Love and Other Theories (24 page)

S
leeping is the only thing I know how to do. I remember Trip waking me up to drink water and another time to call my mom. I told her I would be staying at Shelby’s all day watching movies. I was too out of it to decipher whether or not she believed me.

When I open my eyes on my own, Trip’s room is dim, except for the lamp on Trip’s side of the bed. My head hurts, but I’m not nauseous anymore, and that makes me want to jump for joy. But I don’t want to push my luck. I’m buried under the covers wearing one of Trip’s white undershirts and a red pair of his boxers. He’s lying on his back next to me, propped up by pillows, making flash
cards, in a very similar outfit.

Trip puts his hand behind my head like he’s spotting me when I move to sit up.

“That was bad, huh?” My voice is hoarse.

“You poisoned yourself, Housing.” Once, last year, my mother insisted that drinking hard liquor was like poisoning your body. It was always a joke after Shelby found out and told everyone.
Pick your poison
. I’m glad my mother’s not here to see how right she can be sometimes. I think about drinking straight from the bottle, like I’ve been doing all semester, and I’m sure I’m going to lose it again. I cover my mouth, but I’m lucky and nothing comes up.

“So who were you trying to keep up with?” He’s smiling, but his voice is kind of serious.

I sink back down into the pillow, shaking my head. I try to laugh about this, at my own ridiculousness. Self-deprecation can be funny. But all I can do is cry. I cover my face. It’s no use trying to stop what’s pouring out of me right now.

I remember everything. Nathan is hooking up with Shelby. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants and this is what he wants, this is who he wants. Trip pulls me into him and hugs me.

“Hey, come here. You’re okay.”

I’m getting snot and tears on his shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His hand runs over the back of my head, smoothing my hair. I have the slightest urge to push him
away. I don’t deserve this kindness from him, not when just last week I left him on the side of the road.

I don’t deserve this kindness from anyone, because I did this to myself.

There’s a knock on the door and Chiffon sticks her head in. “Dinner’s ready,” she says. “Can she eat?”

“We’ll be out in a second,” Trip tells her.

I sit up. My entire face is wet and I can’t breathe out of my nose. In a way I feel better, knowing Chiffon saw me like this.

“Dinner?” I ask.

Trip stands up. He nods and smiles but doesn’t say anything. He lets it sink in that I’ve slept the entire day.

“Better get cleaned up.” He takes off his shirt and tosses it at me. I finish wiping down my face with it. I even blow my nose on it. Somehow I know that’s allowed. “Here.” Trip hands me a pair of sweatpants. They’re mine. I don’t remember leaving them here, but here they are. He throws me one of his sweatshirts. It swallows me whole and I’m tempted to go back to sleep, but I am really hungry.

I watch Trip slide on jeans, put on a new T-shirt, slip a sweatshirt over his head. I don’t think I’ve ever watched him dress. I wonder where we made the turn in our relationship—to dressing each other instead of undressing each other.

Earl, Zane, Trip, and Chiffon are having chili, Caesar
salad, and orange juice. Trip made me a microwave pizza.

“The grease will help,” he promises me.

Billy’s having something lumpy and cream-colored, though most of it is on his face. Billy is starting to look like an actual person. He has a few teeth now. And because Zane shaves his head, Billy actually has more hair.

Billy screeches when we all move to sit at the table and he’s still stuck in his high chair. The noise makes me jump.

“He does that sometimes,” Trip says.

I catch Chiffon laughing quietly at this, but she won’t look at me. We’re sitting at the same table, and all I have to do is tell her thank you, but they seem like the emptiest words right now. I wonder if seeing me too drunk to walk and covered in my own snot was justice enough.

Through some spell of luck, my phone still works. Between last night and this evening I’ve missed five calls from Melissa. Two from Danica. Two from Shelby. Nine from Nathan. There’s only one text message. It’s from my mother, asking if I plan on coming home at all today or if I’ve officially moved out. Even though I’ve already spoken to her, I text her to let her know I won’t be home until late. I still have to pick up my car at Leila’s—the place I left it before we rode with Patrick to Sam’s—but I’m not in the mood to see anyone.

There’s a sharp ringing. It’s the ringing of another phone, but it startles me and makes me drop my phone again.

“That thing’s taking quite the beating,” Earl notes.

Billy starts chattering and wiggling and being loud about it. Like he knows the ring, or maybe at this age he just likes anything noisy. Zane leaves the room, phone in hand, and comes back a few minutes later. We all wait for him because at dinner the Chapmans are more polite than they are all day.

“That was Jamie. She’s on her way to get Billy.” Zane turns to Chiffon. “So you gotta go.”

She freezes for a second and her cheeks turn pink. “Oh, okay.”

“Come on, Zane. We’re just about to eat,” Trip says.

Earl shakes his head, muttering to himself, glancing at the door like he’s pissed enough to leave.

Zane’s really kicking her out. Zane’s ex-girlfriend is coming over to pick Billy up and he’s making Chiffon leave. It’s awkward and awful.

Chiffon puts on the fakest smile I’ve ever seen. “I just have to get—” Her plate slides forward when she stands and knocks over her glass of orange juice.

“I’ll get your stuff.” Zane disappears down the hall. He has to feel bad, guilty,
something
, about what’s going on.

“Shit, shit,” Chiffon curses under her breath. Everyone has their hand in the mess, dabbing up the juice.

Zane returns with Chiffon’s Windbreaker and a backpack overflowing with clothes. I try not to stare as she
walks to the door with her head down. She won’t even look at Zane.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, babe,” Zane says to her before she shuts the door.

“Goddamn it, Zane.” Earl pushes his chili away from him.

“What?” Zane shrugs, but there’s a thick layer of defensiveness in his voice. “Chiffon knows how it is. She knows it’s easier not to have to deal with Jamie.”

I wonder how many times Zane has said that to himself, that it’s not a big deal, the way he’s treating Chiffon, only inviting her into certain parts of his life and pushing her out of others. And not sticking up for her. Never sticking up for her.

And last night she helped me so Zane wouldn’t have to—or maybe because Zane wouldn’t have helped. I never thanked her.

There’s an urgency that takes over, a ringing in my ears and a squeezing in my chest. I follow her outside.

“Wait!” I’m not wearing shoes and I have to step off the porch and onto the gravel to reach her, but I don’t care.

“What, Aubrey?” There’s strength in her voice to make up for the red around her eyes, the quiver in her lip.

I mean to tell her thank you, but what comes out is “I’m sorry.”

Her cold stare turns malicious. She rolls her eyes and
a tear falls down, but she hits it away. “I really don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity.” Everything seems so backward in this moment, that Chiffon would think I pity her when last night I was the one who was so drunk I couldn’t walk. “I just—I don’t know how to thank you for coming to get me last night, and—” I feel my chest tighten more, but I manage to finish. “I just . . . I’m sorry.” She deserves better than Zane, just like she deserved better friends in tenth grade. “For everything.”

Chiffon licks her lips and looks away. I think for a second that she really will cry in front of me. “I’m sorry too.” Her voice is harsh and her eyes match, but even in their severity they can’t hide the sadness. “I’m sorry you and Shelby and Melissa and Danica thought that Ronnie Adams was more important than me.”

Melissa’s voice is in my head telling me to scream at Chiffon and correct her: Ronnie Adams was more important to you than
we
were, and that’s why we got rid of you.

“Ronnie Adams is no one,” I say. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know anything about boys back then. We didn’t know how to deal with their crap.” Even I can hear the hollowness in my explanation.

“But you sure knew how to deal with me.”

I shake my head, suddenly feeling as though I might cry too. “No,” I tell her. “No, we shouldn’t have
said those things to you, we shouldn’t have . . .” I stop because the list is too long. I can’t name all the things we shouldn’t have done to Chiffon. I can’t even validate our past offenses against her by pointing out that she still did relatively well for herself. She was still invited to parties even though she was sometimes laughed at or whispered about when she got there. She still had real friends, even though her old ones lingered in the halls like ghosts, always taunting her, punishing her for the boy who liked her when she was fifteen.

Because the bottom line, the conclusion, won’t change no matter what I say. Her reputation dwindled while ours thrived; it plummeted so that ours could skyrocket.

“You guys were very wrong about me,” she tells me. She’s opening the door to her car. This is what she wants me to know before she goes.

I nod but have the strongest urge to ask her why she’s with Zane.
If everything we’d presumed to know about you was so wrong, why are you with someone like Zane and letting him treat you like you don’t matter?
But before I can even take a breath to form the question, I realize I already know the answer. I’m a part of the answer.

We both jump a little when we hear the front door open and the screen door slam. Chiffon gets in her car quickly this time, and I know Zane has just come outside. He looks baffled, maybe irritated, that Chiffon is still here. Trip just looks confused. He glances down at
my feet, my white socks covered in dirt and pebbles.

Chiffon barrels out of the Chapmans’ driveway and doesn’t look back.

“Your pizza’s getting cold,” Trip says, opening the door for me and reaching out his hand. It’s all so typical and so wrong. I’m invited in and Chiffon is asked to leave.

I wonder where I’d be right now if I’d been the one Ronnie Adams was enamored with instead of Chiffon, and I was the one who broke Melissa’s heart. I take Trip’s hand and let him guide me back into the warm house, back to my spot next to him at the dinner table. If I’d never evolved, I wouldn’t be here. Not like this.

If I’d never evolved, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of Nathan’s decision to detach from me. I’d think it was unacceptable. I’d probably be fighting for him right now.

Immediately I miss Shelby, because Shelby’s the one with all the answers. If I can’t lean on the events of the past or the boys of the future, I want to at least be able to lean on my friends and the theories.

“Please be nice to Jamie when she gets here,” Zane says. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.