Anything but Ordinary (13 page)

here should be an Olympic event for taking stairs in heels, swear to freaking God,” Mary shouted in Bryce’s ear.

Fact Number Four about drunk people: they tended to shout a lot. Mary was clutching Bryce as they ascended from the lowest level of White Light
.
The dance club hadn’t really been thinking of its customers when installing the only set of bathrooms down a set of rainbow fiberglass steps.

On her seemingly millionth trip down the dangerous rainbow, Bryce concluded facts Number One, Number Two, and Number Three were that drunk people couldn’t stop going to the bathroom.

Bryce and Mary cleared the top step and staggered through the sea of guys and girls in the blue flashing lights, looking to Bryce like a writhing Abercrombie catalog come to life. Mary lifted her bangle-laden wrist and yelled at the bartender for another Manhattan
.
The brunettes were shimmying on either side of Peter, one wearing a flapper-style fringe dress, the other in a cloudy pink satin. Peter looked like he was enjoying himself. Zen was in green sparkles, glimmering like a mermaid under the colored lights.

Bryce scanned the crowd to find Gabby, and scowled. She was dancing against Greg, her lips parted and her eyes closed.
Bryce would rather not look to see how Greg was finding Gabby’s backside. Instead, she looked at her feet in red pumps. They looked miles and miles away. She had always been tall; in heels she
towered
. She hoped her legs weren’t showing too much in the silvery, shimmery dress she’d borrowed from one of the brunettes. It was backless, and suddenly she felt too exposed.

“Are you the designated bathroom helper?” A male voice came from her side. She turned to find the shoulder of the tall, tousled-haired guy who had stolen Gabby’s crown. He gave her a tight smile. “Because I hear the stairs are dangerous, and I need to go.”

“Ha,” Bryce said. “I’m off duty at the moment.”

“What’s your name?” He turned his back to the bar and leaned. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.

“Bryce.”

“Tom,” he said. “I’d buy you a drink, but I noticed you’re not imbibing.” He held up a glass full of ice cubes soaking in a deep brown liquid.

“Not tonight,” Bryce said after a pause. She didn’t feel like talking about the coma right now. “I’m on a solids-only diet.”

An amused look crossed his face. “You’re funny,” he said, leaning closer to her.

“Easy crowd,” Bryce said, backing away. She could smell the liquor on his breath.

She stole a glance at Greg. He was holding up Gabby’s arm for a ballroom spin, but his gaze was in their direction.

“So what’s next for you?” Tom asked, draining his glass.

Bryce lifted her shoulders. She was sick of this question. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, I assume you’re a graduate.”

“Nope,” Bryce said, allowing herself a proud grin. “Not even high school.”

It was Tom’s turn to be confused. “So, you’re a drifter. Just a wandering soul, taking in the world.” He lifted his hand in an arc for effect. Before Bryce could respond, he said, “That’s hot.”

Bryce burst out laughing. She had just been called an attractive hobo. Tom mistook her laughter for encouragement, and he held out his hand.

“Dance with me, Bryce.”

“All right.” She took it. “As long as you don’t make me go to the bathroom with you.”

She led him between the moving mannequins to the center of the floor, just feet from Greg and Gabby. Bryce held Tom’s hands and shook her hips. She twisted her knees and dipped down low. She hadn’t danced in a long time. Dancing required muscles. It required athletics. And like anything else athletic, Bryce wanted to do it right. So she channeled her best Beyoncé, and she didn’t care who was watching.

Tom swayed from foot to foot, bobbing his head. She looked up at him and winked. Why not? He probably wasn’t going to remember tonight, anyway.

Next thing she knew, bodies were brushing past her. Greg, followed by Gabby. Greg’s face was contorted in anger. Gabby was pouting, looking over her shoulder at the dance floor.

“I need some air,” Bryce heard him say.

“I don’t!” Gabby cried happily. She twirled back onto the floor and began shimmying with Zen.

Bryce caught Greg’s eyes. He motioned his head slightly toward the exit. She looked back at Tom, who was now heavily involved in reciting the lyrics to “Party Rockers.” Back to Greg. He had moved farther away from the dance floor, and he was still looking at her.

“Be right back,” Bryce called, and bounced her way through the crowd.

She followed Greg’s back at a distance until they were outside the club, where he ducked into an alleyway. Bryce rounded the corner of the building.

It had rained while they were inside, and now the pavement sparkled with damp under the streetlights, and the air smelled clean. She approached his silhouette.

“Hey,” she said.

He turned around sharply.

“What’s up?”

Greg let out a bitter laugh, rubbing his forehead. “You were making me jealous in there. You can’t be dancing with my friends.”

“Yes, I can,” Bryce said quietly.

“Well, at least wait until I can’t see,” he said with a sad smile.

“I should say the same to you,” she said, her eyes drifting to a flower Gabby had put in his hair. “Why’d you even come tonight?”

To see you,
she wanted him to say.

“I don’t know.” He ripped out the flower and tossed it aside.

“Pretty pointless,” Bryce said. She looked sadly at the discarded flower. Good things were gone. Forever was here, separating them.

A true look of pain marred Greg’s face. He beat his fist on a nearby Dumpster, filling the alley with a deafening thump.

He crossed to Bryce and held her tightly. She buried her face in the space between his neck and solid shoulder, smelling his alcoholic sweat, sweet even now. She could feel him breathing, as if he were a part of her.

Where Bryce lay her head, his voice hummed through his skin. “I don’t want to go through with the wedding.” Bryce looked up and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. Greg held her by the shoulders. He stared at a spot on the damp cement, then back at her. “I want to be with you.”

Her body sparked at his touch, hope welling in her. She saw them holding hands, riding in the front seat of his truck, going somewhere with nothing in particular to do, but always finding plenty to do. They would do everything together.

His face was growing joyous in front of her, so handsome in the alley light. “It’s you, Bry. It’s always been you.”

But the weight of the truth was still there, underneath it all, and Bryce recalled the bright images projected on the dark restaurant wall earlier that night—Gabby and Greg carefree with their faces pressed together at the beach, their sweetly awkward prom photo, Greg on his knees in front of Gabby with a look on his face that couldn’t have been more sure. Each photograph, each moment in time, more proof that it
hadn’t
always been Bryce.

She recalled the one and only time she went to Catholic church with Gabby’s family, when she was a little girl. She understood the words, but she didn’t know what they were
saying.
She had stared up at the stained glass, watching colored light angle through the etched people in robes. As Gabby and her family stood up and filtered out of the pews toward the front of the church, Bryce blindly followed Gabby’s back. She saw an enormous figure in white, the parish priest towering over everyone, giving out crackers and little cups of red juice to each person in turn. When her turn came, she held out her hands.

But nothing came. The priest looked around, muttering something. People in line behind her looked over shoulders, impatient.

Gabby appeared, braided head lowered with embarrassment, ushering Bryce back to her seat by her shoulders while every face in the pews turned in disapproval.

“That was Jesus’s communion,” Gabby had explained in a solemn whisper. “You aren’t ready for that.”

So that was it. Once again she was the awkward little girl, pushing into the line for crackers and juice, blindly holding her hands out for a piece of something that was completely beyond her.

But this time there was no guiding hand to bring her back to her place. Somehow she would have to usher herself out, back down the aisle, back to where she belonged.

Bryce unhooked his arms from around her. “You loved Gabby for almost five years, Greg,” she said, forcing the words out. “I think you still love her now.”

Greg put a hand up to his sweaty hair. “That was a mistake. This is all a mistake.…”

Bryce shook her head, backing away. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay out here, alone with him, saying the things that neither of them wanted to hear.

He held out his hands, searching her face. “I’m asking
you
, Bryce, to be with me. Are you saying no?”

Bryce closed her eyes tight against the sight of him, her first love, trying to keep back the tears. They were coming out anyway, falling from her lashes. She couldn’t bring herself to say that word,
no.
Because saying
no
meant saying
yes
to a whole lot of nothing.

The loneliness she’d felt the day she found out Greg and Gabby were engaged began to line her insides like steel. She wasn’t just losing Greg, she was losing
Bryce and Greg
. She was losing the part of herself that had belonged to him, and she had no idea what kind of person was left. She had already lost Bryce the diver. Now she was failing at Bryce the sister and daughter, Bryce the friend. She had woken up, and the time that had passed was like a wall between her now and her then, keeping her out, holding her back.

Who was Bryce when they had all left her behind? She was scared to find out. But she knew that she needed to.

“I’m saying you should marry Gabby,” she said. “And leave me out of it.”

When Bryce turned and walked away from him, she knew it would be for the last time.

he rest of the night was in slow motion. Bryce floated among the jumping bodies in real time, their glinting jewelry and ice-filled glasses making her vision glow at the edges. She felt the silvery fabric of her dress against her skin, sending waves of cold to her bones. The hip-hop blasting from the speakers might as well have been a swelling orchestra, or a tinkling piano playing to an empty room.

Greg joined the mass of his friends, leaping in time to the music, taking shot after shot until he could barely stand.

In every interaction, she was half there. Half listening to Tom tell her about the time he almost broke some guy’s neck when he played football for Stanford. Half holding Zen’s hair back as she upset the contents of her stomach in the
toilet. Half dancing with Gabby when she dragged Bryce onto the floor.

The other part of her was still outside with her heart stopped. She had done the right thing, but no good feeling came. Nothing came. Emptiness was all.

Her two halves came together with a snap when she heard Gabby’s voice. “I’m ready to go,” she said, taking off her heels, her eyes half closed. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

The parties exited in a herd of arms wrapped around shoulders, bare feet, shoes dangling from hands, and even some sloppy kisses.

Inside their suite, Bryce took a long time washing up. She would run the faucet, stop and stare at nothing, forget what she was doing. By the time she entered the bedroom, three lithe, still-dressed bodies were sprawled on the king-sized bed, fast asleep. Zen was asleep on the couch. Bryce tiptoed to each one, removed their shoes, and stretched out on the down comforter of the second bed.

But Gabby was still up. Bryce could hear her filling a glass of water, through a crack in the bathroom door. When Gabby emerged, she gave a heavy sigh and drifted out to the main room. Bryce looked at the ceiling, took a deep breath, and followed her to the far windows.

“Contemplating?” Bryce asked.

Gabby turned around, her eyes bright, still drunk. “Oh, good, it’s you,” she said, her voice thin and tired. She grabbed Bryce’s arm. “Come with me!”

“Where?”

Gabby slid up the pane and stepped through the open window into the night air. “Come on!” she repeated, and with a dangerous sway to the left, she disappeared.

Bryce stepped through to climb the rickety fire escape behind Gabby’s barefooted form. Of all places she thought she’d end up tonight, following a drunk Gabby up a fire escape was not one of them. But something about it was right in the rest of a terribly wrong evening. The stupidity of it, mostly. They could fall, but so what? Bryce was sick of doing the right thing all the time.

“Look, Bryce!” Gabby called down ecstatically. She was propelling herself over a wall at the top of the ladder. Bryce followed suit.

The roof of the Opryland Hotel was an expanse of bare cement except for the center, where thick steel girders held up an enormous neon sign. Bathed in the red light of the giant cursive, Bryce and Gabby caught their breath.

“I’m still totally plastered,” Gabby breathed, laughing.

Bryce laughed with her. “I’m glad you’re scaling the side of buildings, then.”

They stood in silence for a moment, taking in the blur of lights below them.

“Are you having fun?” Gabby turned to Bryce.

“Yeah!” Bryce tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible. “Definitely.”

“You’re faking,” Gabby said, with a scolding look. “I can tell.”

“No, I’m not,” Bryce said quietly.

“I’m having the most fun ever,” Gabby said, and then, suddenly, her lip began to tremble. Tears rolled down her cheeks in black, mascara-filled streaks.

“Gab!” Bryce put her arm around Gabby’s bony shoulders. “What’s wrong?” Bryce glanced around the empty roof. She had no idea what to do. She had rarely seen Gabby lose control.

“I’m—I’m—sorry,” Gabby sputtered. “It’s just, it’s really good to be home.”

“It’s really good to have you home.”

“I felt like I could let loose,” Gabby sniffed. “It was good.”

At
good
, she collapsed in Bryce’s arms, her chest heaving with sobs. Bryce tore her gaze from the cracked concrete. “What’s
wrong
, Gab?”

“I just feel so much pressure,” Gabby said between sobs. “With all these people in our hometown…” She swallowed another wave of tears. “They’re all so perfect, they know what they want to do with their lives, and I’m just putting on a big show.…”

“Are you kidding me?” Bryce almost laughed, but she held it in. “You’re going to one of the best law schools in the country!”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I can keep up,” Gabby confessed, shaking her head.

“But when you first told me, at the restaurant, you didn’t look like you weren’t sure. You looked, like, ready to go.”

“I was trying to impress you.”

Bryce scoffed. “Impress
me
? The girl who couldn’t walk?”

“I don’t know,” Gabby said wistfully. “I wanted you to think that I’d done so much while you were asleep. God knows you would have done more. Probably a gold medal by now, right? Maybe two?”

Gabby smiled through her tears, and Bryce laughed, softening. “You don’t need to impress me.”

“I hope I don’t mess it up,” Gabby said, burying her head into Bryce’s arm, her dark hair fluttering in the breeze. “Law school is going to be so
hard.
”

“Oh, stop.” Bryce shook her head. “You’re smart. You’re strong. You can do anything. And…” She gulped. “And you’ll have Greg.”

Gabby heaved a sad sigh. “I honestly don’t know if he’ll like D.C. We’ve been fighting about it, about Greg getting a job. But…I need him with me.” Gabby leaned next to Bryce, putting her head affectionately on her shoulder. “I’ve lost so many people I love. I don’t want to go it alone.”

Bryce thought with a pang of the pictures she’d seen of Gabby’s father—of his handsome, bearded face, his kind dark eyes. In a way, Gabby lost her mother that year, too. She was never the same after her husband died. And then there had been Bryce herself.

“Not all of them come back like you do,” she added playfully.

Bryce wriggled out from Gabby’s arms.

Not all of them come back.
She couldn’t argue with that. Her thoughts were too twisted, her mind too tired, her eyes too full of city lights, her disappointment too great.

So Bryce sighed, shaking her head at the world that didn’t look nearly as cruel and confusing as it felt, and followed her best friend back down the ladder.