Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  Andrew’s heart ba-bummed in my ear. He smelled like a date, all cologne and nerves. I felt his sad sigh on the top of my head. “I can’t just talk with you, TifAni.”

  Somewhere, that windshield finally shattered whole. I only knew how to strike, and I planted my elbows in Andrew’s chest and pushed. He hadn’t been expecting it, and he gasped, whether the wind was knocked out of him or he was just startled, as he stumbled away from me. “Of fucking course you can’t.” I waved him off. “I actually needed a friend. But you’re just another guy who wants to put it in the Bradley slut.”

  Under the streetlamps now, I saw Andrew’s face all pinched up with hurt and I immediately hated myself. “TifAni,” he tried. “My God, you know that’s not true. I just want you to be happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. But this”—he pointed between us—“this won’t make you happy.”

  “Oh, even better!” I laughed nastily. “Someone else to tell me what will make me happy. Exactly what I fucking need.” Don’t do this. Don’t say this. But I couldn’t stop. “I know, okay?” I took little steps toward him until we were kissing close. “I know what’s best for me.”

  Andrew nodded kindly. “I know you do.” He wiped a tear off my face, and it only made me cry harder. Would that be the last time he ever touched me? “So do it.”

  I gripped his hand to my face, leaking tears and snot all over him. “I can’t. I know I won’t.”

  The restaurant door yapped open, and Andrew and I broke away from each other as a couple, fed and happy, trotted down the stairs. The man waited for the woman on the street, slung his arm around her shoulders when she caught up with him. She pretended like she didn’t notice my glassy eyes as she passed by, but I knew by the look on her face that she had. Knew she was thinking, Couple’s spat, glad it’s not us tonight. I would have killed for us to have been a couple, fighting about how Andrew’s been working too much, how I spend too much at Barneys, anything other than what we were really doing here.

  We waited for them to walk to their cars, listened to the doors slam shut. Hers first, his another few seconds later. He’d opened the door for her. I hated them.

  Andrew said, “I never meant to upset you, TifAni. I hate seeing you like this.” He thrust his arms in the air, angry at himself. “I let it go too far. I should never have done that. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to tell him I was sorry too, that this wasn’t what I meant to happen either. But I couldn’t make the words come out, just more lies and excuses. “I think I gave you the wrong idea about Luke.” Andrew pushed his hands at me, tried to stop me from explaining, but I pressed on. “It is not easy for someone like me to be happy. This is as close as I’m going to get and it’s pretty great—”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that—”

  “So don’t you dare,” I cry-hiccuped embarrassingly, “feel sorry,” another hiccup, “for me.”

  “I don’t,” Andrew said. “I never did. I’m bowled over by you. You cared for Peyton. You held Peyton’s hand. After what he did to you. You don’t even know how amazing you are. You should be with someone who sees that.”

  I picked up the collar of my shirt and acted like I was just drying my face, but I wasn’t. I was hurling quiet sobs into my protective mask. I heard Andrew’s nice dress shoes take a step in my direction, but I shook my head and gave a muffled warning not to come any closer.

  He waited for me, a full body’s length away, while I destroyed my shirt. I couldn’t ever return it to the fashion closet now; I was going to have to act like I lost it or something. Strategizing this new lie was the only thing that could calm me down. Was the only thing that dried me up inside and gave me the strength to clear my throat and say, just barely composed, “My mother’s probably wondering where I am.”

  Andrew nodded at the pavement. Like he’d been watching it the whole time, giving me my privacy. “Okay.”

  I at least managed to get off a pleasant-sounding good night before I turned and took the stairs. Andrew waited behind me again, making sure I got inside safely. I didn’t even deserve him anyway.

  “There you are!” Mom said as I squeezed myself between two tables and into the booth. “I ordered you the most boring salad they have.” She dunked a crispy noodle into orange sauce and bit into it. “I know you’re on that crazy diet.”

  “Thanks.” I snapped my napkin over my lap again.

  Aunt Lindy noticed my face first. “You okay, Tif?”

  “Not really.” I tossed a crispy noodle into my mouth without dipping it into anything and munched. “I mean, I did just spend the afternoon with the mother of the boy I murdered, so that may explain why I’m a little blue.”

  “TifAni FaNelli,” Mom gasped. “You do not speak like that to your aunt Lindy.”

  “Okay then.” I popped another noodle into my mouth. I wanted to shake the entire bowl down my throat, anything to fill the raging hole of hunger. “I’ll speak like that to you.”

  “We came here to have a nice dinner,” Mom hissed. “If you are hell-bent on ruining it, you can just leave.”

  “If I leave, so does Luke’s credit card.” I chewed noisily and gave her a crushing smile.

  Mom managed to fit a calm veneer over her panic about Aunt Lindy witnessing such a scene. Surely my cousin would never embarrass her mother like this. She was marrying a man of the law. Mom turned to Aunt Lindy as though every bone in her body wasn’t screaming at her to strike at me like a snake, and said Disney-princess-fucking-sweet, “Do you mind giving me a minute with TifAni?”

  Aunt Lindy looked like she was sorry to miss this, but she unhooked her purse from the back of her chair. “I do need to use the ladies’ room.”

  Mom waited until we no longer heard Aunt Lindy and her jewelry clanging through the restaurant like a goddamn marching band. She pushed away the hair that wasn’t in her eyes in preparation for her lecture. “TifAni, I know you are under a lot of stress right now.” She reached out to me, and I jerked away. Mom stared at the spot where my hand had been for a moment. “But you need to pull it together. You are this close to driving Luke away.” She held her thumb and index finger a millimeter apart to show just how little breadth I had left.

  It was impressive she knew to go there. So impressive it was suspicious. “And what would you know about that?”

  Mom rocked back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “He called me. He was worried. He asked me not to tell you, but”—she leaned forward and her neck popped with stringy purple veins—“seeing how you’re acting tonight, I think you need to hear it.”

  The idea that it might not be my call anymore, that I didn’t have Andrew, that I might not have anyone, cinched that corset tighter. I shifted in my seat and tried not to look as concerned as I was. “What did he say exactly?”

  “That you’re not you, TifAni. You’re combative. Hostile.”

  I laughed like it was the most absurd thing I’d ever heard. “I wanted to do the documentary and he doesn’t think I should. He wants me to move to London and give up my shot at The New York fucking Times.” I lowered my voice at Mom’s glare. “And so now advocating for myself is being hostile?”

  Mom lowered her voice to match mine. “It doesn’t really matter if it’s hostile or not, does it? Because it’s more about how you’re not acting like the person Luke fell in love with.” She took a sip of the water the busboy had brought her while I was outside, battling Mr. Larson. “You better start acting like the old you if you want this wedding to happen.”

  We settled into our corners, our fierce silence only magnified by the merry, rambunctious room. I spotted Aunt Lindy on her way back from the bathroom. I’d gone with her and Mom to see the tacky little wedding factory where her daughter was getting married, the manager showing off how the lights in the “ballroom” could flash from neon pink to green to blue in tandem with the club music the house DJ was playing. Then she’d bragged about the menu, how it may have been a hundred dollars a plate for the surf and tur
f, but it was her only daughter and she would spare no expense. What a laugh. I’d jump for fucking joy if that was all my caterer was charging me, well, charging us. The memory made that thirst come over me again, the one that expert said could indicate a person wasn’t getting a basic biological need met. Aunt Lindy gave me a tentative, questioning look, and I nodded at her to return while I drained my water glass, the ice cubes bumping up against my teeth in a way that always makes me cringe.

  I signed the bill, and Mom reminded me to take my leftovers. “Take them for Dad,” I offered, generously. I’d gone toe to toe with Mom, and I’d lost. “I don’t have anyplace to store them in the hotel.”

  Out in the parking lot, both Aunt Lindy and Mom told me to thank Luke for dinner. I promised them I would.

  “When do you head back to Manhattan?” Mom asked, doing that thing she does where she thinks she sounds in-the-know by saying Manhattan instead of New York.

  “Not until tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “I have one more thing to film.”

  “Well,” Aunt Lindy said, “get some rest, sweetheart. There’s no makeup like a good night’s sleep.”

  My smile felt like a knife carving all the way around my head. I nodded a good-bye to Mom, imagining the top half of my head peeling off cleanly as an acorn squash halved, ready for my disgusting, gluten-free dinner. I waited until Mom and Aunt Lindy climbed into her cranky BMW. The last time my parents had had the money to renew the lease and trade in for the updated model was seven years ago. I’d suggested something less flashy, not so expensive to maintain, and Mom had laughed. “I’m not driving a Honda Civic, TifAni.” For Mom, success wasn’t working at The New York Times Magazine, success was marrying someone like Luke Harrison, who could provide all the things she pretends she can afford.

  I risked a glance at the even older version of Mom’s car, in the same spot where I’d left it an hour ago, only after Mom and Aunt Lindy puttered out of the parking lot.

  I walked past and pretended I didn’t notice the New York plate. There was a quick flash of movement from inside, and then the taillights saluted me in red. Andrew was gone by the time I unlocked the doors of the Jeep.

  Five years ago, Bryn Mawr College shaved down the trees barricading the Spot from the road. Empty beer cans, mouths ringed with decades-old teenage DNA, were collected and recycled, and the land was coiffed into a sweet park with picnic tables and a swing set, a demure fountain spitting water into the center. Sunday morning, I followed the spindly tracks he left in the grass to their end, the cameras watching at my back.

  He looked up at me, which I suppose he has to do to everyone now. “Finny.”

  I snared my bottom lip in my teeth. Willed the location to contain all that name called up before I spoke. “I can’t believe you got me here, Dean.”

  Aaron urged me to sit on a bench. It would be better for the shot if Dean and I were the same height, and only one of us could even the disparity. I balked at first, but I gave in when I noticed Dean staring at the ground, the humiliation beading red in his cheeks.

  We finally settled into our marks, the crew trained on us like an execution squad, but neither of us knew how to begin. Dean was the one who’d wanted to do this, had asked Aaron to ask me if I would be willing to see him. Which was what he had approached me about on Friday, as I left the studio on the first day of filming.

  “What does he want?” I’d asked Aaron.

  “He says he wants to apologize. Set the record straight.” Aaron was looking at me like, Isn’t that great?

  I know I’d promised Luke I wouldn’t talk about that night. I know I’d said I didn’t even want to talk about that night. But with Dean willing to admit what they had all done to me, some vindication, finally, I suddenly realized how callously I’d been lying to myself. Of course I wanted to talk about it.

  On Dean’s level now, I raised my eyebrows at him, expectedly. I wasn’t going to be the one to speak first. Dean attempted nostalgia, which just goes to show you how dumb Dean still is. “Remember how much fun we used to have here?” He gazed around, the yearning in his face an unintentional insult.

  “I remember you inviting me to your house here. I remember going and being passed around like a gift bag.” The sun jumped out from a cloud, and I squinted. “I remember that like it was yesterday.”

  Dean’s fingers twitched like he’d been electrocuted, then tightened in his lap. “I’m very sorry about how that all turned out.”

  “How that all turned out?” That’s what I’d come here for? Some vague politician’s apology skirting any real responsibility? My eyes turned to slits, a million crow’s-feet everywhere, but I didn’t care. “How about ‘I’m sorry for taking advantage of you when you were fourteen years old and wasted out of your mind’? ‘I’m sorry for trying to do it again at Olivia’s house, and for slapping you across the’—”

  “Stop filming this.” Dean swung his wheelchair at the camera, his agility so shocking it silenced me.

  The cameraman glanced questioningly at Aaron. “Stop filming this,” Dean repeated, advancing on him in a slow smooth roll.

  The cameraman was still waiting for Aaron to make the call, but he was just standing there, white-faced and dazed. It dawned on me suddenly that everything I’d just said to Dean had shocked him. Either Dean had glazed over the details of that night, or this was the first time Aaron was hearing it. He wants to apologize. Set the record straight. Aaron, I realized, had no idea how much Dean had to apologize for. “Aaron?” the cameraman asked, and Aaron seemed to come online. He cleared his throat and said, “Nathan, stop filming.”

  I addressed Dean’s back with a sharp laugh. “Why do you even want to do this, Dean? If we can’t say anything about anything that actually happened.” I stood, the simple ability to do so a powerful weapon.

  Dean maneuvered a turn. At least my albatross wasn’t physical, wasn’t a place where I was doomed to sit all my life. I understood, oddly, that it was almost worse for Dean that the end of his twenties hadn’t attacked him the way it had others. He still had a good scoop of hair, still had that lithe definition to his upper body. One esteemed line crossed his forehead like a fold in an envelope, but that was all. At least if he’d withered under the weight of the years, it wouldn’t be such a spectacular waste to be trapped halfway to the ground for all eternity.

  Of course he was married to a bombshell, heels and a heavy lip at the breakfast table, glossy trimmings I still had to make myself resist, Mom’s brash version of beauty ground deep into my bones. I’d heard her speak in a clip from the Today show—southern, on the crazy side of religious. Probably didn’t believe in sex before marriage, or sex for anything other than procreation at that, which worked out well for Dean. I’m pretty sure he can’t appreciate any of the lusty prowess we promise on the cover of The Women’s Magazine. Arthur made sure of that much.

  Dean checked over his shoulder at the crew. “This isn’t being filmed, right?”

  Aaron said, just a little bit testily, “Do you see a camera pointed at you?”

  Then, “Can you give TifAni and me some privacy, please?”

  Aaron looked at me. I nodded and mouthed “It’s fine.”

  The cameraman pointed at the sky, bubbling over with clouds again. “We really should get this shot before it rains.”

  Aaron jerked his head, a signal to retreat. “We’ll get it.”

  The crew trailed Aaron, his long strides widening the distance between us. Dean waited until the crew collected by the road before turning on me. One vein jumped in his jaw, twice, then rested.

  “Can you sit?”

  “I prefer to stand, thanks.”

  Dean rocked on his wheels. “Ohh-kay.” The corner of his mouth curled up suddenly. “Are you getting married?”

  My hand dangling by my side was right at his eye level. For once, I’d forgotten my emerald pride, all its magical, transformative powers. I spread my fingers wide and flat and looked down, the way girls always do when someone n
otices and asks. The excitement rushing in so fast it’s like it’s new again. The thing may as well have been a dead bug the way I regarded it. “In three weeks.”

  “Congratulations.”

  I tucked my hands in my back pockets. “Can you just get to it, Dean?”

  “Tif, honestly—”

  “I actually go by Ani now.”

  Dean stuck out his lower lip and repeated the name in his head, “Like the end of—”

  “TifAni.”

  He turned it over to see how it fit. “Pretty,” he concluded.

  I kept very still to let him see how little his opinion mattered. The sky quivered, and one lone raindrop made a plea for urgency on Dean’s nose. “Well, first, I want to apologize to you,” Dean said. “I have wanted to do that for a long time.” He held eye contact with me much too intensely, like a media coach had taught him, this is how you give an apology. “The way I treated you”—an exhale vibrated on his fat lips—“it was very wrong, and I’m so sorry.”

  I closed my eyes. Kept them shut until I’d generated enough power to swallow the ache of memory. Smoothed over, I opened them again. “But you don’t want to say this on camera.”

  “I will say this on camera,” Dean said. “I’ll apologize for the wrongful accusations I made against you. Saying that you took the gun because you were in on this with Arthur and Ben”—I opened my mouth, but Dean held up a hand, the one with the silver band smiling around his own ring finger. “Tif—Ani, I mean—you can choose to believe this or not, but at the time I really did think you were involved. Imagine how it looked to me. You come running in and I know you and Arthur are friends and I know how angry you must be with me and he hands you the gun and basically tells you to finish me off and you reached for it.”

  “But I was terrified. I was begging for my life. You saw that too.”

  “I know, but it was all jumbled up to me,” Dean said. “I’d lost all this blood and I was terrified too. All I knew was that he handed you the gun and you went to take it. Those cops, they came at me so sure you had done it. I was just, confused . . . and angry.” He rolled in his wheelchair, meaningfully. “I was angry. Arthur and Ben were dead, and you were still alive to take my anger out on.”