Cast Party - Part IV
In Part III, Cat and Edie get in a fight when they both reveal how they’ve been lying to each other: Edie slept with Luke and was impersonating him in his Facebook chats with Cat. Ultimately, they realize their friendship is more important than a boy and make up.
There were fewer cars in Chloe’s driveway when the girls got back. Most notably, the black Cherokee was missing. By the pool, what was left of the cast of Sweeney Todd looked like a tableau, bathed in the cool blue glow of the underwater lights. The aptly Victorian-looking freshman boy who’d played Toby sat alone by the diving board, swishing his feet in the deep-end, and yawned. Cat waved to him and he gave her a big metal smile. He was going to be so handsome when he got his braces off, she thought. Maybe as handsome as Nick.
Nick, who was stone-cold sober, looked up at Cat from a lounge chair, ready as always with something clever to say, but when he registered the girls’ clasped hands and snotty noses, he jumped up. “So we’re ready to go?” he asked Cat.
“I think so,” she answered. Edie nodded in agreement.
Chloe sat in the chair beside him with her arms folded across her chest. “I’ve got your brown bags if you even want them,” she snipped.
“Of course we do, Chloe,” Edie piped in. “Thank you for having everyone over to your house. Tell your mom thank you for us, too.”
“Whatever,” Chloe muttered. She passed them the bags on her way back through the sliding glass doors.
“We’ll deal with that tomorrow,” Nick said, sliding his bag onto his shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.
“Did Luke already leave?” Edie asked.
“He’s gone, thankfully,” Nick answered, then paused. “Why? Was he your ride?”
“No,” Edie gave him a weak smile, “I just thought it would be nice to say goodbye.”
“So you’re saying you need a ride?” Nick asked.
“Please, Nick,” Cat pouted.
He rolled his eyes. “You bitches owe me.”
“We’ll make it worth your while,” Edie said with a wink.
They stopped in a random neighborhood on the way home, where Edie slipped around the back of a ranch style house to “run a little errand,” as she called it. She grabbed a handful of cash out of her bag before slamming the car door. Cat and Nick sat in a dark silence while they waited for her, the only light being Nick’s phone screen. He was messaging someone furiously.
“Who are you talking to?” Cat asked.
“No one special,” Nick mumbled, not looking up from the screen.
Cat tried to return to the silence, but couldn’t stand it. “Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“Not everything’s about you, baby. I’m just trying to write this message.”
Cat peeked over carefully and saw an orange text bubble. “Are you on Grindr?” she asked. “Don’t leave me tonight for some man. Hang out with us.”
Nick locked his phone and dropped it in his lap. “You’re one to talk,” he snorted. “But you’re in luck—the guy I’ve been talking to isn’t available this evening.”
“Who is he anyways?” Cat pried.
Nick just smiled and asked, “What happened between you and Edie tonight?”
Cat noticed Edie’s figure emerging from behind the house. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said as the door to the backseat opened and Edie slid in with a plastic grocery bag full of clanking bottles.
Cat worried that Nick would maintain his coldness, but the idea of a drink perked him up. He even took them through the Wendy’s drive-thru and quietly handed off his mom’s credit card to pay for everything when they pulled up to the window. She asked him one more time if he was okay when they pulled into her driveway. It was around midnight and all the lights in her house were out. She knew her parents would be asleep.
“I’m fine. You can relax,” he smiled.
He was being nice. It made Cat sad that there were ways she didn’t know how to be a good friend to him. She decided she needed to notice more about Nick, to be more like him.
The three of them spent that night drinking and laughing and drinking and crying until they saw the sun start to glow on the horizon. Nick had fallen asleep mid-conversation on the couch, so the girls hid the empty bottles in the back of Cat’s closet and crawled into bed.
“Do you think we’ll still be friends like this by this time next year?” Edie asked when they finally lay down.
She could have kissed Edie right then if she really wanted to, but the moment had passed. She was already thinking about what next year would be like. It felt like life had sped up to a pace she’d never felt before. Years of legs bouncing under public school desks and nights spent lying awake, counting down the hours to autonomy, had neared their end. The weight of the future had descended upon her fragile shoulders, and she was scared of the change, but needed it, too, more than anything.
“I don’t know,” Cat had to tell her.
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.
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