The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “You hate sick people,” I say. “When I’m sick you treat me like a fucking biohazard, you don’t… God. It’s not settling down you don’t want. It’s me.”

  “Andie,” she says.

  “You’ll do all that shit, just with someone else.”

  “Well, I’m not running out to adopt the Hungarian orphan.”

  “All this time I thought you were the problem,” I say. “I thought you were just scared and broken and too fucked up for a relationship and it was me.” I might throw up. “I’m the problem. I’m too boring and selfish and I’m this, like, embodiment of staying in Providence, which you fucking hate, I’m just this fucking stupid basic bitch townie and—”

  “It’s not you,” Ivy says.

  “It’s me.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then what? Why can you do this with someone else and not me?”

  “It’s…” Ivy sighs and looks away. “I don’t know what it is.”

  God. She can’t even come up with anything else. It’s me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to be in love with you.”

  She quirks up half of a smile. “You’re not the first to be in that position.”

  “Shut up.”

  Her smile fades. “Okay.”

  “I just…” I have to say it. I can’t not say it anymore. “I just don’t know why you can’t do this, whatever you want to call what you’re doing, I don’t care, just, with me. All I want is what you have with her. You don’t have to do anything else. I just want…I want you to be as happy as you are with her but with me instead.” I swallow. “And preferably somehow you do it without hurting her, because she’s starting to grow on me.”

  Ivy just looks at me and then says, “No.”

  And I swear to God, I feel myself physically sink into the ground.

  “I know,” I say. “I know. I’m gonna go.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I’ll get an Uber.”

  “No,” she says. “Come on. Just…try to be quiet.”

  Getting home sounds really, really hard, and my head is pounding and I just want to lay down, and I also sort of feel like if I don’t go with her right now we’ll both disappear into how goddamn awkward this is and avoid each other for the rest of our lives.

  So I follow her up the stairs of her building. I don’t even feel like I’m walking. Moving is just something that’s happening to me. I don’t want to follow her. I don’t want to be in the same space as her. It’s too close. It’s not close enough.

  Ivy unlocks the door and opens it quietly, then sweeps stuff off the couch to make room. “I’ll get you a pillow and another blanket,” she says.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  She goes to her room, and I hear her open up the closet and root around and a second later, Dot’s voice. “What’s going on?”

  “Shh. Everything’s okay.”

  “Is Andie here?”

  “Yeah. Take your temperature again. You feel warm.”

  I bury my face in the couch cushions and bite down as hard as I can.

  …

  “Andie? Andie.”

  I blink and watch everything swim until Dot’s face evens out over me. Mother of fuck, my head hurts. Why is light so bright? Who decided that?

  “Hey,” I croak.

  She smiles. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

  I sit up slowly. “I think I’m supposed to be asking you that.”

  “Better,” she says. And she looks it this time. She’s wearing sweatpants and a URI tank top and she has a little bit of makeup on. “Do you want some water?”

  “Ugh. I don’t know.” Last night is coming back to me, piece by intolerable piece. “Where’s Ivy?”

  “At work.”

  I stretch my neck until it pops. “Right.”

  I’m not sure I’ve ever been alone with Dot before.

  She looks so comfortable standing here in this apartment. That Ivy left her in while she went to work.

  God, I wonder if she has a key.

  I drag myself out of my colloid of self-loathing and self-pity long enough to notice Dot watching me with her head tilted to the side, a thoughtful look on her face. Her eyeliner wings are tiny and perfect.

  “What?” I say.

  “There’s a café next door,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “So do you want to get breakfast?”

  “What, you and me?” I’m not the most tactful when I’m hungover. Or ever, really.

  But she says, “Come on. My treat.”

  …

  I’ve walked past this café on my way up to Ivy’s apartment but never actually been inside. It’s small, just three booths and two tables, and a lot of the walking space is taken up with newspaper stands and displays of Korean snack foods. Dot smiles at a server behind the counter, who clearly goddamn recognizes her, and we slide into a booth.

  “Ivy’s, like, obsessed with the French toast here,” she says.

  “Yeah, Ivy loves French toast.”

  “It’s so easy to make,” Dot says. “I’m always telling her not to waste money on it.”

  A server comes by and gives us coffee, which I gulp down like I’m dying of dehydration, which I guess I probably am. Dot sips hers and watches me over the rim.

  “Ivy told you everything,” I say. No one looks that smug unless they know what’s going on.

  She sets the mug down and blots her lipstick on her napkin with a shrug.

  “God,” I say. “Can we skip the speech where you tell me to back off if I promise that right now I dread even looking at her ever again?”

  She laughs. “That’s not what this is. I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

  Hang on.

  What?

  I blink at her.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  “What’s wrong is I just tried to steal your girlfriend away from you and you’re wondering if I’m okay? I’m the bad guy here.”

  “She’s not the Hope Diamond,” Dot says. “She’s not locked up.”

  “So you either really trust her or you’re that confident that you’re her first choice.”

  She smiles a little. “Why not both?”

  I groan and slump back in the booth. There’s a group of friends at the booth next to us that has way, way too much energy for this early. Don’t they have jobs? I guess Dot called out sick from school. Her mom probably thinks she’s at her cousin’s.

  The server comes by to take our order, and Dot gets an omelet; I get the French toast, mostly because I forgot to look at the menu. Dot hands them back to the server with a dazzling smile and sits back in the booth and looks at me.

  “How did you do it?” I say. “How did you fucking…get her.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Dot says.

  “Come on.” I’m ready to peek in the back of the book for the answers now. I’ve already lost. At least let me find out how I could have won.

  “I’m serious,” she says. “It’s not like I tamed her or something. I just kept being around until she decided she didn’t really mind. Became a habit, I guess.”

  That can’t be it. “She doesn’t mind me around, either.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Dot says. “And I hope this doesn’t change that. I’d kill to have a best friend like you guys have.”

  “Want to trade?”

  She smiles demurely. “Maybe not.”

  “You must have done something,” I say. “Even if you don’t know what it is. People don’t just change for no reason. You did that smile of yours and cracked her open or something.”

  “She didn’t change,” Dot insists. “We’re just in each other’s orbits now or whatever.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Neith
er of us has anywhere else to be.”

  “She talks to you,” I say. “She tells you things.”

  Dot sips her coffee.

  “She doesn’t do that,” I say. “It’s, like, impossible to get her to talk to me about anything real.”

  “You just have to keep trying.”

  “I don’t want to push her away,” I say. “She’s more fragile than you think.”

  “I don’t think she is, actually.”

  And she says it like it’s nothing. Like I’m supposed to stop trying to fix the person I’ve been trying to fix since I first realized there was something broken about her.

  “Do you know about her dad?” I say. I hate that it’s my trump card, but it is. Ivy doesn’t talk about it.

  But Dot just nods. Fuck.

  And my mind goes crazy trying to imagine how Ivy told her. If Dot found a picture and asked. If they were driving and Ivy mentioned her dad liked a song that was playing and tried to drop in casually that he’d died. If it was the middle of the night and Ivy was crying and she woke up Dot for comfort.

  I know it’s not my business, but it’s Ivy, so it kind of is.

  “I let her do whatever she wants,” I say. “I let her get away with anything.”

  “Yeah. I would imagine that gets pretty boring for both of you.”

  I take a minute, making lines in my napkin with my fork. Dot straightens a poster on the wall and checks her phone.

  “You’re really not threatened by me at all,” I say.

  “I guess not. Sorry.”

  I groan. “After last night, I can’t imagine why you would be. I have been very, very rejected. Picture me begging and her looking at me like I’m a sea slug. So very rejected.”

  She scrunches her nose up in sympathy. “Never fun.”

  “How would you know? Has anything bad ever happened to you?”

  “I had a fish that died,” she says.

  “I really wish I hated you.”

  “And I have a phenomenal imagination.”

  I roll my eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does she, like… When you’re alone. Does she call you her girlfriend? Does she tell you she loves you?”

  Dot laughs softly. “Why, should she?”

  “I mean, most people do. And I would want that,” I say. “If I were with her, I’d want that.”

  Dot reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. Her hands are so soft.

  “I know you would,” she says, and that’s it, and something maybe clicks into place.

  The server comes with our food and we eat in silence. It’s a little awkward, but not as much as it should be. Dot checks her phone and laughs every once in a while. She glances up at me at one point, right before Ivy texts me a heart.

  “We’ll be fine,” I tell her. “Stop worrying. You’re not the biggest problem we’ve ever dealt with.”

  Dot chuckles. “That’s the spirit.”

  And when Dot asks me, when I’m paying—I don’t let her do it—if I’m okay, I say, “Yeah,” and I think I mean it. At least a little bit. At least for a second.

  April

  So, what do you do when you have to completely shift gears on your entire life?

  Me, I spend most of the beginning of April working extra hours, trying to keep the club afloat, reading, and avoiding crying as much as physically possible. I lose myself in books.

  Ivy and I aggressively evade talking about anything deeper than what our plans are for the weekend. We go out with the girls and Ivy continues to hook up with anything that moves, besides me. The weather gets warm and wet and Dot’s sneezing all the time from the pollen and Ivy makes fun of her. I go to College Hill on my day off and walk around Thayer Street and pretend I’m some out-of-town college kid, coming here for a fresh start.

  I just…recalibrate.

  I really thought we were going to end up together someday. I don’t think I knew how much I really thought that until the door shut on it. I thought Ivy still had a lot she needed to get out of her system, but when she was ready to settle down, when she was going to flirt with someone in diner booths and drag someone home by the collar afterward, it would be me.

  And it’s not. Because Ivy doesn’t love me. Ivy doesn’t love who I am. Something about me just isn’t good enough.

  And as much as that sucks, well, something about me is good enough for Elizabeth, so I focus on being the best girlfriend ever to make up for being the absolute, categorical worst in ways that she doesn’t even know. I buy her things. I hang out with her vet friends. I cook her dinner.

  I’m coming up with a grocery list one day at the strip club when Ivy makes her announcement. She’s here to pick up Dot, who’s been coming semi-regularly to do the dancers’ makeup, since they now won’t shut up unless they get her. Dot’s been busy with finals but continues to be nice to me in a way that reminds me how much she pities me, and she and Ivy blow straw wrappers at each other and use hand signals across the room and get half naked on Kinetic’s dance floor, moving faster than the music.

  Ivy looks over Dot’s shoulder to check out the cut crease she’s forming and then turns to me and says, “I’m throwing you a birthday party.”

  I cough out a laugh. “You’re what?”

  “I’m throwing you a birthday party,” she says. “Next week. Unless your wife already has you tied up.”

  “We’re just doing a little dinner,” I say. “I told her I didn’t want anything special.”

  “Wow. Nothing special for your birthday. Your twentieth birthday. The end of your teenage years.”

  “Very old,” Dot says, and I stick my tongue out at her. She beams.

  “I don’t need a party,” I say.

  Ivy waves that away. “I haven’t had people over since I got the apartment. It’s all decorated now.”

  “Oh, so this is about you.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I could use a nice party,” Dot says. “My friends’ parties are getting very edgy.”

  “Russian roulette?” I say.

  Dot blots Abby’s lipstick. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s next.”

  “Catholic school,” Ivy says with a shudder. “They’re into weird shit.”

  “Why is Dot invited to my birthday party?” I say, just because it’s a bit at this point.

  Dot pretends to pout. “You love me, really.”

  “Make sure to invite Elizabeth,” Ivy says. “Even though she hates all of us.”

  “She doesn’t hate all of you,” I say. “She hates you specifically.”

  “Good to know I can still inspire strong emotions in people in my old age.”

  “Hey, you’re not the one turning twenty.”

  “And thank God for that.” She spins around in her chair. “It’ll be fun. We haven’t had a party in forever.”

  I hate parties, but whatever. That conversation was the most natural interaction Ivy and I have had in weeks. “It’ll be something,” I say.

  …

  Dot comes over on my birthday, before I meet Elizabeth for our pre-party dinner, to do my makeup. She begged, and I figured today was as good a day as any to finally let her. It’s my good deed of the month. “Hold still,” she says. “No wonder you can’t do eyeliner. You’re so twitchy.”

  “I’m not twitchy when I’m the one approaching my eyes with a sharp object.”

  “It is so not sharp.” She stabs it against her hands a few times. “See? Now hold still.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath and try not to flinch when I feel the pencil against my lash line. “Did you get that PR package yet?” I say to distract myself.

  “Yep, came in yesterday. I’m using their blush on you, so tell me how you like it.”

  “Okay.” She’s b
een getting a lot more free stuff from brands as her channel keeps growing. Ivy has this blank wall with great light that she’s been using as her backdrop, and it makes her videos look a lot more professional than they used to. Yeah, sue me, I’ve watched one or two. The kid’s good at what she does.

  “Excited for tonight?” she asks.

  “Uh, anxious. It’s an Ivy party, so I’m thinking sex swings and whips.”

  Dot laughs. “She’s not that wild really. I’m the one who’s always talking her into shit.”

  “I so don’t need to hear that.”

  “Open,” she says and starts tracing my lower lash line.

  “Are any of your friends coming?” I say. I have all of four friends, so we’re going to need more bodies to fill the space.

  But she says, “Nah. Ivy doesn’t like them. She thinks they’re a bad influence.”

  I laugh and probably make Dot screw something up. “I’m sorry—Ivy thinks someone else is a bad influence?”

  “I know. It’s the end of the world.”

  “You really must talk her into things.”

  “I’m saying.”

  “What did you tell your parents you’re doing?”

  “Staying with my cousin,” she says. “Same as always. My aunt’s the rebel of the family, so she covers for me.”

  “I think you’re probably the rebel of the family,” I say.

  “Hmm.” Dot looks at herself in the mirror, considering this. “Maybe. I was always just the disappointment.”

  “And now you’re getting PR deals.”

  She smiles.

  …

  Elizabeth takes me back to Clair de Lune, where we had our first date. I remember how uncomfortable I was here back then. I hadn’t been to any of the places I have now, the tiny, fancy cafés that Elizabeth loves, the ballet, the opera. I’m some kind of culture kid now.

  I don’t read romance novels as much anymore; I read the books Elizabeth recommends, the ones that are heavy and serious and usually about men and make me think a lot about what it means to be human. I don’t really understand all of them and I really don’t understand why most of them aren’t shorter, but I like hearing what she thinks about them.