Cast Party - Part III
In Part II, Cat and Nick head to the cast party at Chloe’s house They track down booze and bump into Cat’s crush, Luke, who doesn’t seem too interested in chatting with Cat but does tell her that Edie needs her. Cat goes looking for her outside.
Edie was curled into herself like a pill bug on the curb. Cat could see her shoulders shaking all the way across the front lawn and ran to her, crouching down to put a hand on her back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Oh Kitty,” Edie sobbed. Her mascara clumped and ran, her eyes red from makeup, or the crying, or everything that had happened to her in the past four years. It didn’t matter what she did, Cat realized. She would always feel this draw to Edie, like she was the only one who could protect her.
“Edie, what happened? Are you okay?”
“He doesn’t want me!” Edie tucked her head back between her knees and sniffled.
“Who doesn’t want you?” Cat could feel the pressure building in her chest, the very thing she was afraid of happening rising up like bile—or maybe with bile. It was hard to tell. She needed to sit.
“You know who I’m talking about, Cat.” There was anger in Edie’s voice now. She watched Cat lower herself to the curb, heart beating out of time with anxiety.
“Is it Luke? Did you try to apologize to him?”
“I did.” Edie wiped her nose.
“Did he—he didn’t take it well?”
“He took it fine, I guess. He said he understood and that I was still a good person, or whatever, but then we—” Edie paused and looked into Cat’s eyes, her own wide with hurt. She sniffled. “Kitty, I slept with him.”
It was like touching a hot stove. Cat felt tears coming in the corners of her own eyes. She couldn’t help but imagine a desperate hand sliding down a steamy car window, like in Titanic, a movie the girls had watched together.
“But you, you’ve never—have you?”
“No, it was my first time.” Edie wailed and collapsed back into herself. A neighbor walking their dog on the opposite side of the street gave them a worried glance but kept walking.
“Edie, if you guys slept together, it sounds like maybe he does actually want you.” Cat felt anger creeping into her voice.
Edie wiped her nose with her forearm and let out a pained laugh. “Oh no, he wanted to do that. He definitely wanted to fuck me.” She was yelling now. “He just doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me again. Because he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to trust me again, or some bullshit like that.”
“Shhh, shhhh.” Cat rubbed Edie’s back to try to calm her. She’d noticed a couple lights flip on at neighboring houses. She thought back to all her messages with Luke, how much hurt he’d expressed about that night, that party, having to watch Edie with someone else, when she knew he was right there. “I don’t know what to say, Edie. I’m sorry,” she said.
“Really, Kitty?” Edie spat. Her voice changed in a way that scared Cat, an edge cutting through the tears. “You don’t have anything to say about this? You don’t have anything to say about everything that’s happened this spring?”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jesus fucking christ, Kitty.” Edie pushed herself off the curb and walked down the middle of the dark suburban street, her silhouette disappearing as the treeline closed in around her. Cat thought about going back to the party—that’s what she wanted at that moment, to drive the knife in. What did she really owe Edie, who’d been toting her around like a lively accessory their whole lives? Maybe she would sleep with Luke that night too, and do it better than Edie did, make him love her, like she suspected from their messages that he already did. But something pulled her forward, following Edie. Whether it was love or guilt, she did not know. She just ran. Into the darkness, after her friend.
“Edie! Edie, stop,” Cat panted, reaching for her shoulder.
Edie spun on her heel. “What?!” she cried. “What do you want from me?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Then just tell me, okay? Tell me or leave me alone, please.”
Cat swallowed and caught her breath. “I think Luke and I are in love,” she admitted.
Edie covered her face with her hands. “Oh no, Kitty.”
“No, don’t do that. I know it sounds crazy to you, because you can’t imagine someone loving me instead of you—”
“I never said that,” Edie broke in.
“But Luke and I have been talking almost every day for the past two months. I can be myself with him, and he still wants to talk to me. He cares about me and maybe he even loves me. I might not be as pretty as you, or as smart as you, or whatever you think you’re more of than I am, but I have Luke and you don’t.”
A darkness fell over Edie’s face. Her lower lip began to tremble and then she was sobbing again, an uncontrollable sob that shook her body so thoroughly Cat thought she could feel it through the concrete where they stood. She just watched, not offering any more comfort.
“You cheated on him, Edie,” Cat said.
Edie took a few halted breaths to steady herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“For which part?”
Edie shook her head and finally looked Cat in the eyes again. “Luke isn’t in love with you.”
“You’re jealous,” Cat said. She turned to walk back to the party.
“If he was in love with you, then why did he fuck me, Cat? Huh?”
Cat had tried to forget, but was stopped in her tracks, her back to Edie.
“You weren’t talking to Luke,” Edie sighed. “Luke hasn’t used Facebook in like over a year,”
“That’s not true,” Cat said, still unable to face her friend.
“It is. We fought about it all the time when we were together. I thought I told you about it. It was his excuse for not changing his relationship status. I thought maybe he just wanted to look available to other girls, so I made him log on one day and change it while he was at my house and he never logged out.”
“So who was I talking to?” Cat asked, bile rising again.
“I am the only person who’s used Luke’s Facebook in the past year. You were talking to me.”
It was like the night sky came down around them, the few stars they could see flickered out and the trees cracked as they caved in, enclosing Cat in a dark new world, one that had been turning day by day, right next to the one she thought she was living in.
“I don’t understand,” Cat said. Her face was hot, breath shallow. How could she not have known that she was talking to Edie, the one person she thought she knew the best in this world? How could she not have remembered that fight between Edie and Luke? Was she the shitty friend? Her thoughts turned to Nick, sober and alone at the cast party.
“I’m really sorry, Kitty. I am,” Edie said. “You’ve felt so far away from me this year and when I saw your name pop up on the screen—I don’t know—I just responded. I wanted to feel close to you again, like how you’re close with Nick now. It wasn’t good. I’m not good. I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes, I just—” Edie sniffled. She took another ragged breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt you at first. I just didn’t want to lose you. But then tonight, sleeping with Luke, I think I did. I wanted to hurt you tonight and I’m sorry. There’s something wrong with me.” Cat could almost feel Edie’s chest wracked with sobs beyond her. “I just can’t control myself sometimes, Kitty. That’s why nobody loves me anymore. Not you, not Luke.” She closed her eyes. “And I can’t even look at my mother. I can’t look at her in that stupid fucking bandana. I wanted to hurt you, Kitty—I’m not a nice girl.”
Cat stared at the ground. “Who was I talking to?” she asked.
“Me, Cat, I already told you. You were talking to me,” Edie said, crying.
“But was I talking to you you, or was I talking to you as Luke?”
“It was always just me.”
Cat felt Edie’s hand on her back and before she knew it she had softened into Edie’s arms, sobbing. What a familiar position, she thought. Ever since they could stand, Edie, who was always taller than Cat, had been gathering her up and squeezing her like a ragdoll. It was a way to say, you’re mine. They stayed there for a while, until their breaths evened and synced.
Edie broke the silence. “Did you really think Luke would be that interested in someone other than himself?” she asked, and the girls both laughed, despite themselves.
Cat turned towards Edie and they hugged, swaying together in the middle of the street. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Cat sniffled. “I understand. I wanted to hurt you, too.”
“I’m so afraid to be apart from you next year,” Edie whispered.
Their foreheads were touching and Cat wanted to kiss her then. She felt that the only way to tell Edie she understood, to tell her that she was a smart girl, an ambitious girl, talented, and funny, and too young to be wanted so much, or to see her mother in so much pain was to wrap her arms around Edie’s neck and kiss her, deep and long.
But it wasn’t the right time. Cat knew that in this world there might never be a right time to do what she really wanted to do, so she grabbed Edie’s hand and she said, “We’re not there yet.”
To be continued…
Gabi Stephens is a former actress who lives on the North Carolina coast, where she got her MFA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and served as the designer of Chautauqua literary journal. Her story, "Where I'm Supposed to Be," was a finalist for the Doris Betts Fiction prize and she has publications in the North Carolina Literary Review and Strange Hymnal. She is currently a waitress at work on a novel.
Follow her on Instagram and read more of her work here.