I did not envision spending the evening getting drunk with my ex's mistress (ex's ex-mistress?), but the best laid plans and all.

She spotted the bottle of wine as we were getting paper plates out for the frozen pizza. "Wow, I don't even remember what wine tastes like," she said dryly.

Drinking was one thing I didn't do much of. "You're welcome to it."

"Really?" She took the bottle. She was dressed once again in her favorite jeans, the laundry done and a white shirt that made her eyes even more turquoise. "I haven't had anything to drink in like a year. You know how Cale is about alcohol." She rolled her eyes and began searching through the drawers for a bottle opener.

I half admired and half resented her familiarity with everything from my fiance to my utensils. "Third drawer down, there should be one."

There was and she got it open and poured two water glasses mostly full. "This is way too much," she said, but didn't do anything to change it. I followed her--in my own house--to the couch and we sat more or less awkwardly.

"What do you watch?" I asked politely, trying not to sound like it was through clenched teeth. I picked up the glass because it was there and took a sip. "Fuck, that's gross." Vinegary. I drank a little more.

She laughed, an exhalation from her nose. "It's not Cristal," she agreed. "I'm guessing you don't drink much, because of Cale."

My eye twitched at the nickname and I drank more of the wine. "Right."

She raised her glass. "Well, he's not here now," she said, kind of bitterly, and gestured to the TV. "Anything's fine." Her bun was too loose and starting to droop. Her ears stuck out a little bit but it worked for her. 

Of course it did.

I put on something and a few minutes later found I was drinking the last of my wine. It didn't taste that bad anymore. I could definitely feel it already. It was getting dark and I thought I should probably turn some lights on but I was too lazy to move.

After fifteen minutes of what I considered awkward silence, I stood and went to the door, inviting her with a look. "I don't smoke inside because of the bird and all," I told her as we sat on the front steps. The alcohol was making me feel super relaxed, fluid, good. Too good. "Cigarettes, anyway."

"Cale didn't get around to mentioning the crow." Her bun was now a looped ponytail at the base of her neck.

"Stop calling him that," I said without meaning to. "Sorry. But seriously. Makes him sound like a leafy green." I lit my cigarette with only a little bit of trouble and inhaled. "Damn, that's good." I took another drag and caught myself almost passing it to her. Fuck. Drunk me ran on automatic.

She was lighting her own, anyway. "Sorry," she said, her head bowed in embarrassment.

"No, it's just weird. All of it." I lived at the end of a lane with few streetlights, and the stars were speckled mercury drops across the sky. I felt like I was floating. I put my empty hand flat on the porch boards to feel the solidness. My head radio was playing Arctic Monkeys. Landed in a very common crisis, everything's in order in a black hole, everything was pretty in the past though.

"You and Leif seem close." She picked up one of the gravel pieces Leif had been playing with earlier.

"We are," I said, with a mixture of pride and defiance and possessiveness I always felt when someone questioned me about him. "He's not perfect like Caleb, certainly, but he's a great person. He's underrated."

She blew smoke rings into the night, looking down the lane. I wondered if he'd watched her do it and thought of me since it was a trick I loved to do. "You guys never . . . ?"

Nosy as fuck much? "No. I mean, we entertained the thought for a minute like eleven years ago, but then I fell for Caleb." I was going for matter-of-fact but only sounded strained.

She pulled the hair tie from her former bun and her hair fell heavily down her back. It was shiny in the weak light, the kind of many-colored blond that some people are just born with. And others pay a lot of money for. She took a drag, saying, "Nice to smoke without getting the nose wrinkle."

I knew exactly what she meant and bit my lip to stifle the smile. "He doesn't like smoking much."

"He's so fucking uptight, what were we even thinking," she said with a snort, and I couldn't help it; I laughed too. "Like, when I met him? I had light blue hair. And he wasn't excited about it, convinced me to let it wash out." She smoked, a thoughtful air about her. Her hair draped over her shoulder like it was liquid.

"Yeah, he likes things the way he likes things," I agreed. We'd battled more than once about my smoking, and the few tattoos I had, and my somewhat messy ways. It was just part of us. Or had been. I sat up straighter. "I should probably get another tattoo."

She was nodding. "And I should dye my hair. But another tattoo sounds good too. Maybe another bottle of wine for kicks. You could do your hair a nice bright pink."

I was smiling despite myself so I put out my cigarette and got up to go in. She followed me, kind of loud and clumsy in the way that drunk people are. I was thinking about the second bottle of wine suggestion. "I don't have any more wine, but there's this." "This" was an old bottle of whiskey, half full, that Leif had stashed there before he quit drinking.

"Oh damn," she said with appreciation. "Sold." With the most animation I'd seen from her so far, she went back into the living room and sat with her legs tucked up underneath her, turned toward me somewhat. A foot of space was between us as she poured a shot into each of our glasses. "Sorry in advance if I cry when I'm drunk," she added flippantly, making fun of herself a little.

"Ditto," I muttered, thinking of my emotional state recently. I made the mistake of smelling the liquor.

She saw the face I made and the corner of her mouth lifted as she raised her own glass a bit in what I supposed was a free-from-Caleb toast. We drank at the same time and I coughed as the warmth spread through me. "He cried when he told me about you," she said, and there was no mistaking the contempt in her voice. "Speaking of crying."

"Fuck him," I said in the same tone. Fucking coward. "Only because he felt guilty. And sorry for himself."

She nodded emphatically, pointing at me. "Right! The audacity! I think he's a coward for waiting, for what he did, for all of it. A fucking coward, seriously. What a douche." She poured more shots in the water glasses, an inch deep. A little spilled down the side of her glass and she caught it with her finger, putting the drop to her lips. I knew I was staring but she was like art somehow, and my reactions were slow. I finally made myself look away. "Then he felt the need to tell me, like, the rest. Like who you are."

Of course he did. "Fuck him," I said again, getting warm, but I didn't know if it preceded tears or rage. Or both. "Of all the things?"

She handed me the glass, nodding. "Right?" she said again. "Sorry, I say right a lot when I'm drinking. But seriously. So he tells me about you and then tells me what happened to you." She looked at my hand and away again.

"As much as he knows," I said stiffly, with my own contempt. I forced myself not to hide my fingers and we both drank the shots. The edges of the room were spinning now. The clock fuzzily read 9:39.

"I mean, I know who you are anyway," she went on, her words not that clear. She tried not to look at my hand. "I saw the movie on TV and everything."

"It was a terrible fucking movie." I didn't know how to handle what she was saying so was just going on automatic.

"It was," she said, nodding, attempting to pour more liquor into the glasses. "Like a bad Lifetime movie."

Nailed it. "My dad signed my rights away for it when I was still in the hospital," I found myself telling her. "Then I turned eighteen like two weeks later, and the money was all mine. He hadn't factored that little possibility in," I said with a smirk.

"Nice," she approved. "I fucking hate the way adults try to manipulate us when we're growing up. Like we're . . . possessions." She set her glass down and began gathering her hair up, twirling it before winding it around and around itself until it sat neatly on top of her head again. She snapped the band around it three times and gave it a few pats. Caleb liked hair worn down, and I wondered if she was keeping it up partly for that reason.

I stole her word. "Right?"

She leaned back against the armrest, bringing her legs out from underneath her and crossing them. "I'm sorry, though. I, um, sent you a card." She turned pink immediately.

My mind was two steps behind the conversation. "You what?"

She ran her finger around the rim, eyes on it too. "I mean, I saw what happened on the news. Of course; it was all they talked about. And I felt really bad. That, you know, that happened to you. So I sent you a get well card?" She put her hand over her eyes. I could see her furrowed brow and her ears were basically fire-engine red. "It was dumb. I was a dumb teenager."

But I was touched despite myself, probably due to the alcohol. "Really?"

"I don't even know why I told you that," came her muffled voice as her hand was now covering her whole face. "I'm so lame."

"No, it's fine, you're fine." I felt alarmingly close to tears and tried to blame that on the liquor, too, though I was always oversensitive. "That was really nice. I don't remember much from then, but I'm sure it was great." Why did I have to be so awkward. Alcohol was supposed to help with that, wasn't it? Jesus.

She took her hand away, her cheeks still the color of these roses that grew wild in the back at my old house. "It had a penguin on it. Of all things." She shook her head.

"I like penguins," I said nonsensically. I mean they were alright.  

She poured another half-inch in each glass, clinking the bottle against mine so hard I thought it would break. "Oops," she said, a giggle escaping.

The worst part was I giggled too. It was then I knew we were pretty faded.

She left her glass on the table as her hand drifted up. She pulled the tie out of her hair again. "I totally need to cut it, but I always chicken out," she said almost apologetically. She used her fingernails to loosen it at the roots, leaning her head back a little in an unselfconscious gesture as she did so. It was the kind of hair that wouldn't dare to fluff up in humidity, or dry half-assed curly.

My hair broke off halfway down my back no matter what conditioner I tried, which was probably just as well since I didn't have the patience to deal with it being longer. "At least it's healthy. Most really long hair is like jagged and kind of just gross."

"Right? I hate that." She picked up a handful and eyed it critically. "I think mine's okay. Plus, it covers these ears." She tugged one kind of sadly. "Stick out city."

"They stick out, like, the tiniest bit," I protested truthfully, because I felt like if I said they didn't she would know I was lying and I wasn't a liar. Like some people I could mention.

She snorted. "But if it's noticeable, it's too much."

I understood.

"We all had to have long hair when I was in school, so we could wear it the same. As cheerleaders," she explained languidly, picking up her drink and holding it with her pinky out. I wondered if everyone would have noticed, or if it was just me.

Then I realized what she had said. "Wait, you were a cheerleader?" I briefly flashed on all the torture I'd been on the receiving end of in high school, from those very kinds of girls.

She held her free hand up in protest. "I was a nice one," she said. "We were really nice people. I swear to God. We weren't like movie cheerleaders. We did volunteering and stuff, like, because we wanted to." She settled back into the couch. "We were really nice," she said again, trailing fingers through the ends of her hair.

"Not so much at our school," I said. I reached for my glass and was momentarily distracted by my hand looking wavy and cool. "They were definitely movie cheerleaders." I realized I wasn't bothering to hide my other hand from her and wondered a little at it. "They hated me a lot."

They had made it their personal mission to make my and my sister's lives hell, including Leif as often as possible in the endless hazing.

She was solemn. "We had those girls too. We just weren't them."

"Until halfway through our senior year, it was a nightmare," I admitted.

She raised the glass to her lips, braced herself, and tilted it, swallowing. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and traded the glass for a bottle of water. "What stopped 'em then?"

I smiled at the memory. "Leif blew up one of their fancy cars."

She almost spat out the water. She swallowed it, coughing a little. "No fucking way."

I nodded gleefully, following her example with the shot. I barely tasted it, just got a little warmer. "I mean no one could prove it. But they knew. And it stopped." I snorted. "It was the best way to get through to them."

She tucked her feet underneath her. pulling all her hair to one side and twisting it gently around her hand. It reminded me of Leif and his fidget toys. "School is like the worst idea in the world. It's seriously like the most awful things a person could dream up to do to adolescents."

"Caleb liked it," I said, and we both giggled. Shit. Shit. I could not drink and giggle with this girl of all people. Somehow I knew that on some level, but it was far away.

"I'm sure he did. I'm sure he was class president and ran yearbook."

"No, he was only the vice president," I said truthfully. "We had too many sibs to take care of for him to run yearbook, though he took most of the pictures. We were kind of an unusual couple." She should have known him then. He really could have used a friendly cheerleader to round out his perfection. Saved us all this wasted time together.

Dickhead.

"Wait, I have a list here, its . . . " She stood, swaying, and steadied herself on the arm of the couch. "Whoa. I'm kind of lit. Um, oh yeah." She went to her stuff and I heard some unnecessary banging around before she returned. "He gave me this, before . . . before." She sat back down, her hair swinging like a beaded hippie curtain, and handed me a piece of paper.

It was a list of Caleb's siblings:

Caleb and Leif, 26
Ida (moved to NY), 23
Jackson (moved to NY), 20
Charlotte, 16
Gwen, 12
Ruby, 10

"Yep," I said, getting a pink pen off the coffee table to make some additions. "He forgot to mention that Ida and Jackson are complete and literal psychopaths, but that's the gist of it. Here's mine." I turned it over and wrote my own list:

Mary, 26
Elle, 24
Hazel, 22
    -Shiloh, 6
    -Jasper, 3
    -Hank, 6 months
Noah, 17 (lives at his beloved boarding school)
Joey, 15

I handed it back to her and she looked it over. "Wow."

"Right? So they were all like, little, when we were in high school. Or little enough anyway to need a lot of care." 

"I was dating 'Dave' then," she said mockingly. "Football player. Gorgeous. Turned out he was super gay, which explained a lot." She let go of her hair and smiled. "I was the only one not complaining about my boyfriend wanting to do it 24/7, for one thing. It was a total perk."

"Caleb wasn't pushy about sex," I said without thinking.

"Maybe not back then," she said, then turned bright pink even as her hand went to her mouth. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

I realized, albeit slowly, she had just told me that their abstinence had not been his idea. "Damn," I said, but not to her. "I had that backward. Guess that was wishful thinking."

"I'm sorry, Mary. I didn't mean to say that," she said earnestly, and she made my name sound musical. She put her hand on my arm to emphasize her words, then took it way. But I felt it still.

I waved her off. I was too drunk to care about hurt feelings and social faux pas. "You're a singer?" I was thinking of the music in her voice, wondering if it was always there.

She was momentarily thrown by this non sequitur but recovered quickly. "I, um . . . yes?" She looked at me quizzically, the muted TV throwing shadows on her face.

"How come you didn't sleep with him, if you didn't know about me?" I suddenly wondered. I was all over the place.

Her face was almost back to normal color but that pinked it up again. It was a little bit fascinating to see. "I'm old-fashioned?"

"Your answers are kind of like questions too." I yawned, covering my mouth.

"They are?" she asked, and the corner of her mouth rose a little.

I bit back my own smile. "They are." I leaned back into the couch and tried to hold onto the conversation but couldn't. "Fucking Caleb," I said, shaking my head. "I kind of like the idea of him stressing out as your last day got closer."

She was nodding. "I mean, I could tell. I knew something big was going on. I just, I had no idea. How could I? And then he's telling me all this shit," she says, holding her glass and waving it around for emphasis. "Like I'm trying to process all this shit he's throwing at me and he starts crying."

I felt so much contempt I could taste it. "I hate him."

"Me too," she said flatly. She shook her head a little, biting her lower lip. "I don't know what he was thinking. If I could just figure that part out, you know? Fuck. Sorry. I need another cigarette." She got up and unsteadily went outside.

I made my own weaving way into my room with plans to get a hoodie. The bird was watching TV on the bed. Spongebob. "Don't stay up too late," I told him, my words slurred. I lay down for a second and passed out.

songs in this chapter:
Fluorescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys