professional-looking in a perfectly tailored suit. Gemma says it reads too uptight-old-man for her, that he should lose the tie clip or pocket square. They got together right around the time JR and I moved in together, and although they don’t technically live together, he spends most of his nights at her place. He says it’s more convenient to get to his office in Midtown, but he’s not fooling anyone. Likewise Gemma says she wants to wait until her styling business is a bit more stable before they get engaged. The two of them are like the worst poker players ever—we all see their bluff.
I don’t have it in me to argue with her about how much she says to Luke, so I keep stuttering through my tears. “F-f-f-f-irst of all, I don’t even know when he’s coming home. He was arrested again; he’s in jail.”
“Oh my god, it’s exactly like your graduation! Remember? You called me on your way to bail him out at the police station, that son of a bitch.” Told you she doesn’t hold back.
“I know. He had that same annoyed look in his eyes this morning. It was like, screw you and whatever plans you have, to go to graduation or work or whatever. The rules don’t apply to me. I can smoke pot where I want, when I want.”
I look up from my glass of water. I had been staring into it, wondering what it would be like to be the water—to feel no emotion, no heartache, no betrayal—wouldn’t that be nice.
“I just don’t know what to do, Gem. She texted him ‘no matter what I love you’ and she was with him when he got arrested. I mean, they’re like boyfriend, girlfriend.”
“Wait—so you were sleeping, and the cop came and woke you up? And what the hell is she doing with him at three o’clock in the morning? Then what, she goes home and texts him? I can’t. I can’t! What a dumb little whore. I’m gonna kill her.”
“I mean, I should have known. They’ve been so close for so long now. Remember when I went to visit them last year on the set of The Real Housewives of Dallas and she picked the room right next to his in their production house, the only two rooms on the basement floor? She told me they would get high together every night and go over the shoot schedule for the next day and it was perfect because the rest of the team wouldn’t bother them. When I told him that it wasn’t cool—them smoking together, sleeping on their own floor, while I was back in New York—and that he should be sleeping with the rest of the guys on the team upstairs, he told me I was crazy.”
I can tell Gemma’s furious. She’s got the most thick, gorgeous eyebrows—the kind every girl plucks, brushes, and wishes for her own—but she does this thing with them when she’s mad: she scrunches her face so tight that the two thick, beautiful lines over her eyes come together to form one giant unibrow. It’s the only time you’re not jealous of them.
“The only crazy one here is him, G. Crazy not to know he’s the luckiest guy on the fucking planet to have you as his fiancée after all the shit he’s put you through.” She’s standing up now. “Crazy to think he can screw around with this little girl and not get caught.”
“Do you think they’re sleeping together? Has he been cheating on me this whole time?”
“I mean, Guils. I remember the day you met JR, your very first day at UCLA. You called and told me this gorgeous guy came up to you at a party, you talked all night, he walked you home, and then you stopped him from trying to make out with you because you were still going out with David.”
“Oh, David. Life was so much simpler back in high school. I wonder if David’s on Face—”
“Guils! Come on. When you told JR you had a boyfriend, he said, ‘Who cares, I have a girlfriend.’ He doesn’t get it. He never has!”
“But I wound up breaking up with David a week later after I went with JR to his lacrosse tryout. Plus we were seventeen and eighteen years old! We were babies. He’s my family, Gem. Families go through rough patches. They don’t just break up.” Now I was the one scrunching my eyebrows in fury.
“You know I love him, G. I love him for the man he tries to be and the man you wish he was. But G, he’s not. What about two days before Labor Day, after you spent all that time planning a long weekend away for you guys, and he says he’s going to that fucking film festival or whatever because he needs to ‘get away from life for a little bit’?” She curled her fingers into violent air quotes. “I mean, who does that? It’s always something with him. He disappoints you, then knows exactly how to get you back in his good graces. You love him, I get it, so you let him. But enough is enough.”
“I know, but that’s him. You know he’s a thinker and he likes time to himself. And he’s spontaneous. I love that about him. He’s not V-Dub, with his traditional suit-and-tie job. He’ll never be that guy. I know he changes and cancels plans all the time. I hate that, but that’s what I signed up for. His work is insane and demanding and unpredictable and I …”
“Love him. Just say it. But you love him.”
And with those words the floodgates open. There I am, moaning and sobbing into the couch cushions like a five-year-old in utter defiance of her bedtime. Nothing can console me. I’m a wild animal, thrashing and snotting and flailing about. I can see Gemma out of the corner of my foggy, bloodshot eye, and she looks concerned. She’s trying to figure out how to get near me, to pacify me, like a zookeeper might with an out-of-control ape. But she’s at a loss. And then I go still—we both do.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
Beep, beep, beep.
“That.”
I struggle to pick up my face from the couch and grab for the phone before it has the chance to buzz again. One new text message from JR.
“G, what are you doing?” I’m not listening to Gemma, I can’t even see her. I’m on autopilot. I click OK.
GUILS, WHERE ARE YOU? THEY FINALLY LET ME GO. I’M HOME. I’M GONNA TAKE ZELDA FOR A WALK. WANT ME TO MEET YOU SOMEWHERE?
“It’s him! Oh my god, he’s home from jail. And shoot, it’s 1:34. I came here right from work and I didn’t get Zelda! I’m losing my mind, Gem. What am I supposed to do?”
“You go home, you tell him he’s the biggest piece of shit you ever met, you pack a bag and tell him you’re outta there. Enough is enough. You’re moving in with me.”
In a soft whisper, I reply, “So, I need to end it?”
We stare at each other. It feels like that second of silence between the point of impact in a massive ten-car crash when everyone jumps out of their cars screaming, sirens raging. A good friend will hate someone simply if you ask them to do so. A best friend doesn’t even need to be queried. Such is the case between Gemma and me. Few words ever need to be spoken for us to know how the other thinks or feels, or in this case, wants to happen next. My phone dings again, interrupting that precious silence, reminding me that I have yet to acknowledge his text.
GUILS, WHERE ARE YOU? THEY FINALLY LET ME GO. I’M HOME. I’M GONNA TAKE ZELDA FOR A WALK. WANT ME TO MEET YOU SOMEWHERE?
I try to take an honest account of my current status before getting up the nerve to tell her what I’m really thinking. My stomach is hollow, as is my heart, and my eyes are full of tears, so I just say it. “I’m not ready for it to be over.”
Pretending to ignore what I just said, Gem grabs the phone from me and starts typing. “Here, I’ll just say that you’re on your way home now. See you soon.” She turns the phone around to show me. “That work for you?”
As I scan the words she’s concocted into a sentence for me, another alert pops up. One new text message from JR. We stare at the screen together, reading aloud.
G, YOU OKAY BABY? WHERE ARE YOU???
“I gotta go take care of this.” As I jump up and grab for my