Worth the Trouble ✓

38 | first love

TONIGHT, GEORGIA COMES BACK FROM a board game potluck dinner with her community college friends with half a bottle of wine.

It's about ten p.m. and dark outside, the orange glow from the streetlights refracting through the circle top window in the door. Georgia doesn't seem surprised to see me around so late, even though it's way past Cassie's bedtime.

My apartment is newer and cleaner than this place, but really lonely. I wouldn't think it was that bad if I didn't have this house. It's hard to get so much exposure to laughter and life and feel okay in the absence of it, so I look for reasons to stay here. Most of the time, chores are reason aplenty.

"You and Suki should finish this," she whispers, pushing the wine bottle into my hands. She's swaying on her heeled boots, her thin, long braids swirling in an arc around her waist.

I place the bottle of wine down on the countertop that partitions the small kitchen from the equally small dining room. "I still have to catch the bus back."

"Oh, pssh," Georgia giggles, unzipping her boots and stepping onto the carpet. She picks them up as she trots to the corridor that branches from the living room. "It's two drinks between the two of you."

"I'm underage."

Before Georgia—who Cassie refers lovingly to as Joja because she can't muster the geor sound, disappears to her bedroom—she gives me a look so accusatory and disappointed, I start running back through what I've just said to be sure I didn't offend.

"Suki said you were the ultimate rule-breaker in high school. What happened?" she whispers, and then vanishes down the corridor.

Suki comes out from her shower, hair wrapped up in a towel, wearing a loose Jurassic Park t-shirt and green sweatpants. I tell her, "I put out the trash for tomorrow. Recycling isn't that full, so I left it—I can take it out tomorrow morning if you think it'll fill up." I nod my chin to the bottle of wine on the bench top. "Oh, Georgia said to help yourself."

Strangely, I don't know if she drinks or not. Most of my memories of Suki happened before we even considered partying and drinking and trying drugs. We were so young.

"Mm. Don't mind if I do." Suki reads the label with a delighted expression, and I stop myself from chuckling just from the surprise of learning she likes wine. She says, "What?"

"Nothing," I tell her.

When she comes back with two wine glasses, she switches off the ceiling light. There's a corner lamp, shoved between the curtain that looks out onto the street and the end of the couch, which casts the living room in buttery, dim light. I don't reject the wine this time. In fact, we finish the bottle, and then Suki surprises me with a pack of gin and tonics in silver cans.

I'm rubber-limbed and sweating by the time I'm drunk enough to ask, "You remember the very first family dinner?"

It still feels weird to call it family dinner. Walter was the one who coined it, almost derisively, when he observed that we are indeed mother, father and child sitting down at the dinner table.

"When Georgia asked about us dating in high school?"

Suki nods, chuckling at the reminder. She swipes at her nose with the back of her hand and says, "She was just being controversial."

"Hm. So you didn't give any thought to the question?"

"I did," she says softly.

"And?"

Then she laughs brokenly, squeezing her eyes shut. When she opens them, I think she was expecting not to really see me. Her pupils dilate all over again, flickering as she traces my face. "I don't know if I have it in me to be that honest."