Love Like That

I know this is the kind of thing everyone will ooh and ah over and think is the most adorable thing they’ve ever heard in their entire lives.

He nodded. “I’ll do it, then. Hey, you know something funny?”

“What’s that?”

“This’ll only be the second wedding I’ve ever been in.”

“The reason behind that, Andy, is that the majority of your bozo friends will be lifelong confirmed bachelors,” I predicted.

“Let’s hope so,” he said. “But don’t you want to know what’s so funny about it?”

“Enlighten me.”

“The other wedding I was in was Dan’s. Remember? Ha ha ha!”

Andy is cute but too much of a scamp. He has brown hair and impish brown eyes and a wiry build like a soccer player.

“You’re a fucker,” I told him, glaring.

“I am and I won’t deny it,” he practically giggled.

He was referring, of course, to Dan Michaelson. My high school sweetheart. Though our breakup took place years ago, we have sustained a heinous feud. This feud spreads out over time and geography. It has invisible, toxic tentacles.

“You’ve got to admit it’s kind of ironic,” Andy laughed. “I mean, wasn’t the original plan for you and Dan to get married at the same time? To each other?”

“Yeah, when we were seventeen,” I said, starting to get itchy. I feel sick talking about Dan and Andy knows it. “Anyway, you just take that Dan shit and shove it. Now, promise you’ll really be one of my bridesmaids?”

“I promise, Doll. It’ll be a great honor.” He winked at me. “Want me to play ‘Jane Says’ for you?”

“Sure.” He thinks it’s one of my favorite songs because my favorite grandmother, my father’s mother, calls me Jane. She doesn’t like my first name at all. Dalton is actually my mother’s maiden name, and since my mom was an only child and had no cousins, there was nobody to carry it on in the traditional way. Grandma Jane said Dalton was an awful name to give to a cute little baby girl and she was going to call me by my middle name, and always. Grandma Mary, my mother’s mother, said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the name Dalton and that she would never understand why Grandma Jane had to be so hateful about it, especially because everyone got in on that Doll thing, anyway. Only a few people call me Dalton as it is. My mother when she’s very angry with me, my father when he’s very angry with me, and Roman. He says Dalton is a noble name and that he can’t say Doll with a straight face, it’s so ludicrous.

Anyway, it’s not one of my favorite songs, really. It’s just one of the only songs Andy can play and definitely one of the only songs he can sing without making you want to run for cover. Case in point—he finished singing “Jane Says” and started belting out “Everlong.” Oh. My. God.

I zoned and pretended that instead of an ICRA project director, Roman was a famous musician away on tour and I would soon be joining him. We would ride in a big bus all across the country with a hot tub in the back and drink champagne and when he gave a concert he would dedicate a special love ballad just for me as I watched from backstage. In the song he would refer to me as “My Girl,” just like Jim Morrison. When people asked about his love life in interviews he would say he would never dream of going anywhere without taking his girl with him. I would make tank tops out of concert T-shirts with the band’s name on the front and wear them with jeans and a leather jacket as I posed next to him for press photos. I would hang out with fashion designers and models. Fans and groupies would hate me and say they wouldn’t know what Roman even saw in me.

Jeremy showed up around midnight. Ava and Dylan had retired to her bedroom and Andy had joined everyone else outside. I didn’t know who half those people were. That happens a lot around here. They were being too loud.

“Wow, am I glad to get away from that,” he said, flopping down on the couch beside me.

“That being Pristina?” I asked.

He pulled his hands down over his face. “Her friends are such bitches. It makes me love coming over here.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Why, because my friends aren’t bitches? Come on.”

“No, because nobody here cares. Anything goes and you may get shit for it, but nobody really minds. Around her friends I have to act totally different. I have to act all…I don’t know, like I have to carry her purse and shit.”

“Oh.”

“Do you mind if I go see who’s outside?”

“Go for it.”

I watched him leave the room. What a strange creature, really. And what a pushy broad, that Pristina!

Dylan came out of Ava’s room with hooded eyes and a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He put his hands on his hips and peered at me, shirtless. Dylan is not unattractive. He’s sexy the way all scoundrels are. He doesn’t work out, you can tell, but he has a solid, manly body. He has green eyes.

“Hey, would you ever carry a girl’s purse?” I asked him. “Like, if you were dating her?”

“Fuck no,” he replied. “What kind of sick dude would ever want to date a girl like that?”

My point exactly.

Jeremy returned with two bottles of Heineken and handed me one. I guessed the beer stash was dwindling because Jeremy knows I hate Heineken and will only drink it as a last resort. He turned on the TV to see if there were any good movies on.

I watched the way his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned onto his knees to change channels. His face was earnest as he observed the activity on the screen. I wonder if Pristina thinks she’s a lucky girl. I hope she does. I know I’m a lucky girl because when you strip away all of the foolishness and weirdness and constant bickering between us, it’s actually nice to have a friend like Jeremy. It’s nice to have a friend who would rather come keep you company than go home and be alone…even if to keep you company means that you’re both being adulterous.

We slept quietly in my bed that night, on sheets printed with fish, holding each other in a comforting embrace. Occasionally he would wake up and kiss my neck and stroke my hair. Sometimes that’s all you need—to have somebody there—to get you up the next morning and make you think about how sweet it feels to have warm blood in your veins and hot breath in your lungs and a whole life that’s all yours to live and live and live.

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