Frenemies (15 page)

Neither did I, but it wasn’t my place to say anything.

“Don’t give me that look,” Georgia said. “I’m the one who has to actually feel the way I do when I get crazy over inappropriate men. I knew Jared was another in a long line of complete assholes. Believe me, I knew.”

“Back to Chris Starling?” I suggested. Diplomatically.

They had been taking depositions in Scranton, which, Georgia admitted, showed Chris Starling to his best advantage. He always unsettled the people he was deposing. It was the way he looked at people. As if he already knew their secrets and was personally disappointed in them when they failed to divulge those secrets when he asked.

Opposing counsel this time around was some hotshot type, all sleek with flashing white teeth Georgia just knew he’d like to sink into her jugular. Literally and figuratively.

“So basically he was the Jared type,” I said.

“His clone, in fact,” Georgia agreed. “Obviously, I was smitten.”

“And now I’m confused. I thought this was a Chris Starling story.”

“Just listen.”

Georgia had locked eyes with Mr. Jugular, and they’d arranged to meet for illicit cocktails, all in secret, of course, since they were opposing counsel and had to maintain the appearance of propriety. Which, it turned out, suited Mr. Jugular just fine because while he’d certainly be up for whatever Georgia might have in mind—particularly in the bedroom, he made clear with his hand on her thigh—he needed to keep things extra quiet because he was, after all, engaged.

“Yuck,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” Georgia said.

Because he hadn’t even
confessed
it—he’d just announced it. He evidently thought it would either be a turn-on for Georgia, or incidental information to file away in case Georgia got any
ideas.
At no point did it occur to Mr. Jugular that, upon hearing the news, Georgia might
not
sleep with him.

Which had really been the slap in the face.

“At what point did I become so obvious and easy that guys stopped trying to deceive me into bed with them?” she asked me. “At what point did I start wearing
that
sign around my neck?”

She had sat there for a long moment with Mr. Jugular’s hand on her thigh. She was in a cheesy hotel bar in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was a Monday night. And though the setting wasn’t necessarily auspicious, Georgia felt her life shift right there and then.

“I can’t even begin to stress how very much I’d like to tell you that it was like something out of a movie,” she said now, “with a stirring song playing in the background and that light of battle in my eyes, but it was actually really quiet. There was Muzak. And this fucking guy. This
engaged
guy. And I realized that this was what my life was, who I was. This pathetic woman in a hotel bar, about to willingly sleep with some sleazy guy who couldn’t even be bothered to conceal the fact that he had a fiancée.” She shook her head. “That’s how little he cared about me. And I could see with perfect clarity that it started right there and then. I could take this guy up to my room and we could have sex, it might even be good sex, and I could keep having sex with guys like him, and soon enough they’d be married guys. Guys with wives and kids. Guys with houses and whole other lives. Guys who wouldn’t even bother to pretend at having a relationship with me. That would be who I was, and it all started right there in that bar with that guy.”

She sat there for a moment, and I tried to read her expression, but she looked about as remote as I’d ever seen her.

“What did you do?” I whispered.

She looked up and met my gaze.

“It kills me that you have to ask,” she said.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t. Because how would you know?” She took a deep breath. “I got up and left. I wasn’t even mean about it. I just said I had an earlier morning than I’d originally thought. And then I went up to my hotel room and sat on the ugly orange bedspread and cried. For about twelve hours.”

“Oh, Georgia.”

“It was fine,” she said. “I’m fine. And it was kind of interesting to just … feel what I was feeling. I didn’t have you or Amy Lee to call. There was nothing particularly dramatic about it. It was just me, and the person I was
this close
to becoming.”

“Wow,” I said.

One unfortunate side effect of choosing to reinvent herself while taking depositions in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was that Georgia had to face the catalyst for her reinvention across the table in the morning. In the way of men like Mr. Jugular since the dawn of time, he took sexual rejection badly. He used Georgia for target practice enough that at lunch, Chris Starling actually sat her down for a talk.

“He was in rare form,” Georgia said. “Even for him. He took me to Burger King and while I was trying to enjoy my hamburger he looked up and said, ‘This morning is, of course, why you can’t sleep with opposing counsel.’?” She imitated Chris Starling’s dry tone perfectly.

I just shook my head, wordless.

Georgia snapped back at him. She had not slept with opposing counsel, she threw at him, and how dare he—

Good
, Chris Starling said.

“He said it just like that?” I asked, enthralled. Georgia had made him sound so—fervent.

“Exactly like that,” Georgia said, smiling slightly.

And it had altered everything. They’d finished lunch and returned to the depositions. Chris Starling had slapped Mr. Jugular down a few times. Georgia had played her part. It was all normal, except … it wasn’t.

“All of a sudden,” Georgia told me, “I was
aware.
I knew every time he took a breath. I could
feel
when he looked at me. It was crazy. I felt like I was wearing a corset, like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, whenever he walked into a room.”

“Wow,” I breathed.

The days passed, until finally they were finished with the depositions. It was Thursday night, and they were due to fly out in the morning. Georgia once again found herself in the hotel bar, only this time, everything felt epic and terrifying instead of depressing and tired. They chatted about inane things, things Georgia couldn’t even remember. Chris Starling pointed out that it was late, and that they had an early flight. He paid the check, and then they walked to the elevator. It took a long time to come, and they’d seemingly run out of things to say. Georgia felt as if she might burst—into tears, into laughter, into pieces, she wasn’t sure. The elevator finally arrived, they got in, and the door closed, leaving them all alone inside. They stared at each other. Georgia made some crack, something about having nothing to say, because she couldn’t bear the silence for another second.

Which was when Chris Starling pulled out his big gun—that smile.

Georgia felt something melt inside of her, and it was like he’d been waiting for it. Without saying a word, he reached across the distance between them, pulled Georgia to him, and kissed her.

“Just like that?” I was whispering. I practically had to fan my face.

“Exactly like that,” Georgia whispered back.

And it turned out that Chris Starling could kiss. So well that the next thing she knew they were in his room, rolling around on his bed, and half naked. Georgia had come to in a moment of clarity.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means I sat up with as much dignity as you can when you have to refasten your bra and find your shirt,” Georgia said dryly. “And then I told him that I was tired of being treated like Sally, the Sheraton Whore.”

“Oh, no.” I put my face in my hands, and then peeked at her. “?‘Sally, the Sheraton Whore?’?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well … what happened? What did he do?”

“He sat there in understandable shock as I gathered up my tattered dignity and stormed away,” Georgia said. “I can’t blame him, really.”

“He didn’t chase after you?” I frowned. “Maybe I don’t like him very much after all.”

“He didn’t chase after me,” Georgia said. “The next morning, on the oh-so-awkward taxi ride to the airport, he said exactly one thing to me. Guess what that was?”

“I can’t possibly.”

“He said, and I quote, ‘If you’re Sally the Sheraton Whore, what does that make me?’?”

I thought about that for a moment.

“Huh,” I said. “Ouch.”

She let out a sigh, and took a deep pull of her coffee.

“Well?” I demanded. “What happened next?”

“We flew to New York, got stuck for hours in JFK while they deiced the runways or something equally irritating since it’s
December
in the
Northeast
and you’d think they’d be
prepared
, and got home late last night. I believe Chris and I exchanged three entire sentences. When I got home I cried some more, pretended to sleep, and then called you.” Georgia gave me a thin smile. “It’s been quite a week, and just so we’re clear, I wasn’t giving you the silent treatment. Not deliberately.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s a lot. And your partnership dreams are involved how?”

“Hello. My boss has seen my breasts.” Georgia made a face. “And while they’re obviously smoking hot, I also insulted the man and ran away. I just shot my career trajectory in the foot.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. “Not necessarily.”

“But most likely,” Georgia said. She shook it off, and smiled at me. “But it’s your turn. Tell me the Henry story, you lying bitch, and it better be good.”

chapter seventeen

“
W
ell,” Georgia said when I finished telling her the tangled history of Henry and me, up to and including his rejection of me after the caroling party.

And then she fell silent, her attention on the French toast she’d ordered.

“Well?” I echoed after a moment, not at all interested in my omelet. “That’s all I get?”

“I’m trying to decide whether or not I should forgive you,” Georgia said, eyeing me. “Not for keeping it a secret, or even for the whole Henry-is-evil thing, because whatever. Shit happens. But because you have had
intimate
and
personal
contact with that man’s hot body, and you kept it from me when you know
perfectly well
there was a time when even
proximity
to Henry Farland was enough to keep me going for weeks.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” I said, suddenly fascinated with the cheese-and-tomato omelet. “There was this whole angry denial thing going on, and I thought you’d hate me. If that helps.”

“It really doesn’t.” She shook her head. “I loved him so much it actually hurt me, like it was some separate, tumor-ish thing.”

“I know you did,” I said quietly. “I remember.”

It was horrifying, because really, how did this make me any different from Helen? The point of the divide between women like Helen and women like me was that women like me weren’t supposed to do the kinds of things women like Helen did without blinking. Crushes—particularly long-term epic crushes like the one Georgia had had on Henry—were sacrosanct. I might as well have slept with her college boyfriend, given the amount of emotional energy she’d put into Henry once upon a time. It didn’t matter that it had been completely unrequited. Betraying that required the same level of self-absorption on my part.

“Henry Farland was the
archetype
for all the Jareds,” Georgia said dryly. “Beautiful, lethal, completely amoral … I haven’t forgotten, even if you did.”

“You must hate me,” I said in a small voice.

“The part of me that will always be nineteen years old and struck dumb by her first sight of Henry when he sauntered into that party, all tan and beautiful?” Georgia shook her head. “
She
hates you. She might even have cried a little bit. The good news is that she’s been crying over Henry for about a decade now, and she hates
him
, too.”

“I would hate me.” It was true. I was all about bringing the hate. “I’m really sorry, Georgia.”

“I should hate you,” she agreed, “but I’m running out of best friends this month.” She settled back into her chair. “You’re off the hook. Henry ruined his own myth for me years ago.”

“When did he do that?” I asked. It could have been the barely-legal stripper he’d dated that one time. The infamous rumor campaign he’d instituted against poor Felicia, the girlfriend who’d had the temerity to leave him when he was twenty-three. Or his ability to be snide under any circumstances, particularly when it hurt. I hadn’t realized that something had happened to make Georgia get over him. I thought time had simply passed.

“The whole time he was in law school I was able to keep the crush intact,” Georgia said, with a faraway look in her eyes. “You know, because I figured he would go into corporate law, make a ton of money to match the ton of money he already had, and I would yearn forevermore.”

“He’s a lawyer just like you,” I said brightly. “Yearn away.”

“He’s a lawyer, but he’s not like me,” Georgia said, almost sadly. “He spends the bulk of his time trying to shut down my clients. He works for a pittance and usually out of the kindness of his heart, like he’s the personal version of the ACLU. I can’t stand him.”

It was funny when perception changed. It was almost as if I could feel my vision shatter, and then alter so much it was as if the way I’d seen before had never been. It had happened to me once before, quite violently, in Henry’s kitchen that night, and I had the inkling it was happening again in that café with Georgia.

I had to blink a few times. No wonder he’d said I didn’t know him at all. There was a caricature called Henry that I carried around in my head, but he had no relation whatsoever to the real one. The real one was a complete stranger to me—although I was pretty sure I’d glimpsed him for the first time in that hallway the day of the sleigh ride.

“You look shell-shocked,” Georgia said, with a grin. “Don’t worry, Gus. I really do forgive you. Hell, with that body? I’m jealous. I wouldn’t touch his wussy do-gooder ass with a ten-foot pole, mind you, but I’d encourage you even if he
was
the devil.”

“Speaking of which, I don’t get why you went along with the whole ‘he’s Satan’ thing,” I said, frowning at her. “When you knew he was practically the Mother Teresa of the legal community.”

“First of all,” Georgia said, “I am always available to mock, vilify, and tease. Why? Because it’s fun. Whatever certain dentists of my acquaintance might think.” She sniffed. “And anyway, I adored Henry from afar for years, which he knew and did nothing about. What am I, radioactive? He had it coming.”

She forked in a mouthful of her French toast and eyed me as she chewed.

“What?”

“You and Henry,” she said. “Are you … ?”

“I can’t even think about Henry,” I said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin, anyway. Stuff just keeps happening, and he’s off-limits—”

“If you mean because of me, he’s really not. You can have him.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. I blinked. “And anyway, there’s the Nate thing,” I said instead of thinking about Henry any further.

“Jesus Christ. Not again. Not
still.
”

“It’s not what you think,” I assured her.

“Oh, good. Because I think you’re chasing around after a guy who treated you like shit.” She pursed her lips. “A subject I happen to know something about.”

“Well, okay, yes,” I admitted. “It might resemble that kind of thing. But the truth is—”

“The ugly truth about Nate is that he cheated on you and only left you when you caught him
in the act
,” Georgia said. “Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what his plan was? I mean, what if you hadn’t caught him? Was he just going to keep seeing both of you?”

I gaped at her for a moment. Then shook it off. “You don’t have all the information,” I hastened to tell her. “It’s not that cut-and-dried.”

So I told her everything. About what he’d said to me on Janis Joplin night. Those strange, yearning moments at the Park Plaza. The Night of Seven Voice Mails. About when he pretended I was a guy so Helen wouldn’t suspect anything. About last night’s ridiculousness.

“Wait a minute,” Georgia said. “Is this seventh grade? She called you from
his
phone?”

“I keep trying to tell you people that she’s the crazy one here,” I pointed out. “Not me.”

“I don’t know if she’s crazy,” Georgia said with a sniff. “I’ve hated that bitch since the nineties. Since I laid eyes on her in our hallway freshman year and saw exactly what kind of girl she was. But it’s obviously crossed her mind that if she could steal Nate from you, he’s the kind of man who can be stolen.”

“I think maybe he’s just trapped,” I told her. “You know what Helen’s like. You know how convincing she seems to be to men, for whatever reason.”

Georgia sighed. “I think you want him to be trapped, because that way, there’s an excuse for how he’s stringing you along.” She held up her hand when I started to argue. “Believe me, Gus, I know about this kind of thing. I’m the
poster girl
for this kind of thing. You spend fifty percent of your time making excuses for some guy’s shitty behavior and the other fifty percent of your time fantasizing about how great things could be
if only.
”

“Nate isn’t Jared!” The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Georgia’s eyebrows rose, and I felt myself flush. “I just mean, the situations are different,” I said quickly. “I knew Nate for years before we started dating. We were together for almost four months. Okay? I’m not trying to be all Amy Lee about it.”

“It’s okay.” Her voice was brisk.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s seriously fine,” Georgia said. “Jared was a loser and I was overdramatic. End of story.”

When it came to Amy Lee herself, however, Georgia was less forgiving.

“Sure she had some points,” she said, stabbing at her plate with her fork. “She was probably right, in fact.”

I let out a breath.

“I thought so too,” I confessed.

“But that’s how she expresses herself to her two best friends in the world?” Georgia continued. “That’s how she takes us aside and lets us know that she has some concerns? By talking down to both of us, in front of someone else, at a party?” She shook her head. “She’s always thought she was better than us. This is the same thing as that time she was all up on her high horse about how everything was so much different for her when she met Oscar because she had a
good-looking
boyfriend. Please. As if the men we liked were trolls?”

“Okay, sure,” I said, remembering what was definitely not Amy Lee’s finest hour. “That was so long ago, though. She seemed a little too serious this time.”

“Of course she was serious,” Georgia said, and then sighed, and I saw sadness flood her face. “The fact is, Amy Lee had the good fortune to trip over her husband at the age of twenty-three.” She made a face. “She gets the
option
to have adult choices.”

“This is a little unsettling.” I stared at her. “I prepared myself the whole way over here for you to tell me that I’m the asshole in this scenario.”

“I have a very serious bone to pick with Amy Lee,” Georgia replied. “And believe me, I plan to pick it. But I don’t think you did anything wrong. Sneaky and behind my back, yes, but I can sort of see why you’d feel you had to. I had the killer crush for so long, of course you were afraid I’d go ballistic.”

“I miss her,” I confessed. “I’m not used to her
hating
me, Georgia. I’m used to talking to her three times a day.”

“She doesn’t hate us,” Georgia said.

“She told us to fuck off.”

“She doesn’t hate us,” she repeated, but it sounded more wistful this time. She shook her head, and then met my eyes as if together, if we concentrated, we could make it true. “She’s confused, obviously, but she doesn’t
hate
us, Gus. How could she?”

That question haunted me later that night, when I was once again in prone position on my couch, glowering at the ceiling.

Amy Lee had always been different from Georgia and me. We’d gone to BU for any number of reasons, most of them ridiculous (I had fantasies of my life in Boston, Georgia thought the TA she’d met on her tour was hot) whereas Amy Lee had
plans.
She’d enrolled at BU as part of the Goldman School of Dental Medicine’s seven-year plan. Three years of regular arts and sciences classes, then four years of dental school. While we floated from this to that, and Georgia even changed her major twice, Amy Lee remained focused.

She’d always found us a little bit exasperating, now that I thought about it. For a long time I thought Georgia and I provided Amy Lee with a bit of much-needed chaos and levity in her otherwise extremely goal-oriented world. There had been a time she’d loved us for that. I didn’t want to admit that time might have ended. No matter how much I wanted to make her apologize for that scene in front of Henry, I wanted her friendship more.

I just didn’t know what to do about it.

Because it was one thing to not call her, to share in the silent treatment, not-talking thing. It was something else entirely to risk calling her only to find myself screened to voice mail, or fobbed off on Beatrice, the receptionist. In this day and age, as Helen had already demonstrated to me, the only way to force someone into a confrontation they might not want was to show up in a place they couldn’t possibly avoid you (unless they were willing to climb up their own fire escape). There was too much technology to hide behind, otherwise. Until I picked up the phone, I was
not talking
to Amy Lee as much as she was not talking to me. Once I made a call, she might decide to blow it off, and then she was
actively
ignoring me and there was no getting around that.

I thought that someday soon I might be in a different place emotionally, where I could handle that possibility, but I wasn’t there yet.

Not yet.

Tonight I just missed her.

It actually came in handy that it was the Christmas season, I thought a few days later. I could mope through my job, or my nightly rounds of the stores in my vain hopes for inspired gifts, but at least the fact that I
had
to come up with gifts meant that I was moping while out and about in public. I made the usual last-minute selections for my parents, and agonized over what to get my sister and her husband. Only the kids were easy—and anyway, it was fun to shop in toy stores around Christmastime. The looks of abject horror on the faces of all the parents were sort of funny if you knew you weren’t responsible for Santa’s choices come dawn on Christmas morning. And besides, I could only descend so far into self-pity while surrounded by screaming infants, with Salvation Army bells ringing insistently in my ears.

It was this logic that got me to the last holiday party on the last Thursday before Christmas.

First, though, I’d tried to rustle up reinforcements.

“I’m happy to report that I am completely unavailable,” Georgia told me that morning, in a very alarming and perky sort of voice. “As I am currently sitting in the lovely Seattle-Tacoma Airport, enjoying the local ambience. But you have fun.”

“Is he right there?” I asked in an excited whisper.

“I’ll have to get back to you with those figures,” she singsonged. “I’ll call you when we land in Boston, whenever that might be—there’s apparently some storm.”

“It’s almost Christmas,” I said. “Of course there’s a storm.”

“We’ll talk soon,” she promised, and hung up.

I spent the rest of my day neatening up my work area in preparation for Christmas vacation. It was one of the major perks of working for Minerva. She and Dorcas removed themselves from wintry Boston every Christmas. One year it was the Bahamas, another year it was St. Barts. This year they were hitting Cancún. They were usually gone until after New Year’s. All I had to do was deliver them (and Min-erva’s numerous trunks—yes,
trunks
) to the airport the following afternoon and I was free.