Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  “He’s only met me a few times, Liza. I think he’s the last person I owe answers to.”

  “He would have met you once more if you’d let me in that morning.” They were glaring at each other now, their faces inches apart. They should separate if they didn’t want someone to notice. But they just stood there, chests heaving with angry breaths.

  “What do you mean? He was with you?”

  “He was in the car.”

  “What the hell did he come with you for?”

  Was she annoyed? That did it. “He didn’t want me driving through the no-man’s-land of Indiana at all hours by myself. And he didn’t know what I’d find when I got here. I was worried you’d been taken hostage or—I didn’t know what!” The words came out in a rush—everything she’d been wanting to say, everything she’d been thinking. “It made no sense that you wouldn’t call me back that night, after the police were gone. And it made no sense that you turned me away when I got here, like I was nothing. Like I was ridiculous for caring about you. Like I was ridiculous for being the best friend you’ve ever had. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but you are seriously messed up if you think I’m gonna just forget it.”

  She could see the wave of humiliation rolling over Molly. And she did not, as she had at the table, allow herself to feel sorry for her. In fact, she hoped Molly was imagining it all, just as it had happened: Max watching from the curb, in disbelief. The two of them talking about her, the whole drive back to Chicago. Five, six hours of pure speculation, lurid gossip. And now, in a new light, the two of them here, Max making what appeared to be uncomfortably on-point jokes. Though the heat of the pasta was thick in the air around them, Molly shivered, and Liza felt satisfied that her friend had accurately pictured it all. And now that Molly had seen it, Liza wanted her to explain it.

  “So, what?” Liza pressed. “You wanted me gone because you knew who the masked guy was, and you didn’t want Daniel to know, and you thought you could handle it? Kinky rendezvous, debt collector, all of the above?”

  Molly’s eyes darted around the kitchen, anywhere but Liza’s face. “It’s not like I’m the only one who isn’t myself right now, okay? What’s going on with you and Max anyway? I thought you were just friends. I thought you were on some big-deal dating hiatus.”

  She had never said it was a big deal. In fact, it had come too easily to be big. Before she met Henry, that is. “We are just friends.”

  “Friends don’t drive twelve hours round-trip on a weeknight just to keep somebody company.”

  Liza bristled. “That’s exactly what they do. And if you can’t see why, then it’s becoming clear he’s the only real one I have.”

  Why was Molly doing this, lashing out when she was so clearly in the wrong? She was losing her, really losing her. Their friendship had been slowly evaporating over the years, but now it was as if someone had knocked over a water glass. Even if you tried to right it a split second later, it was already too late. Most of the fluid was gone, spreading itself so thin it was miraculous to think that the glass had ever contained it all.

  “Please,” Molly said, pleading. “Can we just call a truce?”

  It took so much audacity Liza had to replay the words to be sure she’d heard them correctly. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “To avoid one of those horrible ‘friend breakups’ we promised ourselves we’d never have?” It was a lame attempt at an inside joke, and it fell short by a mile. They’d read an article on the subject, in college, passing the issue of Cosmopolitan and a lit cigarette back and forth until they were both light-headed and teary eyed. They’d vowed that such a thing would never happen to them, proclaimed the featured women fools for letting such stupid things tear them apart. More often than not, the culprit was a man. Sometimes it was something that should have been happy, like the specifics of wedding plans, or a new baby—often offset by some badly timed rotten luck on the other side. A cheating fiancé. An infertility struggle. One woman, though, had been inconsolable that her so-called best friend had somehow jumped the line on the waiting list with an in-demand hairdresser. Of all things! “They were never really friends in the first place,” Liza had said back then, rolling her eyes.

  She’d been so secure in the fact that she and Molly were true blue.

  “This is hardly at the hairdresser level,” Liza said now. “And like you said, it’s been happening for a while. This is just—the last brick, I guess. Maybe you’re wrong that it isn’t a wall.”

  Molly closed her eyes, and Liza wondered if she was thinking of that stupid mantra of hers. Easy. Easy. Liza had never once liked it when someone had told her to take it easy, much less had any inclination to lecture herself. She’d always thought it sad Molly hadn’t latched on to kinder self-talk.

  “Look,” Molly huffed. “I’ll go with you to the damn meditation class.”

  Liza blinked. “Who said I wanted to go? Daniel is full of bad ideas lately.” As evidenced by this dinner.

  “It’s potentially life-changing stuff, Liza. With the worry cycles you’ve always dealt with at night, and now this? I’m sure it hasn’t been easy, putting your life back together.”

  Nothing about her life was back together. The fact that Molly didn’t know this made her grudge dig in its heels. “You told Daniel you’d had enough of it.”

  “Well, I might have misled him.”

  “What else is new?”

  “Look, let me do this one thing for you, okay? I’m sorry about the way I acted. I know it’s too little too late, but it didn’t have anything to do with you. It’s hard to convince you of that without telling you things I can’t say right now, but please, don’t give up on me. Please.”

  It was obvious—to everyone but Daniel anyway—that whatever the meditation sessions were or weren’t capable of, Molly really didn’t want to go back. Which meant she must be willing to do anything she could think of to smooth this over.

  But Liza was not.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do this. Any of it.”

  “Liza—”

  “Let’s just get through dinner, okay? Here’s some of that unsolicited advice you’re so fond of giving: Consider yourself lucky I’m not making a scene in front of your family. And don’t you dare ask me for anything else.”

  * * *

  Max surveyed the contents of Luke and Steph’s fridge. “Cheap wine or expensive beer?” he asked. They hadn’t said much on the drive home—there had been a window, as soon as they were buckled in and on their way, to immediately launch into what they’d just endured, and when neither of them opened it they plunged instead into a contemplative silence. Coming in through the back door, they’d found the house quiet, the dim light over the sink left on for them, and Liza slid into a seat at the table in the dark.

  Watching Max consider the options in the glow of the refrigerator, she finally felt free—and not just of the awkwardness over dinner. Not since Liza had arrived had Luke and Steph’s kitchen felt like the refuge it suddenly seemed. Finally, for this moment, she didn’t feel like a charity case or a third wheel, though it wasn’t anything they’d said or done that had made her feel that way. It was simply true: She was both, especially as the date neared for Steph’s corrective procedure, which was scheduled for Tuesday morning. Liza would have taken Max to the pub around the corner if she hadn’t been sure Steph and Luke would already be in bed, though it wasn’t late. A part of them still believed that if Steph did everything she could to model a healthy pregnancy, eating fresh organic produce and getting plenty of rest and taking brisk walks to get her blood pumping just enough—then she would have one. A part of Liza believed it, too, even though she’d seen for herself the gravity of the Perinatal Center. Even though Steph had lashed out at her yesterday when she’d mentioned Henry.

  “Must be nice for your biggest concerns to revolve around a second date,” she’d snapped.

  Liza had been knocked off-balance by the blow—it was Steph, after all, who�
�d encouraged her to pursue him in the first place, who’d bounded down the stairs the morning after their date at the winery last weekend to find out how it went. But as the days crawled by, Steph’s nerves had visibly frayed. And she looked so instantly horrified at her own words that Liza couldn’t muster anything but sympathy.

  Besides, maybe Liza had mentioned him more than was tolerable lately. This kind of giddiness over a man was unfamiliar, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it, even as she had a general sense that this had been what everyone else was fussing about all along. Not love, of course, not this soon, but the possibility of something that might lead to it. He’d kissed her good night, long and slow, and now … Well, her heart jumped at every ping of her phone—which often was in fact a text from him. Her head turned toward every plane rolling by the Sky Galley window. He’d managed to join her for lunch twice this week—though she took her break uncommonly late, after they’d recovered from the rush—and hadn’t hidden his disappointment that she was unable to set another date for this weekend. She’d taken a small, hard to get satisfaction in saying no, even as she’d wished she could say yes.

  Still, the idea that he was her biggest concern was a gross mischaracterization. Just this afternoon, Max had run late without calling from the road and Liza had been beside herself, sure he’d been in a brutal crash like the one she’d passed on her own last drive from Chicago. By the time he’d arrived, she’d broken out in actual hives beneath her shirt.

  Not that she’d shown them to anyone. That would be … embarrassing.

  Max turned toward her, holding a bottom-shelf pinot grigio in one hand and a locally brewed IPA in the other. It really was a toss-up, as she and Max were of like minds on this, as many other matters: Good wine wasn’t always superior enough to warrant the upcharge—her night out with Henry a wonderful exception, not that she’d paid—but good beer definitely was.

  “Well, I’ve had my fill of cheap talk,” she began.

  “Beer it is.” He popped the tops onto the counter with an efficient hiss clink, hiss clink, and took the seat across from her.

  “Cheers.” They tapped the bottles together and each took a long swig, the way you do when you’ve really earned that first sip working in the yard all day or moving into a new apartment. Or, evidently, enduring a painful dinner party.

  “You were kind of an asshole back there,” she said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t called for. Only a little surprising.”

  He flashed a sorry-not-sorry smile and took another drink. “I was,” he agreed. “I don’t know what came over me. As soon as we got there, my head just went back to that morning—to the way you looked the whole drive back to Chicago. Like she’d physically punched you in the gut.” He set the bottle on the table. “I know you going tonight was my idea, but once we got there, I felt like she was getting off too easy. And like it was my fault, for talking you into going.”

  “So you just came right out the gate with the burglar hooker jokes, huh?”

  He made an exaggerated cringe face, and she laughed. People really didn’t give enough credence to how friendship could be as nuanced as romance, as complicated as family. She could be kind of annoyed with him and a twisted sort of grateful at the same time, just as she could be done with Molly and yet still feel sorry for her somehow.

  “Whatever is going on in that house, it’s not good,” she conceded. “I got this feeling that we should back away slowly. Almost like she was right to turn me away that morning, crazy as that sounds.” She shrugged. “But, you know, sweeping in and stirring things up like we were on some reality TV show was also a viable option.”

  “Sorry,” he said, focusing intently on the label of his beer. “It wasn’t my place.”

  “Well, I appreciate your loyalty. And I guess a part of me is glad you made me go. A very deranged part.” He laughed, and the air between them was cleared. She wished it were always so easy. How nice that with Max it sort of always was.

  “So are we back to worrying about Molly now? Did she win you over with that hostess with the mostess routine?”

  A cackle burst out of Liza, louder than she’d intended, and she clasped a hand over her mouth, not wanting to wake anyone. When they’d left, Molly had been holding a flailing Nori, who’d been yelling something about sleeping on the floor as if it were a great luxury she was being forbidden, while Daniel fended off a shower of ninja stars behind her in the doorway.

  “I wish you were moving here with me,” she blurted out. She hadn’t known she was going to say it, and she ducked her head sheepishly. “It would just make everything … better.”

  “What if I did?” It might have been a throwaway statement, one said after too much dinner wine, or it might have been an act of kindness, to make her feel less embarrassed about having said it at all.

  Or it might have been a daydream, finally mustering the confidence to voice itself.

  “What do I have going on back in Chicago that’s so great?” he went on. “Maybe you had the right idea, getting a fresh start.”

  She laughed again, and she meant it as good-natured, going along with a joke, but it came out as awkward, unnatural. “If you did want a fresh start,” she said, “you could probably come up with better than Cincinnati.”

  “I used to think about moving to San Francisco,” he said, surprising her. So there was a side of him he’d kept to himself after all. A side that happened to have its wanderlust set on the country’s most gay-friendly town. She instantly chided herself for the assumption. She’d long ago come to terms with the fact that Max still didn’t seem to know what he wanted, and that it was none of her business when or how or if he figured it out. Plus, didn’t his employer have an office there? It was possible she’d had one drink too many at dinner herself. Maybe this beer wasn’t the greatest idea. She pushed the bottle away. “San Francisco doesn’t have you, though,” he added.

  “Cincinnati does have that going for it,” she agreed. “But. Friends don’t follow friends several states away.”

  “True,” he said. “Friends don’t.”

  The words felt heavier than they should have, and the air around them took on the weight, as if this could be a moment of significance. It was too close to what Molly had said not long before: Friends don’t drive twelve hours round-trip on a weeknight just to keep somebody company. Liza’s counterargument hadn’t been untrue, but Molly’s observation wasn’t invalid, either. And here she and Max were again: in a moment when the meaning of friend was questioned or—more dauntingly—when the label as it pertained to them was up for discussion.

  Liza felt it, felt the mass of it pulling down on her arms, pressing on the top of her head, squeezing her lungs, and she held her breath, hoping with everything she had that it would pass and then they’d be in a different moment, a moment in which they’d be talking about something else and nothing would have changed. A moment that would spare them from forever looking back at this one and remembering the question that turned the invisible molecules around them into something with substance.

  For all the ways she’d always be attracted to him, no physical pull was left between them. Not anymore.

  At least she didn’t think so.

  “So. Are we going to talk about it?” he asked gently, and she froze.

  “Talk about what?” Don’t ruin it, Max, please.

  “The pile of fire ladders in the guest room.”

  She burst out laughing. “I’m trying to figure out how to dispense them to Luke and Steph without them thinking I’m a head case.”

  “Are you a head case?”

  “No. I’m just—I’m following some advice, actually.”

  “From Fireman Sam?”

  She hesitated. Not mentioning Henry up until this point had been a conscious decision—one she told herself had nothing to do with a fear that Max would rather keep her to himself. It just seemed insensitive, when Max was still getting used to the idea of her moving away, to rub in anything unexpectedly good abo
ut the new start.

  Just as seeing Max be anything but happy for her about Henry would dull the shine of the one novelty she was allowing herself.

  “Not quite,” she said. “But someone who seemed like he knew something about risk assessment. He thought they might make me feel better. And honestly? They kind of do.”

  Max’s expression turned serious. “I walked by your old address the other day. There’s a memorial now. Flowers, teddy bears, sheet music—I guess to honor those musicians, you know? It was the first time I let myself really think about what could’ve happened if you’d been in there.…” She shook her head and he allowed the sentence to fade out. For him it might have been the first time, but for her it was stuck on repeat, and she’d been trying desperately to shut it off. He looked as if he wanted to say more, maybe even to pull her into his arms, but he didn’t. “I think you should do whatever makes you feel okay, is all I’m saying,” he said finally. “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.”

  She’d always told herself that she’d never cared what anyone else thought of her—an extension of her whole no-strings-attached persona—but it wasn’t true. Otherwise she’d have thrown in the towel and returned to Cincinnati long ago. Early on, when she’d been in Chicago for only a few weeks, she’d been so homesick she came back on one of her days off without telling anyone. She’d worn a baseball cap and dark sunglasses, a poor proxy of a celebrity who didn’t want to be recognized, and sat on the wall at Eden Park overlooking the muddy river far below. She’d purposely chosen a neighborhood she no longer had friends in—but what would anyone have said if they saw her? Back so soon? And why did that seem such a slight? She’d told herself sticking things out in Chicago was the independent thing to do, but the minute it stopped being what she wanted was the minute it stopped being an independent choice. And the idea that these new insecurities filling her days had been there all along was the most unsettling, the most difficult to face.