When Girlfriends Break Hearts (23 page)

Conner loved the home he and Claire had made for themselves in Madison Park, and moving away from their solid work and friends didn’t seem very appealing. At least at the moment. Claire told me that they agreed to keep their options open and that L.A. could very well become home one day. For now, though, they would stay in Seattle. And Claire agreed to stop pestering about getting married.

“He made it clear that he does want to marry me, and that he totally plans on popping the question,” Claire said, starting to blush. “And he said that I need to be patient. I’m sure he’s half-joking, but he said the more often I ask, the longer I’ll have to wait.”
 

I smiled. “So you’re going to stop bugging him about it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I told him I knew I was being obnoxious about it all. But yeah, I agreed I’d stop nagging. I guess I wanted to hear, in all seriousness, straight from his mouth, that we would be getting married one day. Besides, I think this whole prolonging the marriage thing is Chad’s influence.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said, immediately thinking of Chad naked in the pool that summer night.
Bad influence
, I thought.
Very bad influence.

“Anyway,” Claire said. “That’s besides the point.”

As I’d expected, Conner planned on surprising Claire with a big blowout of a proposal. She’d just have to be patient.
 

“Oh, Sophie, I can’t wait!” Claire said. “I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait, but when he does I know it will be worth it.” She took a quick sip of her drink. “Oh! And you’re definitely going to be my maid of honor.”

“One step at a time, girl,” I said, laughing. “Don’t go all crazy on me and buy your dress and make seating arrangements already.”
 

“Where’s Jackie, any way?” Claire asked.

I reached into my clutch and withdrew my cell phone, tapping away. “Just texted to find out.” I slurped at the sad remains of my watered down mojito. “She’s probably with what’s his face.”

Claire sighed. “I don’t think that’s a healthy relationship. Do you?”

She didn’t have to ask. She knew that I agreed—that it was practically a no-brainer that any and all men who shared Jackie’s bed were all no-good sons of bitches. Jackie had a real knack for picking out the losers of the crop. Hank had to be no different. Especially given the way Jackie chose to “get through” their relationship, which I recounted to Claire, agreeing that an intervention was in order.

My cell phone buzzed. It was Jackie and she, in her ever-colorful lingo, texted back,
Get to my place ASAP. And bring the booze!!!

Claire and I immediately headed towards the door of the bar, leaving our drinks unfinished and tab unpaid. Yet as we were just about out the door the bartender called out and pointed to our glasses. I gave one all-knowing look to Claire and she read my mind. “Here we go again.”
 

After paying the bartender, Claire said, “Let’s get out of here,” scurrying as fast as she could out the door. I followed in suit and hailed a cab.
 

“She always does this,” Claire complained. “Always, always.

“It’s not that we have to pay for the drinks,” she said defensively as the cab driver merged onto the I-5, on his way to Emily’s small, one-bedroom apartment in the Fremont district that she kept as a place to occasionally hang up her hat and call home. Emily’s apartment was also the official residency of Jackie, at least when she wasn’t living with the latest apple of her eye. Or accepting money from Lara to try to get on her feet and find a place of her own to call home.

“Jackie always does this kind of thing,” Claire continued. “Constantly gets into bad relationship after bad relationship. And then we get involved, pull her out of it, and watch her go on a drinking binge. I mean, what the hell is she thinking asking you to ‘bring the booze?’ The girl has got to grow up.”

“We’ll find out what happened,” I said, texting Jackie that we were on our way. “Calm down, Claire. We’ve been through this before.”

“That’s exactly the problem. We’re always doing the same thing, over and over. When is she ever going to find someone who treats her well? When will she ever learn?”

“Probably when she decides to stop hiding in her booze or turning to pot to ‘get through’ a relationship. And besides, Jackie didn’t exactly have the best upbringing. She’s got a rather jaded view of the world. We can’t hold it against her for acting like this. I mean, her mother’s not exactly the best example for a mature female role model, you know?”

Jackie had grown up on the lower end of the social scale—parents divorced at a young age, a mother who found the answer to life’s problems in a bottle and on the arm of a pinky-ring-wearing sleaze bag, a father who decided too late that two children and a wife and the settled-down lifestyle weren’t for him, and an older brother who had been in and out of jail for anything from petty theft to domestic abuse. It was any wonder Jackie picked herself up out of her Seattle suburb, ramshackle home and applied for U Dub and actually got accepted with her mediocre grades.

I was undoubtedly proud of how far Jackie had come and how she was able to have enough sense and self-confidence to set straight a better path for herself, but I hated it when she fell victim to the habits of her upbringing—the chain smoking, the drinking, the pot, the promiscuity, the inability to hold down
any
job (blow jobs withheld), and the general irresponsibility and self-inflicted harm. Sometimes I felt like slapping her and telling her that she was wasting a perfectly beautiful and opportune life. More so now than ever. You simply cannot take life for granted.

When Claire and I arrived, we found Jackie in the kitchen mixing a cocktail. Music blared and had it not been for an unlocked door Jackie probably never would have heard our knocking and we would never have been able to get in.

The smell of cigar smoke wafted in the air.

“Jackie!” I yelled over the tunes of The Kooks.

Normally I, and any person not intoxicated, would have jumped at the sound of someone sneaking in the apartment. Jackie, rocking her body to the tunes, slowly turned around, messily clinking with one hand a spoon in her glass, and holding a smoking cigar in the other.

“Girls!” she shrieked. “What the hell took you so long?” She was obviously well inebriated. We had our hands full. She took a long puff of her cigar and made an exaggerated exhalation in our direction. “The party’s just getting started. Can I make you a drink?” She held up her glass to us. “A smoke?” She waved around her cigar.

“Jackie, what’s going on?” Claire asked in a sympathetic and sweet tone. I think she had gotten most of her initial anger out in the cab drive over here.

“Life sucks, but the party’s
greeeaaaat!
”

“Jackie,
what
is going on? What happened?” I pressed.

Jackie led us into the living room and sat down on the love seat. She took another puff of her cigar and offered it to us once again.

“Put that nasty thing out, Jackie.” I waved the smoke away. “It’s not healthy. You know those things will kill you.”

She took another long drag and chuckled. “I’m young. I’m invincible. And I’m not like you and Claire, all healthy and shit. If I ran or worked out, I would
die
.”

“Yeah, that’s our point,” Claire said blankly. “What happened, anyway? Why weren’t you at your favorite bar? What happened with Hank?”
 

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Jackie interrupted. “I’m sorry about that. The drinks, eh? Yeah, Hank and I are splits-ohs, so the drinks aren’t exactly free anymore.” She rolled her eyes. Except for the fact that she was smoking a stogie, was highly liquored up, and nursed a potent cocktail in her hand, she was acting like a thirteen-year-old.

“We could care less about the drinks, Jackie,” Claire said. “What happened with Hank? Are you okay?”

By the looks of it, I’d say ‘no.’
 

“Ugh, Claire. So many
questions.
So many, many questions.” Jackie took a big gulp of her drink. “The relationship ran its course and we’re through. No big fuckin’ deal. I don’t care. He doesn’t care. It’s fine. It’s all
gooood
.”

Jackie’s rash and immature behavior was more than enough to watch, and now I had to hear it. I took the cigar and drink out of Jackie’s hands.
 

“Hey,” she scowled. “Give those back.”

“You’re liquored up enough, girl. And Emily would kill you if she caught you smoking these in her apartment. Not to mention the landlord.”
 

So that was a little half-truth. Emily probably would have turned a blind eye to the smoking, as she herself let loose now and then and was prone to acting a bit like Jackie in the whole wild-and-fancy-free department. The two of them knew how to party and fancied drunk and dizzy nights out on the town, a little puff-puff on the reefer, and the occasional one-night-stands. Probably a reason they got along particularly well. Alright, so I could be thrown into that fancy-free group too. Must I bring up Chad again? Or my relapse with Brandon? But for the most part, Jackie and Emily were the “wild ones,” Jackie the clear winner of the two. And sometimes it was downright exhausting.
 

With the carcinogenic items aside, Jackie explained to us that earlier that night she and Hank had gotten into a big fight about their relationship, arguing about the general no-strings-attached deal they had apparently made with one another. Hank agreed that he would still see other people and wouldn’t hold it against Jackie to do the same.
 

Problem was, in the two months they had been seeing each other, Hank had found a flirty college girl who had seen the same thing in him as Jackie had (a quick and somewhat painless way to be wined and dined). But Jackie hadn’t found anyone else she was interested in.
 

Two months in with Hank and no “better” prospects in sight, she said she just got “a little too comfortable in something I never should have gotten comfortable with in the first place.” She didn’t like Hank splitting his time with another girl (probably because she didn’t have anyone to spend the other half of her time with), so she told him he had to choose. It was either flirty college girl or her. He chose the younger and apparently larger-breasted option.

“He sucked in bed, anyway,” Jackie said casually. “It’s not like I’m missing out on all that much by not being with him. Of course his penthouse was super nice and he bought me a lot of cool shit. And you must admit, the free drinks were pretty badass, but really, I’m not missing out. His stupid new floozy will get the ax, too. Eventually she’ll get what’s coming to her, just like I did.”

Jackie often did that to herself, and I detested it. She never found anything wrong with putting herself down, or in accentuating her faults or blaming herself for the way things happened in her life. It wasn’t her mother’s or her father’s negligence that had given way to such a bad home life. It was because she wasn’t pretty or smart enough to deserve their love. It wasn’t that school actually was difficult or that she didn’t really apply herself. It was that she was too stupid and unworthy to get anything above a ‘C’ average. It wasn’t because she had the propensity to choose assholes for boyfriends. It was because that was the best she could do because she was trash.
 

As we had done countless times before, Claire and I stayed with Jackie through the night and well into the morning, comforting her and encouraging her to make better choices next time around. And Claire and I were always good for a group hug, a late-night get-together in front of the television, and pancakes in the morning.
 

Unfortunately, Jackie’s kitchen cupboards and refrigerator didn’t produce any of the necessary ingredients for homemade pancakes—definitely not my signature blueberry ones. With Jackie’s temporary relocation to Hank’s place and with Emily off the continent, the kitchen was mostly bare. The half-empty box of Bisquick in the cupboard and the quart of milk and half-dozen eggs from the convenience store on the corner saved us. A big pancake breakfast and freshly brewed coffee was just what Claire, Jackie, and I needed. We had all been there before. The scene of Sunday morning chit-chat over pancakes or waffles or omelets was a familiar one, and a favorite of all of ours. It’s astounding what can be accomplished with the girls on a weekend morning.

It’s pretty amazing,
I thought as I stabbed at a fluffy piece of pancake,
that I could have such a close group of girlfriends in my life. Even with all of the complications we go through. Even with how different we can be from one another. We all just…fit somehow.
I thought of Robin, and Lara, both friends who may not have “fit” as of late, but would hopefully, as old times, be one of the six close-knit girlfriends I simply couldn’t live without.
 

Jackie may have been facing her own bout of drama (then again, who isn’t?). And it was probably going to take her some time to pick up her pieces and move on, but for whatever it was worth I offered her my sincere consolation. I had been down that road…was still wandering down it, in fact. She made sure that I knew that my breakup with Brandon, a relationship of three serious years, and my fall out with two of my best friends over a huge ordeal, were a lot tougher to get over than a “middle-aged asshole who couldn’t screw his way out of a paper bag.” (She always had a colorful way of describing her exes.) I concurred, but the point I was trying to make was that Jackie didn’t have to be alone. She could turn to me, to Claire, even to Lara or Robin or Emily. We would be there, as we always had been. And always would be. I knew that more than ever since I had, as Jackie pointed out, been through a tumultuous experience. And I knew that I would still have that network of female friends who would be there for me, who would love me, and who would hopefully forgive me…even if it had taken me awhile to forgive them.

“That’s what we do,” Claire said. “We’re there for each other. It was the same freshman year. It’s the same today. It’ll be the same when we’re eighty-year-old grannies. We’re best friends, Jackie. Isn’t that right, Sophie?” She looked at me, smiling.