“My mom left when I was six,” I say. “And my dad’s an asshole.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“I’m just telling you so you know that I get it,” I say, “that I know how it hurts. Not so you’ll feel sorry for me.”
She blows her nose into a wad of toilet paper she’s shoved in the pocket of my pajama pants.
“I’m not good at crying,” she says. “It’s either nothing ever, even when I should be crying, or it’s like a three-day explosion. I hate it.” She takes a deep breath, determined to collect herself, grabs the remote and turns on the television.
We watch a Spenser: For Hire rerun and make fun of the puffy-sleeved satin blouses Spenser’s psychologist girlfriend wears. Carly grabs my hand and holds it, and you’d think it would be weird, but it’s not, because it’s not about anything other than the fact that she really needs a friend.
* * *
When Adam comes home, we’re out on the fire escape so Carly can smoke.
“Hello?” he says as he walks in the bathroom and peeks out the window. It’s hard not to jump up and run inside to kiss him, but I don’t want to make Carly feel weird, or rub in the fact that I have someone when she just broke up with her someone.
Carly stiffens, like she’s been caught.
Adam looks confused, but I can also tell that he gets that she’s been crying. “Hi, Carly,” he says, trying hard to act like it’s normal that she’s here so she won’t feel uncomfortable. I’m proud of him. “We were going to order pizza from The Nines tonight. Does eggplant work for you?”
“Sure,” Carly says, and her back loosens up.
Adam tells Carly she can stay as long as she needs to. I want Adam to myself again, almost as soon as he offers, but it’s nice that we can do this for Carly. I finally get to have a friend over. I finally get to be a friend.
We eat pizza and drink beer and watch 90210, lined up in a row on the couch: Adam, me, and Carly. I almost tell them that it’s my first sleepover party, but I think it would be too weird.
* * *
Carly sleeps on the futon. She snores. Adam and I lie in bed and giggle every time she gets particularly loud. We have a witness to us now. It’s funny the way we just went to bed like that’s who we are. We’re together and we sleep together and being open about it makes it so much more real. I love it and it terrifies me at the same time, like how I felt when Matty and I climbed to the roof of the high school to watch an eclipse and I stood with my toes at the very edge.
“Looks like you’re in the habit of taking in lost girls,” I say, poking Adam’s shoulder.
“You’re the only one who gets to stay forever,” he says.
* * *
When Adam and I wake up, Carly is still sleeping, so we tiptoe around, trying to avoid the floorboards that are known creakers. Adam makes a full pot of coffee and a huge stack of pancakes, which amazes me, because I didn’t even know we had the right ingedients.
“I wanted to make them shaped like something,” Adam says, waving the spatula at the pan, “but they all ended up looking like pancakes.”
When Carly wakes up and stumbles into the kitchen, with puffy eyes and her black and purple hair sticking out at every angle, Adam offers her pancake-shaped pancakes, and I pour her a cup of coffee.
“You guys pre-caffeinate too?” she says, smiling at us. “You two are cute, you know. It’s nice.”
Adam cuts orange slices and Carly and I set places at the little card table in the kitchen that Adam and I hardly ever use.
After breakfast, Adam and Carly and me walk to Decadence together. When we hit the brick walkway of The Commons, it strikes me as funny—the three of us, side by side, like we’re on our way to Oz and short a lion. And at work, Carly is different. She’s chatty. She winks at me when the absurdly picky lady comes in and takes five minutes to get her full order out. She makes me a latte and tells Bodie to watch the register and we take her smoke break together, sitting on milk crates in the alley. She tells me she feels like an idiot, but she really misses Rosemary. She tells me she knows there’s no way it will ever work out for them now, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s scared to be alone.
“I think maybe everyone is scared to be alone,” I tell her. “Maybe when you get down to it, that’s why everybody does everything. Maybe all we’re doing is trying to be less alone.”
“Are you sure you don’t smoke up?” Carly says, laughing. She taps the side of my boot with the side of hers.