by Amber Stuart
Lottie had tried, repeatedly, to assure her that in two years, it hadn’t changed; she was herself now, it was just a different self, but Lydia had as much trouble understanding that concept as the rest of us.
Eric listened attentively, watching our exchange, Lottie’s hands – she talked with her hands just like my Lottie had – her facial expressions, my reactions to it all. And then he asked her to explain how this process worked or what she thought was different about her. But when he asked her why she’d never tried to contact me in over two years if she remembered me so well, my heart sank into my stomach. Or maybe my stomach jumped into my chest. Of course I had wondered that, too, but I’m not a masochist; there was no way in hell I had ever planned on asking her.
Lottie’s face paled and she looked toward me as if I could save her from this humiliation, from this intrusion into her innermost secrets. I had the sudden urge to throw Eric out of my hotel room.
“Eric, it’s not that simple,” she said, seeming so much smaller than usual.
“Why not? He hasn’t moved, his number hasn’t changed, his email is the same. It seems pretty simple to me.”
“Because I’m not the same!”
“But here you are,” Eric persisted.
“Eric, what the fuck are you doing?” They were logical questions, but she was close enough to my Lottie; I didn’t care what reasons she had, he was upsetting her, and I couldn’t let him.
“It doesn’t make any sense, Dietrich. She claims she’s Lottie, sort of, and if that’s true, I don’t believe for a second Lottie wouldn’t have come to you the first chance she had.”
“But I’m not! I’m not her!” Lottie protested.
Eric pulled a chair away from the table by the window and sat down. Lottie had to turn to see him now.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’ve said you’re Lottie and this other girl, but not Lottie and not this other girl. So you’re like… what? Half Lottie and half you?”
Lottie shook her head. “No. I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore who’s me anyway.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Have you ever tried having two people in one head?”
I looked at Eric now. She’s got you there, Buddy.
“All of Lottie’s in there then?” he asked cautiously.
It was Lottie’s turn to sigh. She was getting impatient. She and Eric had been such good friends, and maybe that was why she found his reluctance to believe her so frustrating. Of course, I hadn’t believed her at first either, but I hadn’t told her I didn’t believe her.
“Again, it doesn’t work that way. There’s no in there, it’s just me. I’m both Lottie and Kyrieana, and I’m neither.”
“So you’re Lottiana?”
I rolled my eyes. So did Lottie.
“How do I know,” he continued, turning serious and thoughtful again, “that what you’re telling me, these aren’t just memories you’ve picked up from conversations with Dietrich recently or shit you just guessed correctly? Like the thing with the lightning whelk. It is our state shell, after all.”
Eric had had no fucking clue it was our state shell until a few days ago when I told him about the conversation between Lottie and me.
“I mean, if you’re really Lottie or half-Lottie or whatever,” he continued, “then what happened at Daniel’s Christmas party two and a half years ago?”
Lottie’s eyes widened, her posture stiffened and she hissed, “Shut. UP.”
I sat up straighter. “What happened.”
I was glaring at Eric. I didn’t remember anything unusual happening at that party, other than the fact that I had actually been talked into going in the first place.
Eric never took his eyes off of Lottie. “Tell him,” he suggested.
Lottie shook her head quickly. “Are you suicidal?” she spit it out, like she couldn’t believe he would even venture into this memory.
I couldn’t either, actually.
“Eric, I will fucking kill you. What the hell happened?” Whatever excitement I had felt over Lottie showing up this morning had completely vanished.
The corners of Eric’s eyes had started to wrinkle, a small smile turned the corners of his lips. He knew that Lottie was clinging on to this memory, this secret they had kept from me. I was starting to think Eric must really have a death wish.
“You’d better tell him, Lottie. You know how he is. He’s not going to wait much longer, then he probably will kill me.”
Lottie exhaled angrily, still scowling at Eric, and through gritted teeth, breathed, “Fine.”
She slowly turned her attention toward me. My chest was burning. A stabbing, burning, sickening kind of pain. What the fuck did Eric think he was doing?
“Remember how drunk Eric got? I mean, hell, we had to take him home.”
I nodded. I also remembered having to pull over so he could throw up on the side of the road and not in my brand new Alabaster Silver Metallic Accord.
“He tried to kiss me at the party.” Lottie had folded her arms across her chest in that defensive way of hers and although she had tried to speak those words nonchalantly, she was still disturbed by that memory or maybe it was the tension in the room. I am pretty sure all of the tension was coming from me.
I tried to unclench my fists and reminded myself this was Eric, after all. I inhaled. “You what?” I asked slowly.
Eric just shrugged and flippantly responded, “She was standing under the mistletoe.”
“That was not a mistletoe kiss!” Lottie shot back.
Now she was angry. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one growing increasingly pissed off by Eric’s dismissive attitude.
I looked to Lottie. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”
Lottie waved her hand irritably at Eric. “That’s why. The next day, he was all like, ‘God, Lottie, I’m so sorry, that was really stupid,’ and I was like, ‘No shit, and if you ever tell Dietrich, he’ll kill you, so you’d better keep your fucking mouth shut. And off of mine.’”
Lottie sank back into the bed and muttered something under her breath that sounded like, “Fucking men.”
Eric looked at me, eyebrows raised, eyes full of wonder. He wasn’t at all concerned about this kiss. It was old news to him. But he had dragged a secret memory out of Lottie that she had, quite literally, taken to her grave, and she had retold that story exactly as Lottie would have told it. There was no hesitation, no self-doubt, no fumbling over word choices or wrestling with the spirit of another person who didn’t want to be reliving this memory.
This was Lottie. My Lottie. That little voice that so often whispered in the back of my brain that something wasn’t exactly right when I was around her had been silent, and it wasn’t just because of my own anger. There was no Kyrieana in that moment. Just Lottie.
“Don’t kill him,” Lottie finally mumbled. She was eyeing me, maybe waiting to see if I really was going to try or if I would let the past go. I swallowed the hard knot that seemed stuck in my throat.
“Why did you do it?” I finally asked him.
I’m not sure if I meant why he had tried to kiss her in the first place or why he had dredged up this secret, this betrayal. He apparently decided I meant the former.
Eric never looked away or dropped his eyes. That’s not the kind of man he was. I knew him well enough to know that he would have told me exactly what had happened the day after the party if Lottie hadn’t asked him not to. That didn’t make it hurt any less.
“I don’t know, Dietrich. You had just gotten engaged, Brooke and I had just broken up, it was the holidays, I was lonely, and I was really drunk. I really did just mean it to be a friendly kiss. You know I’d never hurt either one of you. You know that.”
“I thought I did.” My voice was full of venom. That comment stung. I knew it did, but I wasn’t sorry I had said it. Not even a little.
“It was a long time ago, Dietrich,�
�� Lottie said.
She was lying on her back now, staring at the ceiling. Maybe wishing some portal or ice pick hole would open up and let her escape off of this planet. Immediately.
“Not for me.”
She just nodded. “True.” She kept her focus on the popcorn ceiling above her.
“Dietrich,” Eric started, but I wouldn’t let him speak.
“Just shut up.”
He didn’t argue.
I uncurled my fingers and studied my hands. The room was heavy and silent except for the humming of the air conditioner. After a few minutes of no one speaking, Lottie finally propped herself up on her elbows and watched me again. That doubt and uncertainty were back. She was Lottie and not-Lottie again. She wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“You aren’t going to hurt him, are you?” she asked.
I glanced over at Eric. He hadn’t moved. I shook my head, “No, but…”
“Stop there,” Lottie interrupted. “No buts. Look, we all know why he brought it up in the first place. He wanted to prove something and he did, right? Can’t you just…”
Just, what? Forget my best friend had tried to make out with my fiancée? No, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing a person forgets. And forgive him? There was no fucking way I could forgive him for it either. Lottie wasn’t just my world in that clichéd I’m-so-in-love kind of way; she was the only part of my world that gave my life any meaning.
I had no friends when I met her, and I’d never had any family. I went to LSU and then applied to graduate schools because I didn’t know what else to do. I was still a lost child, a discarded pitiful creature, when she met me, and for the first time in my life, someone had wanted me. She had wanted me; she had loved me, and God, had I loved her.
Lottie never tried to finish whatever she thought might have helped me realize I couldn’t keep losing the only people in my life. At this point, wasn’t I really down to one? Maybe none, now? So instead she sat up, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed and faced me.
“Do you want some time alone? We can go meet Lydia. She may have slept off her hangover by now.”
Actually, the last thing I wanted was for Lottie to leave with him. I never wanted them to be alone together ever again. Or maybe even together ever again, period. But looking at Lottie, I could tell she was hoping I would say yes. She was eager to get out of this stressful situation, with this ominous silence just hanging around us like a shroud. And in all the years I had known Lottie, I had never been able to disappoint her. So I told her yes. I needed some time alone.
Eric didn’t protest, although I could tell he didn’t want to leave without me. Or maybe he just wanted Lottie to leave so he could talk to me. If that were true, then, I thought that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid of him. But he followed her silently out of my room, and as soon as the door closed, I collapsed back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling just as Lottie had, waiting for that same hole to appear to swallow me.
I didn’t want to travel universes, just time. I wanted to go back a little over two years, to a beautiful spring day in Houston when a rare seasonal cold front had moved cool, dry air into the city. The meteorologist on the radio that morning had promised me a high of no more than 68 degrees. This weather was too exceptional, too perfect to waste.
I wanted to make a better decision. I wanted to turn around, go back home, crawl back into bed with Lottie and tell her that when she was ready to get up, we would drive down to Galveston and walk along the beach. It would be too cold to get in the water but we would walk in the sand, look for seashells or just try to avoid dead jellyfish, spread out a blanket and umbrella and read or fall asleep with the waves and seagulls providing the kind of ambient sounds that quieted even my overactive mind.
She would still be alive then. If I had only turned around. And I had thought about it. But I had gone to work, and she had gotten up, answered Jamie’s call and decided to go somewhere with her. I still didn’t know where they had been going.
What had been so important at my desk that day? What had kept me from turning around? What had made me think that I could waste this day, this too-good-to-be-true day that in hindsight, was foreshadowing something incomprehensibly sinister, perhaps trying to warn me: Go get her, Dietrich. This day isn’t right. No, it’s too right, and that’s the problem. I hadn’t listened. I hadn’t listened, and she had paid with her life and mine. I had been living in this Hell of an afterlife ever since.
There was a soft rapping noise from somewhere far away. I tried to place it but it was distant, metallic and hollow. Gradually, sounds came with greater clarity and I slowly opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. The popcorn ceiling of the hotel room came into focus, that hollow metallic rapping sound identifying itself as knocking at my door. How long had I been asleep? I glanced over at the clock. Over an hour.
I rolled off the bed and looked through the peephole, surprised to see Lottie’s spritely figure waiting on the other side. She was looking down the walkway, perhaps wondering if I had left and I quickly opened the door before she had a chance to decide to leave, too. I didn’t have time to wonder where Eric was. Part of me didn’t care. A big part of me, actually.
“Hey,” I said.
God, I could be so pathetic.
She just smiled at me and said hey back then walked into my room and sat down on the same bed she had claimed before.
“I left Eric with Lydia. They were actually getting along. It was getting too weird.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. I knew Lydia wasn’t Jamie. She wasn’t anything like Jamie. But I could understand why that made Lottie feel so uncomfortable. Jamie and Eric had hated each other. Part of it may have had something to do with Eric’s feeble attempt to ask her out when he first met her and Jamie’s not-so-feeble attempt at making it perfectly clear that was never going to happen. Eric was – apparently – a good-looking guy. He wasn’t used to getting shot down, and I don’t think he ever forgave Jamie for that, anymore than she ever forgave him for hitting on her in the first place.
“I’m not sure you should have left her alone with him,” I said. My nap had obviously not cured my incensed mood.
Lottie just shrugged. “I still trust him. Believe me, I would never have left Lydia alone with him if I didn’t.”
“Why is Lydia even ok being left alone with him? She treated me like I was the Jabberwocky last night.”
Lottie raised one eyebrow at me, that half-smile curling at her lips. “C’mon, Dietrich. She’s human.”
I stared stupidly back at Lottie. She obviously expected me to catch on to her innuendo, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. It was my turn to cross my arms defensively. There was no way Eric and Lydia were going to hook up. No fucking way.
“Anyway,” Lottie exaggerated the word, fully understanding I was being stubborn and petulant and she had probably half-expected it. “Let’s go do something. Hey, do you have a DVD player in here? We can go down to F.Y.E. I bet they have a copy of Men in Black.”
“You know I don’t watch movies.” As much as I didn’t want to think about Eric and Lydia, I couldn’t not think about them. “They’re not going to… you know.”
Lottie smirked. “Doubt it, but it’s none of our business. And besides, he’s no longer here to tempt you into committing homicide. So let’s go do something.”
She was virtually bouncing on the edge of the bed now. Even if I had wanted to say no, she was so goddamned adorable, how could I resist her? So we drove down to a Greek and Lebanese restaurant we had always loved and had lunch then went over to the LSU lakes. It was late June in south Louisiana. Hot and humid, uncomfortable even in the shade. But it was an old pastime of ours, to walk around this particular lake, and so we parked on campus and she let me hold her hand as we made our way back toward Dalrymple Drive. Part of it was the heat, and part of it was just that Lottie and I had never felt the need to fill silence between us, and so we walked qui
etly, occasionally moving to the side as a cyclist or jogger edged past us.
By mid-afternoon, we had stopped to rest in the shade of a huge oak tree, passing a bottle of water between us, breathing heavily not so much from physical exertion but from the hot, sticky air around us.
“Now what?” Lottie finally asked.
I glanced down the rest of the path. We still had about a ¼ of a mile to go before we were back to Dalrymple Drive.
“Well, when we get back to my car, I’m turning on the air conditioner. And going back to the Circle K for another bottle of water.”
Lottie laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
I looked down at her. She was staring out over the lake but not really seeing it.
“Oh.”
Now what? Hadn’t this always been her call? From the moment I first saw her in the coffeehouse in Houston, I had wanted her with me, no matter who she was. If she had asked me right then to run away with her to Morocco, I would have pulled out my phone and bought the tickets. Lottie looked up at me. I guess she had expected a more thoughtful response.
“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” she asked.
I laughed, both startled and amused. It had been a long time since I’d really laughed. I shrugged. “You’ve told me.”
“Jamie always thought so, too.”
“That you never told me.”
Lottie smiled back at me. “Well, I didn’t want it going to your head or anything.”
“Whatever. I’ve never cared about anyone’s opinion except yours.”
“I know.”
Lottie looked away again, nervous maybe, awkward. The not-Lottie part suddenly remembering this wasn’t a conversation she was comfortable having. I left her alone for a couple of minutes before reminding her, “So… now what?”
She plucked a few strands of grass from the ground beside her and let the breeze, as little as there was, take them from her hand. “Now? I dunno. I guess we hope Eric doesn’t knock up Lydia?” she joked.
