Chapter Text
Late May
1997
Ever since Lottie Matthews had started her freshman year at Princeton, every morning started the same. She woke up at 6:30am, ate a small breakfast, took her pill, and went for a run. Normally, she would have been in class by 9 or 9:30am, but today she would be packing after her morning run instead, because tomorrow she would be heading back to New York City to stay with her father for the second miserable summer in a row.
She hadn’t wanted to stay with him the first time, especially right after graduating high school, but he hadn’t offered her much of a choice. He wanted her to intern at his company every summer to “learn the ropes,” as he put it. He wanted her to attend swanky parties and introduce herself to young, eligible bachelors with names like Chad or Ashton, so she could marry within her class when the time was right and provide him with “an heir to the Matthews fortune.”
It made her sick to her stomach just thinking about it. Did he seriously think they were still living in the 1800s or something?
But she had learned a long time ago to pick her battles wisely with him, and her summers in NYC were a small sacrifice in comparison to what he really wanted, which was for her to spend all four years at Princeton in a sorority, going on dates with even more boys with pretentious names. At least she’d talked him into letting her live in an apartment, instead of making her pledge to one of those elitist Greek houses— even if that was still a step down from her actual desire to live in the dorms like every other freshman.
Her three roommates had left the day before, right after finals, talking about how jealous they felt of her. They wished they could spend their summer interning for a Fortune 500 company all day and partying with the wealthy all night, instead of going back to their small towns to work part-time, minimum wage jobs and hanging out with the same friends they’d known since middle school. But, to Lottie, their summers sounded ideal.
Okay, maybe without the part-time, minimum wage jobs— but still.
She missed summers in Wiskayok. She missed hearing insects at night outside her window. She missed road trips to Atlantic City on the weekends, late night soccer practices during the week, and getting tan by the pool. She even missed the stupid, alcohol-fueled parties Jeff and Randy used to throw every friday night, even though she’d usually spent the entire time either holding someone’s hair over the toilet or breaking up drunken fights. It had still been better than listening to some guy with ultra-white teeth brag about his family’s yacht all night while staring her up and down like she was some kind of prized hog at an upscale county fair, which is exactly what always ended up happening at the parties in NYC.
But, most of all, she missed Natalie Scatorccio.
She hadn’t seen her since graduation— and hadn’t heard from her either. In fact, in all that time, she hadn’t heard from any of her teammates.
She had tried calling them several times. Shauna’s mom said she’d gone to Brown, which came as a surprise (Lottie had thought she was going to Rutgers with Jackie). Taissa’s parents said she’d left right after graduation to attend summer classes at Howard. Laura Lee, as usual, had spent the summer of 1996 as a counselor at the same Christian camp she used to attend as a kid, and had then gone off to Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Jackie's parents said she was “settling in nicely” at Rutgers and that they’d have her call Lottie when she visited at Christmas, but she never had.
Van’s mom, meanwhile, wouldn’t even bother to pick up the phone, and Nat’s had told her to “fuck off” because— even if she’d known where Natalie was— she “didn’t give a fuck about that brat anymore.”
But, even if none of them missed her, she still missed them, and she would have given anything to find an excuse to go back, if only the universe would have provided her with one.
She had so many things left to say to them, especially Nat— and so many things she still wanted to do before adulthood swallowed her whole and sucked her dry. Just once, she would have liked to have gone to a party and been the drunk girl puking over the toilet, instead of the one holding her hair. Just once, she would have liked to have skipped her medication enough to do that, instead of pretending to sip beers that she actually ended up pouring out when no one was looking.
Just once, she would have liked to have found the courage to kiss someone. Anyone. It didn’t have to be the one she’d been privately crushing on since their sophomore year in high school. She just wanted to know what it felt like to kiss someone, period.
But, as she got ready for her jog that morning, part of her also wondered if her friends back home were better off without her. After all, she’d never even had the backbone to tell any of them about her diagnosis. She’d never told them about the mind-numbing meds she had to take every morning, or how lonely it felt to carry around that kind of a secret.
None of them even knew she’d never been kissed.
All they knew of her was what she’d let them see. All they knew of her was the mask she’d always hidden behind.
Half of the time, even she wasn’t sure who the fuck Lottie Matthews really was. The daughter of a millionaire? An A-student at Princeton? The girl who always smiled when people expected her to, even when she didn’t feel like smiling? How did any of that matter, when she spent most of her time feeling like an empty shell?
And what the hell did she have to offer any of her friends back home, when even she didn’t know herself? Nothing. Nada. Squat.
She took a deep breath, pushed play on her walkman, and slid on her headphones. Even with the heavy thoughts running through her head, Shame on You by the Indigo Girls brought a little bounce to her step as she took off down the sidewalk. But she only made it about a block down the street before the mailman pulled up beside her and waved her down, forcing her to take the headphones back off.
“Charlotte Matthews?” he asked, holding out a pink envelope.
She looked at the envelope and then at him, confusion etched across her brow. “Yes?”
“Glad I caught you! I just found this hiding underneath my seat, and I am so sorry. I think it’s been there for over a week. I wish I had found it sooner.”
“Oh, that’s . . . okay,” she promised.
Hesitantly, like she was afraid it might bite her for some unknown reason, she reached out and took the envelope. She didn’t need to see the return address to know who it was from. She would have recognized Jackie Taylor’s neat but feminine handwriting anywhere.
The mailman then drove away without her even noticing. She was too busy staring at the envelope. She had also forgotten to push pause on the CD— and was vaguely aware that music continued to pour out of the headphones dangling around her neck— but even that seemed to be occurring on another plane of existence at this point.
Someone had finally written to her, after all this time.
For a moment, she considered waiting to read it until she finished her run— but quickly realized she had no patience for that and ripped it open.
On pink stationary that matched the envelope, it said:
“Hey, Lot!
I’m sooo sorry I didn’t call you over Christmas break, but I promise I can explain. I know you’re probably going to NYC again this summer, but . . . is there any way you could make a pit stop in Wiskayok first? Call me when you get this and we can plan a time to meet up. That is . . . if you’re not too pissed at me for not calling or writing sooner.
A lot has happened since we last talked. I would tell you more, but I’d really rather talk face-to-face if we can. I just . . . could really use a friend, and I don’t know who else to talk to. I can’t talk to Shauna right now. I’ll explain that later too.
Just call me. Please? I think I’ll already be back at my parents by the time you get this.
Still your captain (haha),
Jackie”
And she had put a little heart over the ‘i’ in her name. It made Lottie smile.
What a fucking dork.
She folded up the letter, stuffed it into the back pocket of her running shorts, and only paused to put her headphones back on before resuming her run.
But, once more, she didn’t get very far.
A petite girl with bleached blonde hair was jogging the other way on the sidewalk across from her, and she caught Lottie’s eye. The girl had her hair pulled back in a short ponytail, which bobbed up and down as she ran.
She wore navy blue shorts and a yellow t-shirt, and she looked almost identical to Nat.
Of course, logically speaking, Lottie knew it couldn’t be Nat. But that didn’t stop her from getting distracted enough to accidentally run off the sidewalk and face-first into a tree.
“Ouch!”
That was definitely going to leave a scratch on her nose.
In the meantime, the impact of her crash made the Indigo Girls CD skip to the last song, and Hey Kind Friend started to play.
“Hey kind friend . . . I don’t know when I’ll see you again . . .” went the lyrics.
Lottie turned and leaned against the tree, suddenly breathless and with her heart pounding in her chest. But she knew it had nothing to do with the physical act of running or her collision with the tree— and everything to do with Jackie’s letter, the Nat look-alike, and lyrics that seemed way too appropriately timed to be considered a coincidence.
She had been wishing for the universe to give her literally any excuse to go back to Wiskayok, and now it had given her three signs in a row— and on the very day before she was supposed to leave for New York.
There was no question in her mind that she would at least meet up with Jackie and offer her a friendly shoulder in her time of need. After all, Lottie had never been the type to hold a grudge, and she was sure Jackie had been telling her the truth when she said she could explain why it had taken her so long to finally reach out.
But, plenty of other questions were now racing through her head, and almost all of them made her anxious.
How would she explain this side quest to her father? Exactly how long would she stay in Wiskayok? Who else would she have the courage to visit while she was there? Would any of them be the person she’d missed the most?
Had she even missed Lottie back?
That last question might even be the one that terrified her the most.
Two days later
For the past couple of months, Nat Scatorccio had been working the night shift at Lucky’s Video in Wiskayok, with her old teammate Van Palmer. It didn’t pay much— and a lot of nasty, middle-aged men usually came in to look at the videos in the “back room” late at night— but Nat couldn’t complain, especially since Van had not only helped her get the job, but had also given her a place to stay without asking for anything in return.
Six months before that, Nat’s mom had kicked her out of their trailer after her second time getting busted for cocaine possession. She’d been lucky the judge hadn’t tossed her in the slammer and thrown away the key that time. But, either way, she’d ended up homeless for a while. Every now and then, she’d found some chick or dude (usually someone just as strung out as she was) to give her a couch for the night. But she hadn’t managed to find a permanent solution to her problem until Van found her passed out in the middle of the street one night, took her home, and basically locked her in a room until her withdrawal symptoms were over.
“The Van Palmer school of rehabilitation,” Van had called it. “Totally free, and the only drawback is you have to watch movies with me and then listen to me geek out about them for at least an hour afterwards.”
And Nat had scoffed at that at first, because nothing she had ever tried had ever helped her one fucking bit. Not the 12-step program, not jail, and certainly not listening to her goddamn mom tell her what a fucking loser she was every single day of her life.
But, to even her own shock, she’d been (knock on wood) mostly sober ever since moving in with Van.
Mostly, as in, she never touched coke anymore, but she still smoked weed daily and allowed herself the occasional round of binge drinking when life gave her lemons instead of lemonade, which still seemed to happen at least once every other fucking week, on average.
Van didn’t mind the weed. She even joined in from time to time (especially for certain movies, which she claimed were better with a buzz). But Nat had to listen to endless lectures when she came home after a bender.
“If you never stop the alcohol completely like you did the coke,” Van would say, with that downwards chin-tilt look she always got when she was trying to make a point without seeming too judgmental, “you’ll never be totally free from either.”
And Nat would roll her eyes and say something like, “Yeah, yeah. Quit busting my balls, Palmer. I’ve cut down already. What more do you want from me?” But, deep down, she’d feel bad for disappointing her and stay clean for a couple of weeks just to try and prove her wrong.
It never lasted long, but she was at least trying for Van’s sake, because (whether she admitted it out loud or not), she’d kind of grown to rely on Palmer in a way she’d rarely relied on anyone, including her own fucked-up parents.
In fact, she’d even started counting on Van to call her exactly 45 minutes before she was due to clock-in at the video store, which was why— on the day that everything started to change for all of them— she ended up being over an hour late for her shift.
“You’re late,” said Van from behind the front counter, without even looking up from the stack of DVDs she was busy checking for scratches.
“Yeah, no shit,” grumbled Nat. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because it’s been exactly three weeks since your last drink, so I thought maybe you were ready for the next phase in Van Palmer’s School of Rehabilitation. Too soon?”
Nat shook her head, but let out a surprised chuckle as she came around the counter to put down the thrift-store rucksack she carried most of her belongings in. “Has it really been three weeks? That’s gotta be a new record.”
“It is a new record!” said Van, who finally looked up and beamed a proud smile at her. “My baby is growing up so quickly.”
“Shut the fuck up, dude,” replied Nat, giving her a playful jab on the arm.
But she really hadn’t noticed it had been that long, and now she felt an odd mixture of embarrassment and pride that was making her blush.
Luckily, Van was at least cool enough to resist calling her out on the blushing part. Otherwise she would have punched her harder.
“Thanks for covering my ass for an hour,” said Nat. “Guess I better invest in a fucking alarm clock, huh?”
“Hey, that’s what friends are for, buddy,” Van told her. “But yeah . . . I think you’re ready to take that next step towards adulthood now.”
“Pfft. Always busting my balls,” replied Nat with a small smile.
“Somebody has to,” quipped Van.
Nat shook her head again and punched her clock-in code into the front desk computer. It was officially ten minutes after 8pm, and the sun had already started to set outside. Welcome to late May in New Jersey, where summer never truly started until almost the fucking fourth of July. She’d even worn her leather jacket to work, because she knew the temperature would dip into the near 50s by the time she got off at 3am.
“Anything I need to know before you leave for the night?” she asked Van. “Really am sorry I got here so late. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
And Van opened her mouth to speak, but— before she could— they both heard the bell ring above the store’s only entrance and looked up to find Lottie fucking Matthews walking through the door.
She offered Van a bright but somewhat shy smile. “Hey, Van,” she said, before looking over at Nat next. “Nat . . . long time, no see. You let your hair go dark.”
Nat couldn’t tell if she’d meant that as a compliment, an insult, or a simple observation, but she was too busy trying to pick her jaw up off the floor to respond anyway. She purposely hadn’t thought about Lottie in months, mostly because she’d never expected to see her again. She tended to do that with people now-a-days, after all she’d been through. Why keep giving a shit about someone if they weren’t going to give a shit back? That was her new motto.
(But now that Lottie was standing right in front of her) it suddenly felt like they were both back at that fucking party all over again. At Jackie’s graduation day party. Almost exactly a year ago.
“Hey, Lot,” said Van, sounding just as surprised to see her as Nat felt. “What are you doing back in town? Or even in this video store? You do realize most people consider this the seedy part of town . . . right?”
Lottie stepped a little closer to the counter and let out a small laugh Nat couldn’t quite decode. It sounded like she either found Van’s last question amusing or really did have no idea which side of Wiskayok was considered seedy but was doing her best to play along like she did. Nat was betting on the latter being true, since she had never once seen Lottie Matthews on this side of town, except on the odd occasions when she’d dropped her off after soccer practice or picked her up for one of their night drives.
“I actually came to visit Jackie,” said Lottie. “But she told me I might find one or both of you here, so I thought I’d drop by while I’m in town.”
“Glad you did,” Van told her, with a genuine smile. “I was just on my way out, but I can hang back for a while if you want to—”
“Or Lottie could just follow you to our place,” interrupted Nat, trying to pretend to be helpful (when, really, her impulses were just telling her to get Lottie out of the store as quickly as possible). “I mean . . . I’ve got so much to do here, and I won’t even be done until 3 o’clock in the morning. You two might as well catch up without me.”
“Pfft,” scoffed Van. “What do you have to do? We haven’t even had a customer for the last 30 minutes.”
“Dude, stop fucking around,” said Nat. “You know we got that whole shipment of new shelving units in earlier. They’re not going to put themselves up, for fucks sake.”
But she could tell Lottie was on to her by the way she folded her arms and arched her eyebrow with suspicion. (Damn Matthews for always being so fucking observant, and damn herself for always being so easy to read when she got flustered).
“Do you not want to see me for some reason?” Lottie asked her.
Nat flared her nostrils and frowned.
At various points in her life, she’d repeatedly been given the choice to either tell the truth and rock the boat— or lie her ass off and risk sinking it completely. She never knew which she was going to choose until the damage had already been done either way. But, for whatever reason, tonight she chose the truth.
“You don’t remember leaving me stranded at Jackie’s party last year?” she asked.
And she noticed Lottie blushing. (So she did remember).
“I . . . I was going to give you a ride,” said Lottie, “but . . . when I came to get you at the end of the party, you were making out with some guy on Jackie’s bed, and . . . I guess I thought he’d end up giving you a ride instead. So . . . I left. I’m sorry.”
“Bro,” Van gasped, looking straight at Nat with wide eyes. “Did you have sex on Jackie’s bed? Holy shit, she would have a stroke if she knew.”
“No, I did not fucking have sex on Taylor’s bed,” snapped Nat. “But what did happen was that asshole ditched me when I told him I wasn’t in the mood, and then I had to walk all the way back home in the fucking rain, because Jackie had passed the fuck out and everyone else had already left. You could have at least apologized the next day. I mean . . . I thought we were friends, Lottie.”
But as soon as she’d let the truth out, she felt bad about it, because now Lottie was looking at her like a pathetic, wounded animal, with her shoulders slumped and moisture in her big brown eyes.
“I tried,” promised Lottie. “I really did.”
“You didn’t even call me. Not once in all these months.”
“I tried, Natalie,” repeated Lottie. “But every time I called, your mom told me to fuck off.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t know you’d moved in with Van, or that Van had even moved out on her own, until I talked to Jackie yesterday,” Lottie explained. “But I’m really sorry that creep left you stranded that night. And I’m even more sorry that I did it too. It was a shitty thing to do.”
She sounded sincere enough— and Nat had no doubt she was sincere. But she also thought she caught a strange look flash across Lottie’s face right before her apology started. Something that oddly resembled fear more than it resembled regret.
But why would she be afraid, when Nat had already forgiven her the moment Lottie had revealed her mom as part of the misunderstanding? Wasn’t her mom always a source of her problems? It wasn’t like this came as a fucking shock to Nat.
“Well . . .” said Nat, scratching the back of her head with a small, embarrassed smile, “. . . you’re here now.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lottie, smiling back at her with relief. “I’m here now.”
Nat vaguely felt Van look at her weird before turning her stare on Lottie. A little amused smile was twitching at the corners of her mouth, but Nat couldn’t fathom why. “So!” said Van, after an awkward silence had fallen between the three of them. “Looks like all is forgiven here. Lottie, how long will you be in town?”
Lottie chewed at the inside of her cheek. “Uhm . . . I’m not sure really. As long as it takes I guess?”
“As long as what takes?” asked Nat, letting out a confused huff of laughter.
“I just . . . have some more people to see, that’s all,” said Lottie cryptically. “Some things to take care of. Plus, I really missed summers in Wiskayok. I’d at least like to stay until the fireflies come out.”
And Lottie got a dreamy look in her eyes, unlike any Nat could remember seeing her get before. It kind of made her look . . . beautiful. But not in the normal Matthews type-of-way she had looked in high school, when all the boys had taken their shots and been repeatedly rejected by her. No, this was a different kind of beauty. There was something . . . vulnerable about this type that made it hard for Nat to look away.
“In that case, Lot,” said Van, clearing her throat. “I shall bid you adieu if you promise me we can catch up another time before you leave.”
“Of course!” agreed Lottie.
“Now, wait a minute, Van—” Nat tried to say, feeling suddenly panicked.
She had no idea why. She had missed Lottie and was glad their misunderstandings had been cleared up so quickly. She had missed sharing cigarettes with her after practice and getting the odd ride home in the vintage Mercedes Benz her old man had bought her for her 16th birthday. It was true they’d never really shared any deep conversations, but (let’s get real) Nat had never had any deep conversations with anyone else back in high school either, and Lottie had still been the closest female friend she’d managed to find.
So why her heart was racing at the thought of being alone with Lottie now— only a year later— Nat had no fucking clue.
But, for some reason, as clueless as she felt, she got the weirdest feeling that Van was a mile ahead of her on this one. It was the way she kept smiling at her and Lottie, like she suddenly understood some secret mystery about life that neither of them were allowed to know about yet.
“No, no,” replied Van, who physically had to shrug out of Nat’s grip in order to pick up her backpack and sling it over her shoulder. “I already worked an hour over for you. The least you can do is let me go home and get some sleep. Maybe Lottie can help you put up those shelves.”
And she distinctly heard the sound of Van chuckling quietly to herself as she rounded the side of the counter and headed out the door.
The little bell jingled on her way out, signaling how alone they suddenly were.
A long pause filled the space between them. Nat looked down at the floor and shuffled her feet for a second. Lottie took a deep breath, blushed, and smiled awkwardly. It seemed like neither one of them knew what the fuck to say now that Van had left the store.
“Do you really have shelves to put up?” Lottie finally asked, breaking the silence.
“No,” admitted Nat, letting out an embarrassed laugh. “I just . . . wasn’t sure what to say to you.”
“Seems like you still don’t,” said Lottie, with a small laugh of her own.
“I mean . . .” Nat searched her brain for something, but the only stupid thing that came out ended up being, “. . . do you like my hair or not?”
Lottie laughed even harder at that, but her smile warmed, and they both seemed to relax a little. “I like it a lot,” promised Lottie. “It makes you look . . . more mature.”
“What a load of bullshit,” replied Nat (but she was smiling too now).
“Look, do you want to smoke a cigarette outside and watch a movie or something?” asked Lottie. “You certainly have no shortage of DVDs to choose from.”
“Sure, why not,” Nat agreed, with a shrug she tried to make look nonchalant. “There’s a TV in the office, and I’ll hear the bell if a customer comes in. You like horror?”
Lottie shook her head. “Afraid not. Unless you mean those really dumb ones where the teenagers get chased through the woods.”
“Seriously, Lottie? How did I not know this about you? Those are literally the cheesiest, worst kind of horror movies ever made. Well . . . except the original Halloween. That’s a fucking classic. What about the Hellraiser movies?”
“Eww, no,” said Lottie, wrinkling up her nose.
“Eww, no?” replied Nat, blinking hard in confusion.
“Don’t you like any rom-coms?”
Letting out a deep, dramatic breath first, Nat then turned and acted like she was reaching for the store’s phone.
“Who are you calling?” Lottie asked, with a look like she was already half-in on the joke.
“Van. I’m going to tell her I can’t be alone in the store with you after all. One of us is not coming out of this alive, Matthews.”
And Lottie rolled her eyes and smacked her playfully on the arm, but at least they were both smiling and goofing around again like they used to— even if it did mean Nat was probably (okay, almost definitely) about to watch a movie from her very least favorite genre just in order to make Lottie Matthews happy.
Lottie fucking Matthews. Back in Wiskayok. And, already, Nat could feel the whole entire fucking world tipping on its axis, like it was bowing to meet her. Including herself.
The Day Before
Lottie had agreed to meet up with Jackie at a local coffee shop in Wiskayok as soon as she got into town and found her sitting in a corner booth, away from the rest of the customers. She waved Lottie over with a bright smile that faded the moment Lottie sat down across from her. At first glance, she hadn’t changed that much in a year. She still wore her hair the same and had on the same preppy clothes as usual, but— the moment Lottie got closer— she could see the sorrow hiding behind all that. Her eyes looked tired, and she slumped over her cup of coffee like she wanted to drown in it.
“Thanks for meeting me,” said Jackie. “I hope your dad didn’t bitch at you too much for coming here before heading to New York.”
Lottie shrugged. The truth was, he had practically screamed at her over the phone when she’d told him, claiming she would “lose valuable time at the office by being even a day late for her internship,” but there was no reason to tell Jackie that and make her feel unnecessary guilt when she clearly already felt like shit over other things.
“It’s not a big deal, honestly,” Lottie lied. “So . . . what’s been going on? I know you really wanted to talk about whatever it is in person.”
Jackie let out a long sigh that ended in a huff of depressed laughter. “Fuck, where do I even start? It feels like the whole team fell apart after graduation. Guess winning a national championship together didn’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things, huh?”
“Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re not speaking to Shauna anymore,” suggested Lottie, eyes filling with sympathy.
“More like Shipman isn’t speaking to me,” clarified Jackie, and she lifted her eyes up to give Lottie a look of warning. “You do promise you’ll keep this between us, right? I know I’m about to spill a lot of secrets myself, but . . . that doesn’t mean I think the whole town has a right to know what Shauna’s been through. She’s still . . . really important to me.”
“Of course,” promised Lottie. “I swear I won’t tell anyone.”
Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Jackie took a deep breath and sat up in the booth a little straighter. “Alright. So . . . as you might remember, Shauna was supposed to go to Rutgers with me in the fall. But, apparently, without even bothering to tell me, she had also applied to Brown and got in.”
Lottie nodded. “Yes, her mom told me that much when I tried to call her. Is that why you two had a falling out?”
Jackie smirked at that. “Oh, that’s only the half of it,” she said. “About a month and a half into last summer, she suddenly disappeared on me. And, like, I mean . . . dropped off the face of the earth for a few weeks. No one seemed to know where she’d gone, including her own mother. And, when I called Tai at Howard to ask her about it, I could tell she knew something, but she wouldn’t tell me. So I just had to sit by the phone and wait. I didn’t even hear from her until I was already at Rutgers and she was at Brown. But, by then, it was too late.”
“Too late for what?” asked Lottie, scrunching her brow.
“She’d had . . . an abortion,” whispered Jackie. “Not that I’m judging her for that at all, just so you know. I believe in a woman’s right to do whatever she thinks is right in that situation, and of course I think Shauna has that right too. But . . . she didn’t even tell me she was pregnant until it was over. And she for sure didn’t tell me who the father was until I guilt-tripped her into telling me.”
“Oh Jackie,” Lottie breathed out, not exactly sure what to say. “Who was the father?”
Jackie let out another sad huff of laughter and shook her head. “My ex-boyfriend, if you can even believe it. Jeff. They’d been hooking up behind my back for over a year. So much for best friendship, am I right?”
“Jesus,” said Lottie. “I’m so sorry. I . . . I had no idea.”
“No one did,” Jackie told her. “Jeff never even told Randy. Turns out when Shipman wants to keep something a secret, she is really skilled at making sure it stays a secret. I guess the only reason she finally told me was because the guilt was eating at her. Hmph. Not that guilt did me any good when it came to keeping our friendship intact.”
“Yeah, I’m . . . a little confused about that part,” admitted Lottie. “You said Shauna wasn’t speaking to you, but . . . it sounds like you’re the one who should be upset, not the other way around. How did it end up that way?”
“Well, you see, Lottie,” said Jackie, leaning back in her seat, “I guess when Shauna’s finally ready to admit she did something wrong, that’s one thing. But god forbid if you actually try to share your feelings about it, because . . . then suddenly you’re the bad guy who’s just attacking her for no reason, and . . . poof. You’re nothing to her. At least, that’s what she told me. “You’re nothing to me now, Jackie,” she said. After all those years of being best friends, she fucking threw me away over something she did to me. And all I really wanted to do was be there for her, you know? I mean, sure, I needed to let her know how hurt I was over the betrayal with Jeff, but . . . that honestly meant so little compared to how much I wanted to comfort her over what she’d had to go through. But, she didn’t want to talk about that. She just got pissed at me for being honest about how much she’d hurt me.”
“Sounds like maybe she’d rather keep punishing herself than allow anyone to comfort her,” suggested Lottie.
“Yeah? Well . . . that sucks. Because, now she’s just punishing both of us.”
“Have you tried talking to her since then?”
“Of course I have,” said Jackie, rolling her eyes. “But, every time I try, she just . . . hangs up on me. I even tried going to the grocery store where she’s working this summer, but she dipped out and told her boss to make me leave. He told me not to come back.”
“I could go talk to her though,” offered Lottie.
Jackie tilted her chin down at that and gave Lottie a disapproving look. “I thought you promised not to tell anyone what I told you.”
“I don’t have to tell her anything specific,” said Lottie. “I can just . . . mention that I ran into you and gently remind her how special your friendship used to be. What’s the harm in that?”
“When it comes to Shipman? I can think of at least a dozen harms that could happen. Do you want to be the next person she decides to never talk to again?”
Lottie shrugged and gave her a sideways smile. “She’s not talking to me anyway,” she pointed out. “At least . . . not since graduation. Might as well try, right?”
“Hey, it’s your funeral,” scoffed Jackie, shrugging back. “Just don’t come crying to me if you get exactly the same treatment I did. And, for the love of god, do not mention Jeff or the abortion. You made a promise, Matthews. I expect you to stick by it.”
“I would never bring those things up,” assured Lottie. “You came to me as a friend because you needed someone to talk to, but it’s still none of my business what Shauna has or hasn’t done. That’s between you and her.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Of course.”
Jackie then fell silent and took a few more sips of her coffee, like she didn’t know what else to say now that the Shauna conversation was out of the way.
But, unlike Jackie, Lottie had always had a lot more on her mind than just Shauna Shipman.
“You said the whole team had fallen apart after graduation,” Lottie reminded her. “What did you mean by that?”
“Wow, you really have been out of the loop, huh?” replied Jackie.
“Just tell me?” Lottie sighed.
“Right. Sorry,” said Jackie, looking genuinely apologetic. “Well . . . for starters, Tai broke up with Van right after you left. She said she was going to be too busy with school for the next 8 years to stay in a serious relationship, but . . . I think we all knew it was bullshit, including Van. Poor Van. They’d barely even had a chance to come out of the closet in the first place, and it sure looked like all Taissa wanted to do was crawl back in it.”
“Oh my god. Is Van okay?”
Jackie shrugged. “I guess. I mean . . . it’s not exactly like we run in the same circles. I know she’s living with Nat now, but—”
Lottie’s eyes went wide at that, and her expression apparently stopped Jackie cold, because she let the rest of her sentence trail off and instead gave Lottie an odd look and said, “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Van and . . . Nat?” asked Lottie, with enough emphasis to let Jackie know exactly what assumption she’d jumped to.
“What?” laughed Jackie. “Lottie, no, of course not! They’re just friends. The way I heard it, Van pulled Nat out of a bad situation a couple of months ago and helped her get a job at the video store, that’s all. I even heard Van’s been helping her get clean. You know Nat got arrested a couple of times, right? Cocaine. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Jesus. I’m glad she has Van.”
“The way you looked at me just then though,” added Jackie with a sly smile, “when I told you Nat was living with Van. What was that about?”
Lottie swallowed hard, shifted in her seat, and hoped Jackie hadn’t noticed.
But she could literally feel herself blushing.
“Nothing,” lied Lottie. “It was just . . . surprising, that’s all.”
“Bullshit,” said Jackie, leaning forward with an even wider smile. “Oh. My. God. Have you been crushing on Scatorccio this whole time? Of course you have. Why didn’t I see it sooner? All those times you two disappeared under the bleachers after practice . . .”
“We were just smoking cigarettes,” Lottie told her.
With a smirk, Jackie leaned back again and folded her arms. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Like you’re one to talk.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Lottie twisted her mouth for a second, considering her options. No one had ever dared call them out on it before. It had always just been hushed whispered giggles behind their back. But if Jackie expected her to be honest about Nat, then it was only fair that Jackie finally had her own come-to-Jesus moment about Shauna.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason Shauna kept hooking up with Jeff behind your back was because sleeping with him was the closest she could get to sleeping with you?”
And Jackie scoffed at that at first. “Pfft. Please. Are you insane? That’s completely ridiculous. I mean . . . who would do that? That—” But even as she spoke the words, a look of gradual understanding was dawning in her big hazel eyes.
“Sounds exactly like something Shauna Shipman would do?” said Lottie, finishing the rest of her sentence for her. “Yeah. I rest my case.”
Jackie, meanwhile, let out a surprised huff of laughter and let her shoulders slump. “Wow. I . . . I don’t know what to say. No wonder I’ve felt so lost without her. Fuck my life, Lottie. What am I supposed to do now? She won’t even speak to me.”
“I might have an idea. How do you feel about camping?”
Jackie blinked at that. “I’m sorry. Did you say . . . camping?”
“Yeah, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do anyway, and I think it might be a good bonding exercise for all of us after this year apart.”
“Bonding exercise, huh?” said Jackie, with a wry smile. “Way to throw my own words back at me, Matthews. Do you really think Shauna and the others will go for it?”
Lottie shrugged. “I can try. It never hurts to try, right?”
“And will you be telling Nat how you feel at this bonding exercise?”
“What would be the point, Jackie?” said Lottie, with a deep sigh. “It’s not like with you and Shauna. We all knew you two probably had . . . you know . . . secret feelings for each other, or whatever. But . . . with me and Nat, I’m just not sure that’s true. Plus, if she’s just now getting clean from cocaine, and I’m . . . well . . .”
She stopped and thought about all her father’s demands. How he expected her to be in New York any day now. How he expected her to graduate, marry rich, and give him a grandchild to carry on the business, even when she was long gone.
And she thought about her diagnosis. The one she’d never told anyone about.
Why did it somehow feel easier to admit she had a crush on Natalie than to ever let anyone know about the schizophrenia?
“It would just be bad timing for us both,” Lottie finally said. “I don’t want to do anything that might interfere with her sobriety.”
But Jackie only cocked an eyebrow at her. “And it’s not bad timing for Shauna and I?” she asked. “Lottie, get real. We’re living in the fucking 90s here. It’s never going to be good timing for anyone who wants to fall in love, especially if we’re— if we’re—”
“It’s okay,” promised Lottie. “The sky is not going to crack open and fall apart on your head if you say the word.”
“If we’re . . . lesbians,” Jackie finally said, whispering the actual word.
And Lottie took a deep breath, but smiled anyway.
She supposed she had no right to judge, at any rate. Since when had she ever used that word outside of a classroom discussion on sexuality?
“Lesbians,” she whispered, just to see how it felt on her tongue.
“See?” said Jackie. “Not as easy as you thought, now is it, Matthews?”
Back at the video store (continued)
Over two hours (and about a dozen annoying interruptions from customers) later, they’d finally finished watching the movie Lottie had picked out and were leaning against the brick wall outside, smoking cigarettes. Lottie took a drag off her skinny-ass, ultra-feminine Capri and exhaled it slowly with a happy sigh.
“I missed hearing crickets at night,” she said.
“They don’t have crickets at Princeton?” asked Nat, flicking the ash from her Marlboro Red. “I thought that place was supposed to be kind of . . . wooded.”
“Parts of it are,” replied Lottie. “But there aren’t really any in New York in the summer, you know? Not any that are this loud, anyway.”
They were standing so close that Nat could feel her right hand brush against Lottie’s left and decided to change hands with her cigarette. This late at night, it really wasn’t that warm outside at all. But something about their brief touch had made her feel hot suddenly, and she didn’t want to think too fucking deeply about it right now. She just wanted to enjoy having her friend back.
“Did you like Say Anything?” asked Lottie, referring to the movie.
Nat shrugged. “I liked that girl that sang Joe Lies. She was kind of the best part.”
“Yeah, agreed,” said Lottie, with a small laugh. “But . . . you know what’s weird? I’ve seen that movie at least three times, and I could have sworn it ended with the boombox scene. I really thought that’s how he got her back at the end. I can’t believe I forgot it didn’t work, and that we had to wait another 20 minutes or so for him to finally get her back for real.”
“It was kind of corny, Lot,” Nat told her. “I mean . . . he stood outside of her window in a trench coat with a whole-ass stereo balanced on his head, playing In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. That’s not serenading, that’s fucking stalking.”
“It’s not stalking if you love someone,” replied Lottie.
“Sounds like something a stalker would say,” joked Nat, and Lottie punched her playfully in the arm for that (which was totally fair).
“Okay, okay,” laughed Nat, rubbing her arm like it actually hurt (it didn’t). “But, tell me the truth . . . would something like that work on you?”
Lottie smiled and paused to consider the question, looking up at the heavens like she might find the answer there. The skies in Wiskayok were clear tonight, and a million stars twinkled above their heads. It made Nat realize that, along with not having many crickets in New York, they probably never had night skies like this either.
It also made her realize that there were a lot of things about Lottie Matthews she had never stopped to notice back in high school. Like how soft her eyes looked when she was relaxed and at peace, or how certain lights (like the flickering glow of the overhead sign for the video store) made the lighter shades of brown in her hair shine and glisten.
(And there came that heat she didn’t want to think about too deeply again.) Nat did her best to push it away, but she could feel her skin flushing, all the way from her cheeks to the bottom of her feet.
“It would definitely depend on the person,” Lottie finally said, snapping Nat back to attention. “I don’t think I fall in love . . . easily. But, if I ever did, then . . . yes, I think his boombox trick would work. I thought it was sweet. I think that’s why I forgot it didn’t actually work in the movie.”
Nat felt herself smile, but it felt weird. It was like she’d never smiled in exactly this type of way before, and something about it made her feel off balance. Part of her hated it, but another part of her never wanted it to end, and the only thing she could think to compare it to was getting drunk. It felt like that perfect buzz after a few beers, right before she lost control and went completely off the cliff by drinking a few more (or several more, if she were being honest with herself).
“You know, come to think of it,” said Nat, “I don’t remember you dating many guys in high school. I just remember you rolling your eyes at them a lot.”
Lottie let out a small laugh at that and dropped her cigarette, smashing it with the toe of her boot. “And your memory would be correct,” she replied. “Wiskayok boys were literally the worst.”
“And what about Princeton boys?” asked Nat, with a little twinkle in her eyes. “Or the ones in New York, for that matter. C’mon now, Matthews. Surely you’ve met someone special by now.”
“Have you?” asked Lottie, looking over at her with those soft brown eyes.
Nat felt herself swallow hard as the heat came back to her face. She hoped Lottie hadn’t noticed. “No,” she admitted with a breathy laugh. “I’ve fucked around with plenty of people . . . of both genders, actually . . . but, no. I’ve never met anyone I’d get out of bed for just because they were standing outside of my window with a fucking boombox on their head.”
“Wait.”
And, when Nat looked over at her next, Lottie’s eyes had gone as wide as saucers, and her smile had dropped. She even looked like she might have grown a shade paler.
“What?” asked Nat. “Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
“No, it’s just . . . did you seriously just blurt out that you’re bisexual, without actually saying the words?”
Nat let out a huff of confused laughter at that. “I guess. Why? Is it a big fucking deal or something? Lottie, we’re not in high school anymore. It’s 1997. Even Ellen Degeneres came out of the closet like a month ago. Do they not have gay people at Princeton either?”
Lottie shook her head, looking suddenly embarrassed and blushing an even deeper shade of red than Nat could feel in her own cheeks. “No, of course it’s not a big deal. I just . . . didn’t expect it, that’s all. You never seemed interested in any girls in high school.”
“That’s because I wasn’t,” said Nat. “But, to be fucking fair, Lottie . . . most of the girls in high school wouldn’t have looked twice at me anyway, even if they had been gay. You know how the other girls talked about me. Even some of the ones we played with.”
“I never talked about you like that,” reminded Lottie, with a slight frown.
Nat gave her a weak smile in return. “No, I know you didn’t. But . . . you know what I mean.”
“I guess so,” said Lottie.
And her smile came back, but it wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t the same one she’d had when she was looking at the stars earlier, when she’d seemed relaxed and peaceful. Instead, this new smile felt forced or even anxious. It made Nat worried that she’d somehow said or done something wrong.
She wanted to see Lottie smile like she had before, when they’d only been talking about the movie.
“Listen, it’s late,” said Lottie next, looking down at her gold watch. “And I need to go and see someone in the morning. But . . . before I go, there’s something really important I need to ask you.”
“Okay,” replied Nat.
She felt her heart race a little, with a million different possibilities spinning in her head.
But the question Lottie ended up landing on, Nat never could have predicted in a thousand years.
“Will you go camping next weekend with me and Jackie?” asked Lottie.
Nat blinked hard a few times before answering. “What?”
“I need you to ask Van too,” Lottie told her. “It’s important.”
“You want . . . to go camping?” Nat clarified. “With Jackie Taylor?”
“And you and Van and some others.”
“What others?”
“Who do you think?” asked Lottie, raising an eyebrow.
“Fuck, Lottie . . . no.”
“Look,” said Lottie, suddenly taking her hand and giving it a squeeze (which nearly made Nat’s eyes pop out of her head in surprise), “For reasons I’d really rather not get into right now, I really need this summer . . . or at least part of it . . . to be different than my last one. I need it to be . . . fun. Remember fun, Nat? Remember when I used to pick you up in my car, and we’d just drive around aimlessly for hours, smoking a joint and listening to music with the windows open? I need a summer like that. And I can’t have one if some of my friends aren’t even speaking to each other. So . . . please? Will you please talk to Van for me? And I’ll talk to Taissa and Shauna. I just . . . need one night where . . . everything feels normal again.”
And part of Nat wanted to point out that nothing about this particular friend group had ever been normal (nor had camping ever been something any of them had done together, in summer or otherwise). But, instead, she felt herself nodding involuntarily and staring into Lottie’s pleading eyes without even blinking, almost as if she’d been hypnotized.
“Alright, Lot,” she heard herself promise, throat dry. “I’ll talk to her.”
Lottie smiled and squeezed her hand one last time before dropping it. “Thank you,” she said, breathing out a sigh of relief.
But Nat couldn’t help but notice that her smile still hadn’t returned to its formerly relaxed glory, and (without even being conscious of it) she found herself wondering how she could get it back for Lottie and help her keep it this time.
Hell, if one camping trip would do the trick, she’d put up with sleeping on the fucking ground for one night. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before.
Lottie, in the meantime, stepped away from the building and slid into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes. She started up the engine and rolled down the window. “Good night, Natalie,” she said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” replied Nat.
But, before she could manage to say “Good night, Lottie” back to her, she’d already backed up the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
Nat decided to light another cigarette, and she leaned back against the brick of the building. It had been a long time since she’d bothered to listen to crickets and look up at the stars, she suddenly realized, as she let her exhaled cloud of smoke rise up into the night sky. So long, in fact, that she couldn’t even remember if she’d ever done it at all.
She had to admit, it kind of felt nice.
Maybe Matthews was fucking onto to something here. Maybe Nat needed her summer to be different from the last one too. Maybe she even needed it to be different than any summer she’d ever had.