I try to gather myself, to catch my breath and clear my throat, so I won’t have to answer in a dehydrated croak.
Of course, I don’t have to answer.
But this is the first time I’ve heard from Peter in weeks, and the thought of not hearing what he has to say—of simply wondering, forever—makes me feel sick.
Just kidding, Gill’s shots are doing that just fine.
The name Gill just occurred to me out of thin air, the image of his braided gray beard flashing across my mind.
I clamp my phone against my ear and beeline toward the window for fresh air. It’s cool out, more spring than summer today.
“Hello!” I say, too loud, too forceful, and too cheery. A rare trifecta.
“Daphne?” Peter’s soft voice fills my head like helium.
“Yes?” I say.
There’s a pause. “You sound different.”
“I feel different,” I reply. No idea why that’s what comes out.
“Oh.” There’s a silence on the other end.
“So,” I say.
Another pause. “So, I got your RSVP?”
I dig the heel of my hand into my forehead and press, hard, against the throbbing there. “Yeah.”
“And I guess I just . . .” He takes a breath. “I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“Okay?”
I feel like I’m back in high school calculus, random bits of equations and numbers drifting around me nonsensically: there’s some kind of meaning there, but I do not have the right brain to interpret it.
“Yeah, I mean . . .” A soft breath. “You don’t have to come, you know.”
My laugh sounds more like a cough.
“I mean, of course we’d love to have you,” he hurries on.
The sound of we alone is enough to make the contents of my stomach flip around like I chugged clam chowder, then hopped on a roller coaster. We used to be the we he talked about.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew there was no pressure on our end,” he says.
Our. We.
Let’s get all the most painful words out on the table and make sure each one positively drips with condescension.
The worst part is, even after all this, I’m not positive I don’t love him. I mean, not this version of him, but the part that remembered every important date, who brought home flowers just because he happened to be walking past a cart selling them, the Peter who had my favorite soup delivered to me every time I got sick.
The parts reserved for her now.
“We know how hard this must be for you,” he’s saying, and just like that, he snaps back into the other Peter. The one I hate. “And I just . . . I hate to think of you there, on your own . . .”
As if this whole thing isn’t humiliating enough, he’s called me to make sure I know he feels bad for me. I’m seeing red.
“I won’t be alone,” I say.
“I mean, without a date,” he clarifies, completely unnecessarily.
“I know,” I say. “I’m bringing my boyfriend.”
Even as I’m saying it, there’s a voice screeching in my brain, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I face the window and pantomime a scream, one hand dragging down the side of my face. I wonder if this exact scenario inspired Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
“Your boyfriend?” Peter’s voice emanates sheer disbelief.
No, my brain says.
“Yes,” my mouth says.
“But . . . you didn’t RSVP for a plus-one.”
I’m not usually a liar. In fact, I still sometimes lie awake thinking about a time in the sixth grade when I’d just switched schools and a girl struck up a conversation with me about my horse necklace, and in my desperation to make friends, some foul demon possessed me to tell the girl I loved horses and grew up going to horse-riding camp every summer.
I’d been horseback riding twice. I fell off the second time, if that matters.
