Starfish
Starfish
Copyright 2013 Beginnings Press
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All characters in this fictional story are 18 or older.
This ebook is also available in paperback.
Copyright 2013 Beginnings Press
ISBN-13 (mobi): 978-1-62602-031-3
Jill’s waiting by the fountain. Just like she said she would be.
She sees me and smiles. Her hand touches her short blonde hair and I wonder if, under all that armor of cool, she’s just as nervous as I am.
I say hi, try to crack a joke. She says something about my outfit. How she didn’t think I owned clothes like this.
Looking down, I consider my midriff-baring red blouse, black jeans, black studded belt and Cruella heels. It’s all stuff I picked up in thrift stores over the years. I always shop thrift. Usually I purchase my regular conservative clothes. But the sexy blouse was a quarter, jeans were a buck, I think the shoes came as a two-pairs-for-one buy but I’m not sure. I can’t resist a good deal. I told myself at the time that I was assembling a Halloween costume. I would go to a party as Jill.
Only that never happened, along with so many other things. Throwing the clothes on today had been a last-second decision. I had wondered if Jill would get the joke.
She certainly looks amused. Dressed same as ever. Tight white shirt exposing her flat tummy, black hip huggers, black sneakers. But there’s a light in her eyes. She smiles at me, and I forget what I was going to say.
She walks, I follow. I wonder if our local hangout will be jammed with parents and their kids, celebrating today’s graduation. We trot over the quad, where custodians are setting up the folding chairs in precise, orderly rows. Power tools hum as bored burly guys assemble a stage, panel by panel.
The bar is indeed packed but Jill, as usual, finds a way. Soon the two of us have improbably found stools at the bar. I order a vodka martini, something I’ve only had once before. Beer is my go-to, whenever I’m not with Brad, anyway—he disapproves of drinking and who can blame him, I should, too—but right now there’s no time to lose. Jill and I only have a few hours. I need some liquid courage, fast, if I’m going to go through with this.
The martini arrives. I try not to gulp it. Jill sips a Blue Moon, her usual. We discuss moving-out stuff: rental trucks, boxes, dollies. I keep glancing at the clock on the wall. Relax, Jill says. It’s going to be okay. I tell her I know, but deep down I don’t know.
My phone rings. Brad. I answer it and shout over the bar noise that I can’t talk right now. He asks me where I am, and I tell him, but I add that I’m with my parents. He says okay, and that he will see me at graduation. We hang up.
If I had told him I was with Jill, maybe he would have invited himself to join us. Fifty-fifty, I think. Lately he has acted, not hostile exactly, but cold whenever Jill has been around. It’s as if he senses a competitor, another suitor. Or maybe he’s just plain jealous. He knows nothing about The Offer, though, so I guess he just has good intuition.
Way back, when Jill originally asked me to say nothing to Brad about The Offer, I had rolled my eyes. Brad and I at the time had been dating for less than a week. Not telling him about The Offer had seemed like a waste of a good joke.
Jill and I had laughed about The Offer ever since freshman year. It annoyed me that Brad could not share in the mirth. But Jill had made me promise.
Now I’m glad she did. Brad knows nothing about Jill’s sexuality and things are so, so much easier that way. His intolerance in that regard is one of the few things I don’t love about him, and it would break my heart if he came between Jill and me. Jill’s friendship has been the one constant of my up-and-down college journey. I feel close to her in a way that I fear Brad will never understand. But he doesn’t need to understand, and that’s okay.
I order a second martini and down the hatch it goes. Jill cracks that she doesn’t want to have to carry me. I kid that she might have to. It’s like old times, us teasing and laughing. I try not to think about leaving tomorrow…
I’m not thinking about it. And I can tell Jill’s refusing to think about it either. She small talks: her new job, the studio apartment in Manhattan that she has rented sight unseen, the possibility that she may buy a bike and brave New York’s city streets. Working on Wall Street is boring enough, she says. A hair-raising commute twice a day may keep life interesting.
I’m feeling the alcohol now. Good. A light, easy buzz lifts my brain. Everything seems funny—the jostling crowd around us, the posters on the wall, Jill’s starfish earrings. I’ve never seen her wear them before.
I bought them for her during sophomore year, when she and Deborah and Bonnie and Elizabeth and the rest of us were in Fort Lauderdale on spring break. The earrings were in a costume jewelry bin inside a tourist trap gift shop. My gift was a joke, of course. I had earlier begun telling Jill that she was a starfish, and I was a clam. She kept applying relentless pressure, trying to get me. No matter how many times I had told her to forget about The Offer, she had never given up. The starfish earrings had made her laugh, like she laughed about everything.
I suddenly remember something.
If I wear them, will you accept The Offer?
Jill had asked then.
The shiny stainless-steel earrings look pretty under the bar’s track lights. I reach and touch a glittering starfish, sliding my finger over Jill’s ear. Jill gets a funny look on her face. It’s an expression I’ve never seen before, and for a moment I almost run out, run away, leave her with the check and everything else, all the memories, the friendship, us. Because I’m terrified of the possibility that in the next few hours the
us
will stop, and in its place there will just be a
me
and
her
. That might happen, anyway, since she is going to the Big Apple and I’m going to be teaching English in Botswana with Brad. Out of sight, out of mind.
Alcohol-brave, I go ahead and ask her: is this going to change our friendship?
She smiles. She takes my hand. That will never, ever change, she says. I nod. I believe her.
My hammering heart slows and my face transforms into a sunny smile.
Our drinks are empty. You ready? she asks, touching my knee. It’s a light touch, just her fingertips, a playful touch like so many she has given me over the years, but this time it shoots electricity up my legs.
I pay for my drinks, she pays for her beer. We slide off our barstools, jostled by the hovering frat boy seniors desperate for a seat and one last get-wasted-hurrah before graduation in a few hours. Jill leads me out into the sunshine.
She turns back toward campus. What? Oh, yeah. The conference center. As I walk behind her, stumbling in my heels, my alcohol-fogged brain struggles to remember the conversation we had had less than an hour ago.
I had called asking where she was going to sit. What do you mean, she had said. After a short chat about potential shaded areas on the quad and saving ourselves from the traditional graduation-day sunburn, the words left my mouth. Out of nowhere.
I wish I taken you up on The Offer.
(A timely pause as she weighs if I’m kidding. She decides not, thus:)
It’s not too late.
(I laugh. She speaks again.)
It’s not too late.
(Her tone deflates my giggling. Calm. Sure of herself. Very Jill. She keeps talking.)
Why don’t we go to the conference center. We don’t have time for a hotel. My roommate’s here, and I’m guessing your roommate is there, too. Right?
Right.
So let’s do it.
(An eternity passes. Finally, I reply:)
I need a drink first.
Meet me at the fountain. We’ll hit the tavern and then we’ll go. Okay?
Okay.
See you in five.
Okay
, I had said. I look at the tree limbs swaying above us in the breeze as we pass through the heart of the place I have spent the last four years of my life.
Okay
, I had said. Just
okay
. No
aw Jill
. No
yeah in your dreams
. No evasions or brush-offs or snappy comebacks. Not today. Not on this, the last day we will see each other for a long time.
Inside the conference center, a few older men in suits wander around. They seem befuddled. Probably visiting professors, wondering what all the commotion is about on the quad and forgetting it’s graduation day.
Jill approaches the reception desk. I halfway hope they have no rooms, and am halfway terrified they don’t.
They do—someone canceled their reservation. Jill pulls out a credit card.
I can pay half, I say.
She gives me her trademark grin. Points to me, says: Peace Corps salary. Points to herself: Wall Street salary.
I laugh. She pays. If the receptionist wonders why two college girls are renting a six-hundred-dollar-a-night room at the campus conference center on graduation day, she doesn’t show it. She’s probably seen more interesting stuff than this.
We rise up the elevator in silence. I touch Jill’s hand; her fingers caress mine. The doors open and she walks out into the hall. My hand releases, and she doesn’t hold on; I hurry out after her before the doors close again.
Room 662. I feel an incredible wave of relief that we are not in 666, an indicator that I would be going to hell for sure. Then I remember: no hotel has room 666, or room 13 for that matter. So if I am looking for a sign that my betrayal of Brad is going to send me to eternal damnation, I’m not going to find it in such a soap-opera overwritten way.
Jill walks past the bed, pulls the curtains closed. She glances back over her shoulder.
I’m still on the threshold.
We stare at each other.
Finally, I walk in and close the door.
For a moment, I wonder if all Jill really wanted to do was watch HBO. The TV remote’s in her hand. Stations flip endlessly before she finds what she wants: smooth jazz. A screen saver glides around the television screen and soft saxophone music fills the room.
You romantic you, I say. Only it doesn’t come out right. My voice is high and catches on the last word. I wonder if Jill will feel sorry for me and call the whole thing off.
That’s all right, Ellie, we don’t have to do this. Why don’t we just lie on the bed, order some champagne, and relax?
I see us laughing on the bed, fluted glasses in hand, reliving all the funny stories of the past four years.
Jill sees my nervousness all right, but her reaction isn’t exactly what I was expecting. She begins popping the buttons on my blouse, one by one. Her eyes are on her work and you would think from her calm expression she was just helping a friend disrobe in a cabana at the beach.
It hits me how determined, how ruthless, she is. The straight-A student. Ceaseless letters and phone calls to investment banks, asking for an internship. No wasted time. Guess that applies in this area of her life, too. Jill has always known exactly what she wanted, which I suppose is partly why she’s always fascinated me. I came to college with a vague idea of doing some sort of philanthropy work. Beyond that, I didn’t know. I guess I still don’t.
My shirt’s off. Jill reaches for the belt. I don’t want to be undressed like a child so I beat her to it, opening the buckle carefully, watching the sharp spikes in the leather. The damn belt stabbed me once when I was rearranging my closet and I don’t want it to happen again. Stepping out of my heels, I unzip my jeans before stepping out of them also. After a split-second I scoot my panties off and beat her to that, too, because somehow I want to own the responsibility.
But it doesn’t matter, because I freeze up anyway. So Jill takes the lead. Turning my shoulders gently, she faces me away from her. My head bows. I’m embarrassed, scared, pick an adjective. I’ve never felt so unsexy in my life.