“First time with what?” Nicole asks, Sloane and Lucy turning to look at her like they forgot she was there. She seems so small like that, bent into a ball in the corner of the couch, and it brings to mind the way she looked last night: curled up on the floor like a baby bird, wet and trembling, after tumbling out of a tree. I wonder if she even remembers me cleaning her up, tucking her in. Lying awake for over an hour to make sure she wouldn’t get sick again and choke to death in her sleep.
“Molly,” Lucy says. “I was an idiot and gave her a whole pill.”
That explains the euphoria, then. The overwhelming sense of love I felt as I looked at all of them around that fire, dreamily pondering the possibility of Levi and me living together in perfect harmony. What is it about Lucy, I wonder, that causes us all to simply do as she asks? I hadn’t even questioned her about what that pill was. I didn’t even hesitate. I just saw the way she was looking at me, all eager and expectant, and tipped my head back. Hoped for the best.
“Speaking of disappearing, where the hell were you?” Sloane asks, directing the question at Nicole now. I walk to the couch and take a seat beside her, making sure to leave a little room between us.
“I don’t even know,” she says at last. She’s holding a cup of coffee, too, but it’s completely full, quivering in her hands. “I went over there early, right after class, and started drinking too fast. I think I was with Trevor the whole night.”
“Not the whole night,” Lucy says, putting her empty mug on the floor. “He was outside for a little.”
“Maybe—” She stops, bunching her eyebrows like she’s trying to remember something. I watch the side of her face as she swallows, shakes her head gently. “Maybe I fell asleep. But somehow, I got home. I woke up in Margot’s room.”
Lucy flings her head back and laughs again, clapping her hands together. This is our normal morning ritual—recounting stories from the night before, bleary and bashful, amused at all the little things we could hardly remember—but right now, it doesn’t feel like it normally does. There’s a darkness to it, a creeping dread like marbled clouds gathering before another summer storm. There were too many things about last night that went wrong and I watch as Lucy and Sloane get up, making their way into the kitchen for more coffee, but Nicole is still sitting, staring. Her eyes on the couch in a way that feels the opposite of focused—like she’s no longer trying to remember something, but instead, trying to forget.
“Are you okay?” I whisper once the others are gone. She still has her wrists covered with her sweatshirt and I try to remember the look of those bruises I saw—unless they weren’t actually bruises at all. It could have been a trick of the light, maybe. A cluster of shadows; a smudge of makeup. It’s tempting to believe that, but still, there was something about them that felt eerily familiar. Something about the placement like five large fingers that makes my stomach twist. “Nicole?”
I reach out to touch her leg, my hand barely grazing the skin when she winces, a physical recoil that makes me yank it straight back.
“Sorry,” I say, alarm creeping into my chest. “Sorry, it’s just … are you—？”
“I’m fine,” she says, placing her cup on the coffee table and pushing it away like it’s something repulsive. “Sorry, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” I nudge. “Last night—”
“Last night was a shitshow,” she says, finally turning to face me. “Honestly, I’m embarrassed.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” I say. “But when I found you this morning, I thought I saw bruises…”
“Oh, yeah.” She laughs, rolling her eyes and pushing up her sweatshirt, the blue from before already morphing into a deep, plum purple. “I vaguely remember Trevor trying to help me walk at one point, holding my arms. I bruise so easily.”
I try to picture it: Trevor grabbing her forearms, guiding her forward, not unlike the way my own fingers dug into her armpits as I yanked her up off the floor and got her in bed. For the first time, I wonder if I left bruises on her, too. I wonder if I’m capable of leaving that kind of mark, evidence of the way I had hoisted her up, clawed at her skin. The dead weight of her almost impossible to hold. I feel a small relief flood into my chest when I remember the time her thigh slammed into the coffee table last month, leaving behind a welt the size of a baseball. The time she tripped in the shed, smacked her shin, and spent three weeks slapping away Lucy’s hand every time she tried to poke at the pooling blood with her finger. That maniacal laugh and devious grin.