
Maya turned to Hannah. “This reminds me of that time
we ate that bad chicken and—”
“We don’t need to talk about that.”
Renee emerged from the bathroom and appeared in the
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doorway looking pale. “Pregnancy,” she said. “All of the hang-over, none of the booze.”
Hannah patted the bed and Renee sat.
“So…” Maya said.
“So…” Renee said.
“You really are pregnant,” Hannah said.
“It would seem so,” Renee said with a sigh. Her eyes were
glassy from vomiting or sadness or both.
“And that asshole is cheating on you,” Maya said. “I could’ve told you all Darrins are dirtbags.”
“You said they’re all good in bed,” Hannah pointed out.
“From all the cheating,” Maya said as if it was obvious.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Renee shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I wanted you
guys to think I was…who I wished I was. Surprise! I’m a fail-
ure at everything.”
“Him being a cheat has nothing to do with you,” Han-
nah said.
“Part of me knows that,” Renee said. “The other part of
me—the part of me that wants to fix it and stay with him, I
guess—is unconvinced. I know that should be a no-brainer
but…nothing ever feels that simple when you love someone.
Pathetic, huh?”
“Very,” Maya said.
“Says the girl who’s losing her house,” Hannah pointed out.
“I like to think of it as giving the house to a bank in need,’”
Maya said.
“Hey, what happened to Blue?” Hannah said.
They listened. Silence.
“Blue!” Maya called.
Still nothing.
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They got up, went to her last known location in the drive-
way. The elderly couple across the way saw them searching
and pointed politely to a body in the grass.
The girls approached Blue, who was lying on her back, one
arm strung over her eyes. “Who’s up for breakfast?” she said, without moving.
“Not you,” Hannah said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re light green.”
“But she was forest green a half hour ago,” Maya pointed
out. “Also, I have bad news.”
Blue squinted up at her.
“We have tickets for the whale watch in an hour.”
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Maya insisted they make a quick stop at the farmers market for breakfast just as they’d done twelve years before. There they browsed the kaleidoscope of shiny fruits picked from nearby
fields, sampled the thick loaves of butter-brushed bread and
gourmet jellies in homemade jars, ogled the chocolate scones
and crumble-crust pies, everything fresh and sweet, the tastes of summer. They made their selections, and Maya coerced
Blue into buying her an everything bagel with cream cheese.
Then they all sat cross-legged on the grass, people watching
amid the bustle of morning traffic in town.
Mostly they were quiet, letting the day wake them slowly,
fixed on their coffee and food. Maya noticed Blue holding her fist to her mouth as if she might be sick again.
“Blue, eat something,” Maya said.
She held out a piece of her bagel. Blue glanced down. Sud-
denly her eyes bulged and her cheeks ballooned like a puff-
erfish.
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“Oh no,” Maya said, yanking the bagel away.
Blue’s face settled back. “False alarm.”
“You’re in bad shape, my friend,” Maya said, but Blue wasn’t
listening. She was staring off into the distance, her mind carried elsewhere.
Maya followed her gaze to a quaint old restaurant across
the street with a For Sale sign on the front.
“I used to love that place,” Blue said wistfully. “Best fried shrimp ever. And Nana always let me order two desserts. Can’t believe they’re selling it. The hipsters will probably turn it into a bowling alley.”
“Or something French and overpriced,” Hannah said as she
peeled a banana and took a bite.
“Or a fedora shop,” Renee said.
“The freaking fedoras,” Maya said. “What is with that?”
“Literally no one looks good in a fedora,” Renee said.
“I mean, I do,” Maya said. “But I get your point.”
“What they should really do is turn it into a bar,” Blue said.
“There’re no good divey bars in town.” As soon as she said
it, she gagged again.
“Maybe not a good time to be thinking about alcohol,”
Maya said. “What time is it?” She grabbed Renee’s wrist to
check her watch. “Crap! We gotta go.”
They gathered their trash, fled back to the car. Blue trailed them, one arm covering her eyes, the other outstretched to
ward off the sun. “I’m going to die,” she moaned repeatedly
to no one in particular.
Maya took Old West Lake Drive to the docks, passing the
sleepy bay, the wind soft through the open windows, the
morning light wan and tired as a mother before coffee.
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“Look,” she said as they passed Surf Lodge. “Scene of the
crime.”
“Ugh,” Blue said, without looking. “Kill me.”
Maya and Hannah exchanged pitying glances in the rear-
view mirror.
“I have aspirin if you need it,” Hannah said, rifling through her purse and showing Blue the bottle.
“Got anything for self-loathing?” Blue asked.
Hannah seemed to consider this, handed her a pastry.
The air changed as they neared the docks, salt thickened
and fishy. They passed the bait and tackle shops, the dilapi-
dated restaurant where old local fishermen hunched over the
dark bar to day drink.
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