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Lucretia sat in the third row at her ex-girlfriend’s straight wedding.
She was a journalist. She could put on a pantsuit and a pair of sensible shoes and get through pretty much anything. If she was being completely honest, she would have to admit that she had been sorely tempted to bail at the last minute, but she’d RSVPed six months ago, and there was no excuse good enough to hurt Lup’s feelings like that. They were still friends. She was friends with Barry, too. The three of them had all moved in the same social circles for years, and there was no reason to make waves just because she felt a little restless, a little uncomfortable. Watching Barry and Lup together had long since stopped being awkward or painful, but for some reason, actually showing up at their wedding felt different. Whatever it was manifested in a dull sort of ache right behind her sternum, throbbing and constant.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy for them—she was, truly. They were good together, much better than she and Lup had ever been. The two of them had been too different and too similar at the same time, ambitious in different, contradictory ways. She didn’t really miss what they’d had, not when she thought rationally about it, and she didn’t want it back. If she missed anything, it was the intensity of that period in her life. Everything had seemed so important, so pivotal, so urgent.
“So this is where they put the honors scholars,” Lup said, flopping onto Lucretia’s bed. “Swanky.” It was true; even though the walls were still ugly white-painted cinderblocks and the floors were still old tile, Lucretia’s single was a lot more spacious than the regular dorms. She hadn’t bothered to decorate much. There were a few wilting plans on the windowsill, a huge corkboard covered with colored paper that functioned as her planner and schedule, and a precarious stack of black notebooks on her desk, each filled with her tiny, neurotic script.
“I hate it,” Lucretia said, clipped, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Everyone in this building is an asshole.” They were mostly rich kids, legacy students, who could get away with breaking whatever rules they wanted. Half of them never went to class. Their parents had bought them places in the program. The university had to occasionally admit a couple of real brainiacs like Lucretia to put on the pamphlet—bonus points because she was a black girl.
“Bet it’s really easy to get uppers around here, though.” She wiggled her eyebrows. Lup was plenty smart enough to be an honors scholar, but not even under pain of death could she be compelled to fill out the forms and attend the extra classes. She was too stubborn. She would not be told what to do.
“It is.”
“Gotcha, you fucking degenerate.” Lup poked her in the ribs. Lucretia cracked a smile despite herself, slapping the other girl’s hand away.
“They’re for studying!”
“Do you think it’s not doing drugs if you don’t have fun? Because it’s still doing drugs.”
“It’s different. Maybe you would know, if you ever studied.” If she thought about it for long enough, it frustrated her. She had worked and worked to come out on top, to be the smartest. Lup just was, without ever lifting a finger or cracking a book.
“Whatever. Did you bring me to your bedroom to give me a lecture about good study habits?” Lup pouted. She was so pretty, so natural and at ease with herself, sprawled on the quilt, her reddish-gold hair spread out on the pillow like a corona. It was hard for Lucretia to imagine having that kind of confidence. She stretched out on the bed beside her girlfriend, nudging her aside to make room on the narrow dorm-standard mattress. She combed her fingers through all that soft hair, half-smiling, arranging the locks behind her on the pillow carefully.
“I like this stupid dorm a lot better with you in it,” she said softly. Lup giggled. She leaned forward for a kiss, warm and lingering.
“That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard, babe.”
The ceremony took place on the tiny strip of beach in front of Merle’s shitty Margaritaville knock-off, a late-in-life career shift that was very on-brand for the man. Merle himself, who was somehow still an ordained minister, was officiating, as he did at anyone and everyone’s wedding for the price of a dime bag. Lup, who would not be shackled by tradition of any sort, was wearing what Lucretia would have been forced to describe as a pair of shimmery white bell-bottoms and a matching crop top. Barry was, of course, in jeans, rolled up around his ankles to keep them from getting damp.
They couldn’t have timed it better. The sun was just setting over the gentle water as they exchanged their vows. There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd, even when Barry almost dropped his prepared sheet of paper into the ocean. Lucretia felt strangely self-conscious, sitting there by herself, listening to these people who she had known for a huge portion of her life bare their souls. It felt too intimate, like she was intruding upon something. She was glad when, after all the kissing was done, the two of them walked up the beach arm and arm to the sound of cheering and a scratchy boombox rendition of Here Comes the Bride. All she had been able to hear had been the waves and the sound of her own heart, anyway.
She made an appearance at the reception and said hello to their friends. She suspected that Magnus and Julia had started drinking during the ceremony, because there was no way that they had gotten that tipsy in the fifteen minutes since the bar had opened. Taako was in charge of the food, in his element yelling at a bunch of terrified kitchen staff. Merle and Davenport had gone to the back patio, presumably to smoke Merle’s payment and talk about old-guy stuff uninterrupted. Eventually, she made her way over to the mob of people gathered around the newlyweds. When Lup caught sight of her, she beckoned enthusiastically. Lucretia elbowed her way past several members of Barry’s extended family. The two women hugged, long and sincere.
“Congratulations,” Lucretia said. “You look beautiful.”
Lup appraised her with a critical eye. “You look like Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
“You say that every time any woman puts on a blazer.”
She laughed. “Guilty. Are you gonna stay for a while? Watch me get rum cake smashed into my expensive makeup?” She wiggled her eyebrows, just like she always had. Lucretia smiled ruefully.
“I wish I could, but I’ve got a flight to catch tomorrow. You know me.”
“Yeah, I know. Work, work, work. Well, call me sometime, okay? I’ll even accept the international charges for Madame Worldwide over here.”
“Sure.”
She shook hands with Barry, waved in the general direction of the rest of the group, and then went out the back door. She drove home in the dark, packed her suitcase methodically, and set her alarm for 4am even though she knew she wasn’t going to sleep. Her bedroom was a lot like her dorm room had been; comfortable, but essentially featureless. A placeholder for something better.
Lucretia normally didn’t expend a lot of energy dwelling on her emotions. She didn’t feel lonely most of the time; at least, she didn’t think she did. She either felt like a loser or a winner depending on how much she had achieved on any one particular day. She liked her job. Writing gave her a sense of satisfaction, but at the same time, she tore herself to pieces over it. Editing second and third drafts of her articles kept her up for days, obsessing over pull-quotes, word choice, intros and conclusions. Her editor said that everything she wrote was gold, biting and concise, that she didn’t have to stress herself out so much, but she didn’t know who she was if she wasn’t constantly under pressure. She didn’t know how to take her blinders off.
What did she have, what was it in her life that was worth working so hard for? What if there wasn’t anything?
“See you in a week.” She was leaning into the passenger’s side window of Taako’s appalling lemon-yellow Monte Carlo. “Have fun.”
Lucretia had decided to sit out this particular spring break trip to finish her capstone assignment. Something had felt off between she and Lup for weeks, but she didn’t know what to do about it, so she was trying her best to ignore it, to will it away. She was afraid that it was going to end, and even worse, that it wasn’t going to end with a big fight, a blowout, a painful revelation, but that it was going to fade out of existence like it had never happened. All the nights Lup had dragged her out to bars and clubs to dance, all the Sundays they had spent downtown in the used book shops, picking through the romance novels and mystery-thrillers to find the hidden gems, all the holidays they had spent together in the dining hall, no families to speak of…she felt it all dissolving into abstraction, into fond memory. She didn’t know what to do except cling to what made her, her—academics. Success. Work.
“See you,” Lup said, pushing her sunglasses up her freckled nose. She puckered her lips, and Lucretia kissed her until Taako started beeping the horn impatiently.
She waved as they drove away. She had the peculiar, plaintive feeling that she was never going to see her again.