Alexis, who I used to think I was in love with, glares at me.
“Uh-huh.” I take a gulp of coffee, which hasn’t quite cooled and burns down my throat. “So my guess is that’s what Sylv said to you, and then you pushed back, because of course you did, and that’s when she said what you said to me, huh?”
“Said what to who?” Alexis sips the highland grog that I know she hates and tries to hide her grimace.
“You left her to grieve alone, Lexy. Damn.”
Once again, I feel like all the pieces have come together and I can finally see what should have been obvious.
“The day after the accident, why were people coming to your house instead of you going to Sylvie’s?” I ask.
“I went to the hospital when her parents called me. I was tired and wanted to go home! And our friends needed a place to grieve together, Jack. Sylvie isn’t my only friend.”
“There’s a basement in every damn house in this city and you know it,” I say. “Sylvie needed you. Damn, I wouldn’t have minded—” My serenity and my voice crack at this point, but it can’t be helped. “It would have been nice if you had said something to acknowledge that he was my best friend, Lex. Maybe my only real friend, I don’t know. But the fact that you compare your grief to mine? Or Sylvie’s?”
I shake my head. The whole conversation is a moot point.
I push back from the table to stand. I don’t think Alexis believes that I will leave without her permission, because she makes a scoffing sound at me.
I look at her one last time. She has a pretty face. For now.
“Sylvie said that you had a lot of growing up to do, but honestly, Lex? If you’re this far behind at eighteen, I don’t know if you’re ever going to catch up. I hope you do, but…” I shrug. I give up and stand up.
“Jack, you are not seriously—”
I am, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
eleven
Apparently, the final thing I must do to prove to my parents that I’m going to be okay is go out with “my friends” before I leave for college. This doesn’t seem like the time to point out that I am questioning whether I have friends outside of Finn. I’m starting to see how superficial my other relationships have been. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t given Sylvie such a hard time about everything. I suppose it wouldn’t help to reach out and tell her that she might have been right, that maybe I never knew what friendship was until it was taken from me.
But then Kyle texts me that there’s a party in St. Charles tonight, and even though it’s the first time anyone from our class has reached out to me since the funeral, part of me melts a little. Part of me wonders if it would feel normal. It’s not like Finn was at every party with me. Half the time, Finn was off making sure Sylvie wasn’t giving herself alcohol poisoning on a dare anyway.
The way my parents light up when I say there’s a party across the river that a bunch of the team will be at and I figure I’ll stop by and say some goodbyes? That almost makes it worth the effort. If I can fool my parents that I’m okay, maybe I’ll be able to fool myself eventually.
As I drive over the bridge, I think about how whenever we went to St. Charles, Finn would say something about the airport expansion and white flight, and I’d be like, “Yeah, people suck. What are you going to do about it?” If Sylvie was in the car, she would talk to him about it, and I’d zone out or make out with Alexis if she was there. It’s not that what Finn was talking about didn’t seem important, but I figured we were kids. What kind of impact could we make?
I guess I don’t think that way anymore, but I also don’t have anyone to explain that stuff to me.
I could ask Sylvie, but there’s a chance she’s not speaking to me given our last text exchange.
Once I arrive at the address, I recognize the house. I’ve been here before. It had been a small party where everyone else knew each other. Finn, Sylvie, Alexis, and I were only there because an upperclassman from the team knew the host and invited us along with him. For a small party, there was a surprising amount of alcohol. At some point, late in the night, a dude said that the cop who lived next door would be coming home from his shift soon, and wouldn’t it be funny if one of the girls flashed him?
Despite the number of people, including the host, who pointed out the obvious reason this was a bad idea, Sylvie volunteered for the job. It didn’t matter that most people at the house were sober enough to not let the superdrunk girl antagonize the cop, Sylvie and Finn once again argued about whether Finn was trying to control Sylvie by stopping her from doing something stupid. Worse still, they had their argument in the front seat of Finn’s little red car while Alexis and I were squeezed in the back seat and she was mad at me about some mysterious thing.