Frenemies (19 page)
“See?” I was definitely feeling smug. “You should have more faith in us. We rule!”
“Hey,” she protested from the step behind me, “in case you haven’t noticed, we have a history of making bad situations terribly and horrifically worse.”
“We’re all grown up now,” I said, even more smug. “You should give us a little more credit.”
Which, naturally, is when it happened.
Georgia, too busy laughing to watch where she was going, tripped over her own feet and crashed into me.
“Ouch!” I cried, and threw my hands out to catch the banister.
But to do that, I had to drop Linus’s leash.
Linus trotted up another step or two, and then paused. He turned.
Our eyes met.
He noticed that no one was holding his leash. He cocked his head to the side.
For the space of one heartbeat, and then another, I stared at my dog. He stared back.
“Good boy,” I murmured, pulling myself upright, never breaking eye contact. “Good, sweet boy. Stay, Linus!”
I swear to God, he smirked at me.
And then he bolted.
“Shit!” I yelped, and threw myself after him.
Everything sped up.
“Linus!” I hissed, tearing after him. He ignored me completely. He galloped up to the third-floor landing and then took off along the hall. I could tell that he was having a merry old time—his tail was waving happily in the air and every now and again he would toss a coy little glance behind him to make sure I stayed close—and out of reach. I was sucking in gulps of air and cursing under my breath.
“I knew I should have gotten a gerbil,” I snarled.
We skidded after him into a small sitting room, tastefully done up in cranberry hues. Georgia crashed into me from behind, tossing me forward into the room.
“Ow!” she cried, grabbing her elbow.
“Block the doorway!” I commanded, righting myself and crouching low. “Whatever you do, don’t let him get past you!”
“What if someone comes?” she hissed.
I couldn’t answer her because all of my attention was focused on Linus. It had obviously just occurred to him that he might be trapped.
He turned to face me, and assumed what I called his vulture position. His body tensed, and his head lowered, as he watched me approach with his canny eyes.
“Sit down,” I told him.
Yeah, right.
“The next time you get a dog,” Georgia complained behind me, “you might consider actually
training
the damn thing.”
For a moment, I thought Linus might back down. His ears flicked from front to back, and his head cocked just slightly to the right.
“Good boy,” I crooned approvingly. “Sit down, Linus.”
I eased a little bit closer, reached out and down with my hand—
And he took off.
Georgia squealed and jumped at him, smacking into the doorjamb while Linus zoomed through her legs.
“You suck!” I threw at her as she collapsed into a heap in the doorway. I vaulted over her crumpled body and hurled myself down the hall after my dog.
This was the end of the line, I knew.
He was headed straight for the main staircase, which would deliver him directly into the main lobby and deliver us directly out on our collective ear. If I was going to save this situation—and I had to—it had to happen
then.
I pumped my arms and legs like some kind of marathon runner and then, just as Linus turned the corner toward the top stair, I dived.
I lunged forward in an all-out dive. My fingers stretched wide—I felt the canvas leash with the tips of them—but Linus danced just out of reach—
SMACK!
I hit the ground in a belly flop and skidded a few feet. I slid directly into what took me a moment to recognize as someone’s feet. I blinked. Familiar-looking black boots with a four-inch heel, polished to gleam. And under the right foot—pinned and immovable—was Linus’s leash. I seized it in both hands, too full of adrenaline and relief to care about the many ways in which I hurt. I would deal with that later.
I thanked the powers that be, and then looked up, ready to kiss the feet in front of me. I was already lying there in position, prostrate and everything.
“Hello, Gus.” Amy Lee peered down at me, and let out a little sigh. “I thought that was you.”
“
O
h, terrific!” Georgia said from behind me. Her sarcasm preceded her by about three feet, like a kind of bad smell. It made Amy Lee recoil in the same way. “Look, Gus! Amy Lee is here to judge us!”
She came to a stop next to me, which meant her sharp-toed boots were mere centimeters from my face. That made two sets of dangerous heels within easy stomping distance. I decided it would probably behoove me to get up.
“Was I interrupting something?” Amy Lee asked in her snottiest voice. “Because it just looked like the usual immature crap to me.”
“Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you!” I singsonged, grabbing Linus’s leash from under Amy Lee’s foot and restraining myself from trying to fling her down the stairs. Because violence was better imagined than actual, I reminded myself.
Actual violence
led to prison terms.
For his part, Linus seemed completely unaffected by his dash across the hotel. In fact, he—oblivious to the group dynamics—was delighted to see Amy Lee and kept trying to lick her hands.
“Forced holiday cheer will definitely divert everyone’s attention,” Georgia snapped at me. “Good call.”
And then the three of us just … stood there on the landing, not quite looking at each other. I had a dramatic moment wherein I imagined our history hung there in the air between us, but I suspected it was just the pine smell from the evergreens downstairs in the lobby.
“I think things kick off around 4 p.m.,” Amy Lee said eventually, still not looking anywhere in particular. “Lorraine insists on black tie. I have to get changed.”
“So do we,” I said, unnecessarily, since both Georgia and I were sweaty and in jeans.
“We all received the same invitation, I’m pretty sure,” Georgia said, her tone scathing. I looked at her, trying to communicate a gentler form of
shut the hell up
with my eyes. She only pursed her lips a little bit, but she didn’t say anything else.
Amy Lee let out a long-suffering sort of sigh, and turned away.
Thus began the truly awkward climb up the stairs to our adjoining rooms on the next floor. We all trudged along in a deeply uncomfortable silence broken only by Linus, who was panting happily. He seemed perfectly content to stay on his leash
now
, I noticed.
Outside our rooms, Georgia unlocked our door while Amy Lee unlocked hers. I stared at the carpet. Still, no one spoke. Georgia threw open the door and stormed inside. I followed her, and set about unfastening Linus’s leash. We could hear Amy Lee’s door slam, and then, once again, there was only silence.
“Well!” I said into the oppressive quiet before Georgia’s storm of temper. “That was awkward.”
“She has to be fucking kidding me!” Georgia exploded.
“She’s obviously still mad about whatever she’s mad about,” I said, trying to sound soothing. “So let her be mad. She’ll talk to us when she’s ready.”
It wasn’t that I wasn’t mad myself, not to mention hurt that one of my best friends was still acting like she hated me, but I was more concerned with damage control. This wasn’t an afternoon sleigh-ride party that we could all storm away from. This was a hotel out in the country and we’d all be staying the night. It was also a national holiday. I figured my hurt feelings took a distant second to keeping Georgia from throttling Amy Lee before the clock struck midnight.
“That stuck-up, self-righteous—”
Georgia couldn’t even finish, she just whirled around and stomped over to the door that joined our room to Amy Lee and Oscar’s. She balled her hands into fists and started pounding. She was no fragile flower, either, so she made quite a racket with all of her Amazon strength behind each blow.
“Could you please—” I rubbed at my temples. “What do you think this is going to do, exactly?”
“I think it’s going to open the door,” Georgia snapped. “And then I think me and Miss Holier-than-Thou are going to talk about this bullshit.”
“You’re trying to beat down the door so you can
talk
,” I pointed out, mildly. “Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, from violent, crazed—”
“Either help me or shut up, Gus!” Georgia barked.
I chose the second option, and waited.
It didn’t take long before the door flew open and Amy Lee stood there, practically hyperventilating with rage.
“Have you lost your
mind
?” she hurled at Georgia.
“How
dare
you sit in judgment of me?” Georgia threw right back. “Whenever you needed a friend, I was there for you—I was
always
there for you! And in return for over
ten years
of friendship I get what? You telling me to fuck off in some random party? Have
you
lost your mind?”
“I held your hand through the first four hundred heartbreaks, Georgia,” Amy Lee snapped. “Which for a
normal person
would end sometime, like after the
fifteenth identical situation
—except not you. You just keep going and going—you’re like the Energizer Bunny of stupid, pointless relationships!”
I thought Georgia might actually faint from her fury, which I swore I could hear sizzle along her skin, and so bodily placed myself between the two of them.
“Everyone needs to calm down!” I announced—okay, it was closer to a shout.
“It must be pretty bad if
Gus
has to step in and be the adult,” Amy Lee said, with a little snort of extremely obnoxious laughter.
I reminded myself to take a deep breath. While I was doing so—and thus not throttling Amy Lee myself—-Georgia recovered enough to leap to my defense.
“Are you the model of adult behavior, Amy Lee?” Georgia demanded from behind me. “Because I think you’ll find that
sniggering
at people is usually frowned upon
on the playground.
”
“I should have known that the two of you would just gang together and
wallow
like it’s senior year of college again,” Amy Lee spat.
“Have I lost
my
mind?” I asked no one in particular. “Why the hell are we talking about
college
? The last I checked that ended when we graduated
seven years ago
!”
“Some of us graduated,” Amy Lee retorted.
“You see, Gus?” Georgia asked acidly. “Amy Lee is just better than we are. She works harder now, just as she did then, which is hard to imagine, I know, since she’s so fucking perfect. She’s
just better.
”
“I don’t know about better,” Amy Lee snapped. “But let’s see—I don’t lie about who I’m sleeping with, nor do I thrash around in my bed like some fucking opera heroine for whole days.”
“You condescending—”
“The two of you can’t even come to a New Year’s eve party without turning it into a circus!” Amy Lee continued, talking over Georgia.
“You really are full of yourself, Amy Lee,” I told her, because the hell with deep breaths, I wanted to slap her. “If we’re such a trial for you, I’m surprised you kept us around as your best friends in the entire world for over ten years. So I guess that makes you the real psycho here, doesn’t it?”
I wasn’t even yelling, or particularly snide. In fact I was the calmest voice in the room. And yet, it was like I’d slapped her the way I’d briefly imagined.
Amy Lee seemed to crumple in front of me. Her face sort of folded in on itself, and it took me a long, horrified moment to realize that she was crying.
Amy Lee never cried.
She didn’t cry when her heart was trampled by her high school love, when she broke her finger, or when her body betrayed her once a month. Or even at her own wedding. No tears for Amy Lee—that was the rule. She was all about stoicism and grim determination. Once, long ago, she’d gotten a little misty-eyed during a particularly intense conversation over tarot cards and cheap red wine, but we’d been all of nineteen then and she blamed the wine.
So it took me a while to realize that what she was doing was sobbing. I might have thought she was convulsing, except I saw the tears. I didn’t have to look over at Georgia to see that she was as floored by this as me—I could feel her hand digging into my arm, where she was holding on to me for dear life.
“I am
not
psycho!” Amy Lee said, between gulps of air and more floods of tears. “I just
feel
psycho!” She took both of her hands and placed them on her belly. “I’m fucking
pregnant
!”
If it was possible to get more still and more silent, we did. It was as if Georgia and I turned to stone right there in the doorway. Amy Lee sobbed some more and backed into her room, where she sat on the edge of the bed and held her face in her hands.
“Oh my God,” I said, hardly breathing. “Are you serious?”
“Like I would joke about the fact that I’m going to be someone’s
parent
,” Amy Lee snapped, obviously recovered. Sure enough, she sat up again and wiped her eyes. “Georgia still has issues with her mother and she’s about to turn thirty—”
“About to? Hello? In
April
, thanks, and let’s not rush it!” Georgia yelped. She let go of my arm when I glared at her. “Sorry, Gus.”
“And you know what?” Amy Lee asked, still somewhat emotional if her shaky voice was anything to go by. “I can’t believe neither one of you noticed! I
told
you Oscar and I were going to start trying!”
“You said it that one time,” I said, stung. “And then you never mentioned it again!”
“I haven’t touched alcohol in months!” Amy Lee cried. “Is there a bigger sign than that?”
“You told me you were taking on the designated-driver role to be fair to Oscar,” I reminded her. “I’m sorry that I took what you said at face value. And who cares, anyway?” I took a step into the room. “How far along are you?”
“And why didn’t you just
tell
us?” Georgia demanded, finally roused from stone for a reason other than defending her age. “You’re a walking hormone bomb, for God’s sake. No wonder you wanted to kill us.”
We both inched into the room, and sank down on either side of her on the bed.
“Can I … ?” I asked in a whisper, and held out my hand. She wiped at her eyes again, and nodded, and I laid my palm across her belly, where there was a slight rounding. The sort of thing that would suggest a weekend with Toll House cookies on a figure like mine, but meant something else entirely on tiny little Amy Lee. I let out a breath, awed.
Georgia, wide-eyed, leaned in and placed her hand next to mine. Amy Lee took a ragged breath, and let it out into the sudden stillness of the room around us.
“I’m about three months along,” she said in a quiet voice. “You’re not supposed to say anything until then, because so many things can happen.”
“Nothing is happening to my godchild,” I declared, and I could feel my eyes begin to well up as I began to think of the ramifications of that. I had thought everything would change when Amy Lee got married, but Oscar had added to the life we were used to living together. I had no idea what a baby would do.
“Hi, baby,” Georgia whispered at Amy Lee’s belly, and then leaned over to place a soft kiss there.
We all laughed a little bit, and when Georgia sat up again she was glassy-eyed too.
“You’re going to set me off,” Amy Lee wailed.
“I’m already set off,” I replied, and sniffled.
“We don’t cry!” Amy Lee said. “
I
don’t cry!”
“I think we’re allowed to take a small break from being completely and totally kick-ass, here,” Georgia said, wiping at her nose. “It’s not every day we get to meet the next generation.”
We were all laughing and weeping, sometimes at once, when the door swung open, and Oscar appeared with bags on each arm.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said, looking alarmed. He dropped the bags where he stood. “What now?”
