Friends Like Us Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2012 by Lauren Fox

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Fox, Lauren.

  Friends like us: a novel / by Lauren Fox.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “Borzoi book.”

  eISBN 978-0-307-95742-9

  Cover photographs (top) composite of Lori Andrews/ Flickr /Getty Images and Eva Mueller /Getty Images; (bottom) Eva Mueller / Getty Images

  Cover design by Abby Weintraub

  1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction 3. Choice (Psychology)—Fiction 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3606.O95536F75 2012

  813'.6—dc22 2011023867

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  v3.1

  For Andrew

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Also by Lauren Fox

  Prologue

  This is what I’m thinking about when I see her: I’m thinking about a Saturday morning, six years ago, when Jane and I decided to make omelets.

  In the small kitchen of our apartment, Jane pulled a frying pan from the cupboard, and I took five eggs out of the carton. We were both still wearing our pajamas; neither of us had anywhere else to be.

  “You know,” I said, “my mom never let me crack eggs when I was a kid.” I tapped one against the side of the bowl and plopped it in. “I used to be very clumsy!” I swept my hand to the side in a dismissive gesture—can you believe that?—and with that brush of my hand, knocked the remaining four eggs off the counter and onto the floor. They made a clapping sound as they hit the linoleum, four little thwacks in rapid succession, like a quick round of applause from the gods of comic timing. I clapped my own hand over my mouth as Jane stared at me in disbelief.

  She looked down at the floor, yellow yolks and gooey whites oozing and spreading, then back at me. She tilted her head with a funny little smile on her face and was silent for a moment. And then she said, “I find that very hard to believe.”

  I’m standing in line at the bank, idly adjusting the shoulder strap on my bag, and I’m remembering how we started laughing then, and how that laughter escalated until Jane had to sit down, clutching her stomach as she gasped for breath. How just as we were regaining control, finally, just as our torrent of giggles was finally subsiding, Ben called out from the other room, “What’s so funny?” and set us off again, sent us to that place you go with your best friend, to the rollicking inauguration of an inside joke that will remain hysterically funny, only to the two of you and to the annoyance of many others, for years. I used to be very clumsy! we would say to each other, at first when one of us had done something that was actually klutzy and then, after a while, just whenever we felt like making each other laugh—at the grocery store, on a walk, in the middle of a movie. It never failed.

  This is what I’m thinking about, really, because this is how it works once in a while, when the universe cracks you over the head, when it gives you what you need, whether or not you want it. I’m standing in this long line on a Friday afternoon, and I’m remembering that careening moment of hilarity six years ago, and I’m thinking about sketching it when I get home, I’m thinking about drawing a panel where Jane, in her oversize plaid pajamas, gazes at the broken eggs on the floor and says, I find that very hard to believe. I’m smiling to myself, and at just that moment, I catch the eye of the baby in line ahead of me, the brown-eyed baby in the puffy snowsuit peering over his mother’s left shoulder.

  They’re a few customers ahead of me, close to the front. The baby sees me smiling and, deciding that my smile is meant for him, returns it: hugely, wetly, toothlessly. I’m bought and sold. I wave.

  “Guh-weeee!” he squeals, delighted. I waggle my eyebrows at him. “Ah doo DAH,” he yells, his voice raspy with glee. The elderly woman in front of me turns around and smiles as if I’m responsible for this display of adorableness, and the goateed twenty-something dude behind me chuckles. We have morphed, suddenly and happily, from a disconnected line of distracted bank customers waiting to complete our most mundane transactions into a community of baby lovers, charmed by this dark-haired blob of sweetness.

  I wave at him again. “Hello,” I say. “Hi!”

  And that’s when the baby’s mother shifts him in her arms and cranes her neck, and although she’s wearing an expensive gray coat and a burgundy cashmere scarf instead of her old blue down jacket, yellow homemade scarf, and her father’s Green Bay Packers cap (which together completed the fashion-forward statement: emotionally unstable football fan); although I haven’t seen her in five years; although there are other differences, including her new human accessory, she is, unmistakably, Jane.

  The baby grins again, open mouthed with pure joy.

  Jane’s expression I can’t read at all.

  Twenty minutes later, at the table by the window of our old coffee shop, I have to wrap my hands around my cup to stop them from shaking.

  “So, this is Gus,” Jane says, her pride obscuring whatever else is lurking underneath it. She has him propped on her lap, his snowsuit half off, as he gums a pumpkin scone. “He’s nine months old,” she says, her face, for the moment, as open to me as it used to be.

  The industrial coffee grinder powers up with a metallic hiss-clank. Gus winces, and I reach across the table to touch his hand. It’s wet with drool; I pull my fingers back at the slobbery shock of it and smile, trying to pretend I’m not slightly disgusted. Probably when you have a kid you get used to the general condition of moistness. “Gus,” I say, drawing out the u. “Hi, little Guuuus.”

  Gus chortles, then throws his head back in full-on hilarity at my joke, his fat little body quaking with laughter.

  “Oh, my God,” I say, enchanted, and Gus laughs harder.

  Jane smiles, then casts her gaze downward at the baby’s head. “He likes you,” she says shyly. He reaches up for a hank of Jane’s hair, which she gently works free from his fist. I feel the old bond with her, the irresistible, magnetic attraction that has always been there between us, and who cares if we’re using her baby as a prop? Gus looks at me and starts giggling again.

  “Is this y
our life?” I say, meaning, do you spend your days in the company of Mr. Personality, this marvelous, shining little boy? But I see immediately that she takes it the wrong way: I see by the way she hunches her shoulders and leans in protectively toward the baby, the way she seems, suddenly, diminished, as if I’ve consigned her to a stereotype, a supporting role, a smaller life than the one she leads. That’s not what I meant, I want to say. That’s not what I meant! But when you haven’t seen the person who was your best friend in five years, a small misunderstanding might expose a canyon of hurt, and after all that, what can you possibly do to fix it? What point is there in even trying?

  “Yes,” she says, pushing her hair back. “My life. Gus, and my marriage”—her marriage; the word slices through me—“and my job, and a million other things.” Things you lost the right to know about. She breaks off a piece of scone and chews it slowly, then rests her chin lightly on Gus’s head, strokes his cheek with her hand. I look down at my latte. It’s too late in the day for caffeine. I take a sip of it. I’ll be up all night.

  “The thing is,” Jane says, and I look up at her again, startled by the gap between my expectations and reality. Jane’s hair, which used to be just like mine, is smoother than it was when we lived together, shinier, the curls perfect ringlets, the color a richer shade of brown, as if she not only has the money to spend on it now, but she does; she spends it. She’s wearing glasses, which she didn’t back when I knew her, funky black-and-green frames, her dark eyes behind the lenses big and clear and calm. Her skin, as always, is pale and perfect. She looks beautiful.

  I’m not sure how I look. Probably the same as I did five years ago: maybe slightly disheveled, because I still roll out of bed and face the world; maybe a little tired, because I frequently drink too much coffee this late in the day, and then I stay up drawing until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.—just like I used to, only these days I actually get paid for it; maybe I look kind of okay, too, because in the wake of turning thirty I’ve come to appreciate certain things about myself: the angle of my cheekbones, the thickness of my hair, the fullness of my lips. Right now I just see myself reflected in Jane’s face, like I always did.

  Gus arches back into his mother’s body, points his hunk of scone up at the ceiling, and waves it around. “Willa,” Jane says, “I’ve thought a lot about what I would say if I ever ran into you.” She pauses. My face goes hot. I nod. I think that we both do, and do not, have so much to say to each other. “Five years ago, you … I …” She makes a gesture like she’s flicking a bug away. “I was shattered.”

  Gus begins to whimper and fuss a little, and Jane turns him around with an expertly executed lift-and-spin. He slumps right onto her shoulder, content.

  Gus. I can’t help but think that if I’d been in her life when he was born, I’d have had some say in name selection. I imagine, with all the brief indulgence I’ll allow myself, that we’re sitting here together with this baby whose name is not Gus, is Asher or Joe, Elvis, Milo, Hank; I imagine that we come here every day, that I’ve known him since he was born, that I still know her.

  “I was destroyed,” she says, her voice firmer, her back straight. She looks me in the eye. “I hated you.”

  “Yah!” Gus says, as if his first language is going to be German. “Ja ja ja ja!”

  I blow on my coffee even though it’s no longer hot, just for something to do. My heart is jackhammering, and my throat is thick. Of course she hated me. I’m not surprised. Still, it’s on the short list of phrases you least want to hear. You have six months to live. Turns out I have herpes. I hate you. “I know,” I say, because I said I’m sorry five years ago, and even then it rang hollow.

  She flutters her hand again, waving my words away. “I’ve wanted to say to you …” She stops, sighs, starts again. “I didn’t understand this back then, but I do now. I know that you thought you didn’t have a choice.” She nods firmly, decisively, leaving me no room to argue. “But you did. You had other options.” This is what she has figured out about me. I take it. I drink it in. “You didn’t know it. But you did. You had other options. You are … you were … so amazing, Willa.” Gus bounces his head up and down on her shoulder. She shrugs, then exhales like she’s been holding her breath for five years and pats his back. “Okay?” I’m not sure who she’s talking to. She rearranges the baby and zips him up, gathers her bags, brushes crumbs from the scone into her empty cup. Her generosity stuns me. I can only watch silently as she readies herself. Gus shoves his hand into his mouth. The girl behind the counter calls out drink orders. A spoon clinks in a cup. “Okay,” she says again, “I should go,” and I’m thinking Stay here, stay, please stay, but Jane is standing, she’s pushing her chair away from the table, she’s wriggling herself into her coat, she’s hoisting Gus onto her shoulder. She’s turning, she’s walking, she’s gone.

  Chapter One

  Jane sweeps a scattering of crumbs into a neat little pile. “You are quite a slob,” she says as she pushes the broom across the floor with a rhythmic swish-swish. “And so lucky to have me to clean up your messes!”

  “I know,” I say, watching an ant crawl across the windowsill. “But if I weren’t so messy, you wouldn’t get the satisfaction of cleaning the apartment. I do it for you. For your OCD.”

  “Thank you, sweetie,” she says. She props the broom against the wall and drops to her hands and knees, sponging up invisible spills, scrubbing our crummy kitchen linoleum into gleaming submission.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I continue, lifting my feet so Jane can clean under them. “I appreciate it. But it’s not a favor if you can’t not do it.”

  “I can stop anytime I want to!”

  “You missed a spot,” I say, pointing with my left big toe to a nonexistent smudge on the floor; in response, she squeezes a dribble from the wet sponge over my bare foot.

  “I do appreciate your attention to detail,” she says, dabbing my foot.

  “Well, here’s how you can repay me,” I say as Jane squirts a viscous blob of liquid cleanser onto the sponge. “You can come with me tonight.”

  “And you know, my pretty, that there is no chance of that.”

  “Why not? A, you don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to, and B, if you do, people will find you charming and interesting.” Sometimes I think it’s helpful to speak in outline form.

  “Willa,” Jane says, attacking the tabletop. “I will not go to your high school reunion. A, I’m not your boyfriend, and B, I didn’t go to high school with you.”

  Excitement is the cousin of dread. Three weeks ago I agreed to attend my eight-year high school reunion. Eight-year reunion, yes: there it was, in my in-box, an Evite to a list of two hundred twenty-eight vaguely familiar names from one vaguely familiar name: Shelby Stigmeyer, who, the invitation explained, was supposed to get married tonight, but her fiancé called off the engagement, and Shelby couldn’t get the deposit back on the room. Aw, I thought. Awwww. And in this fleeting, unfortunate moment of sympathy, I added my name to the “yes” column.

  I’ve spent the last twenty-one days regretting it. The only thing I liked about high school was leaving it—that and my best friend, Ben Kern, nickname “Pop,” but he’s just another reason I should have declined that invitation. I don’t want to go tonight, and I desperately don’t want to go alone. Jane is, in fact, the closest thing I have to a boyfriend, and with her, what promises to be an excruciating rerun of four years of shyness could be, instead, a party. But I know her well enough to know that she’s easily moved, right up until the moment she’s not. “Fine,” I say, defeated. I deliberately let a shower of crumbs from my granola bar fall onto the table.

  She reaches around me with her sponge, unimpressed, then kisses me on the head. “It will be fine. It’s only one night. You can leave early.” She dabs at the last of the crumbs, her thin arm close to my face, her skin warm and bleachy. “Take good notes. I’ll wait up.”

  The trip that should take twenty minutes takes me a good forty, as
I deliberately navigate the side streets and drive ten miles below the speed limit, incurring the wrath of the old man in the boat-sized silver Chrysler behind me. I stop for gas, even though the tank is three-quarters full. Finally I have no choice but to pull into the restaurant parking lot and face the reunion head-on.

  Inside the Hampton House’s private party room, the bass-heavy thump of an eight-year-old Aerosmith power ballad bores into my skull. I squint against the swirl of Christmas lights and the confusion of faces, their features blurred, take a shallow breath through my mouth to try to minimize the smell of heavily perfumed and aftershaved bodies. Women who haven’t seen each other in ages squeal with delight; men pound each other on the back like friendly apes. I’m pressed against the back wall when I think that I spot him. I crane my neck.

  It’s his walk that I recognize, finally, the way he moves through space like he knows in his bones that the world will never belong to him—his shoulders slightly rounded, head down, long strides meant to propel him to his destination as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. That’s him. I spent four years searching the undulating sea of high school bodies for Ben’s walk.

  But everything else about him is a shock, electric and sweet. The man who is loping toward me, who is standing here smiling at me, is not the weird little wombat I knew years ago. He’s tall—well, he’s my height—and thin, angular, stretched out. His intense brown eyes are no longer planted deep in a round baby face; they stare out at me from a man’s face, a man’s face with cheekbones and not just a chin but an actual jaw. He’s Ben Kern, for sure, but new, improved Ben, Now with Bone Structure! He looks me up and down and then grabs me in a bear hug, and that’s my next surprise, the way he squeezes the air right out of me, and not just because he’s stronger now.

  “Hey, dingbat,” he says, softly, into my hair.

  “Hey, Pop,” I say. He smells good, too, like licorice, another welcome addition to Ben 2.0.