Side Effects May Vary (21 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Harvey.

Then.

H
ello?” I called. “Al?” The house was quiet, which had become the norm now that Alice spent more time sleeping than not. I hated to think of her so still like that. Instead, I thought of how I'd taught her to drive a few weeks ago in the SaveMart parking lot and of the way that my fingers had brushed against hers as I'd helped her maneuver the steering wheel.

After locking the front door behind me, I trudged down the hallway to her bedroom. Bernie had been invited to a client dinner with her firm. It was an attempt to include her, despite her dying daughter. A Good Samaritan act.

Months ago, Bernie had cut back to half days at the office. Her five half days turned into two or three half days, and then those turned into mere hours a week. She tried to do most of her work from home, but a lot of the cases she worked on were handled by groups of attorneys, so it wasn't an easy job to do solo. Originally, Bernie had declined the dinner invitation, but Alice had insisted that Bernie and Martin go. After much deliberation, they decided to attend only if I came over and stayed with Alice. Typically, Alice would guffaw at this, but she called me herself and explained the situation. She was completely reasonable and not at all bothered by asking me to babysit her.

She was up to something.

I knocked lightly on her door. “Alice?” No answer. “Alice?”

“You can come in now, Harvey.”

When I opened the door, Alice stood there with a small bath towel wrapped around her paper-thin body, water dripping off her and pooling at the carpet. Her legs were so much thinner than I remembered, making her kneecaps seem big and bulbous. Her body swayed a little, like she was bracing herself against a strong gust of wind that only she could feel.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I didn't realize you had just gotten out of the shower. I'll be on the couch.”

“Come here.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Come here.”

She could have said “Light your car on fire,” and I would have done it. I stepped forward a few steps.

“Closer,” she said, and I spanned the last couple steps between us. “Closer, Harvey.”

The space between us was nearly nonexistent, but I filled what little there was, pressing our bodies against each other. We were in a little bubble, and outside of that bubble I could hear the entire world spinning on its axis ten times its normal speed.

Alice held her arms wrapped around her chest, keeping her towel in place. She looked up, her bottomless eyes steadying me, taking away my dizziness. Everything felt stable and solid again while she held my eyes with hers.

Then Alice dropped her arms. Her towel fell to the floor, bunched up in a heap around her ankles.

“What are you doing?” I breathed. She wrapped her arms around my waist and held herself against me, my clothing separating our bare skin.

“I want to do this, Harvey,” she whispered into my T-shirt, walking backward, with her arms still circling my waist, pulling me with her.

“You—you're sick, Al.” She looked so fragile, like a feather could break her.

“It's a good day, Harvey. I can't say that very often,” she said softly. And then, in her sharp, familiar voice, “Do not ruin this.” She tilted her face to mine, and I dipped my chin to meet her.

Our lips touched. It wasn't our first kiss, but in that moment, I knew the meaning of it all. I knew every word in the dictionary, every color in the rainbow. For a moment, cancer was cured and the world had halted to a stop in an eerie state of perfection.

With our lips still joined Alice reached for the bed behind her, and leaned backward. I wrapped my arms around her, bending my body to the curve of hers as she pulled away the blankets. I laid her down on the cool sheets, gently, like she might break. Then I stood back and really looked at her.

There was no denying that Alice had always been the driving force behind my hormones. But what I saw was wrong, not what I had always dreamed (yes,
dreamed
) Alice would look like. She was completely bare, and I saw everything the baggy T-shirts had been hiding for months. Her waist dipped in dramatically, her rib cage moving slightly with each breath. A mean-shaped bruise wrapped across her hip, purple at the center and yellowing at the edges, fading into her lighter-than-ivory skin. She bruised so easily now, and I wondered what small infraction was the cause of this one. The sharp ridges of her sternum jutted out, her collarbone draped with ashen skin. Tiny red dots splattered across her thighs and shoulders, broken blood vessels. I had only ever seen them a few at a time, but here with nothing to hide behind, they were an epidemic. Her lack of hair didn't shock me. That, I had grown used to.

She bit her bottom lip and used her arms to cover her bare chest. I was a horrible person, but I didn't want to remember her like this. I didn't want to remember that this shell containing Alice was withering away. I closed my eyes tightly, with my arms at my sides, my fists curled tightly.

“Harvey?”

But I wanted to do this.

I opened my eyes and Sick Alice was gone, her wavy brown hair fanned out around her on her pillow, framing her face and shoulders. Her cheeks were full and her curves filled out. The rosy tint teasing beneath her ivory skin had been restored.

I didn't care what Alice looked like. I never had. I just wanted her to be alive. I hovered above her, knowing that what we were about to do could never be undone. Her fingers played at the hem of my T-shirt as she slipped it over my head. My lips met her neck and spread small kisses to her ear and back as she turned her head to the side, her lips parting and her eyes closed.

She twisted over to her bedside table, opened a drawer, and retrieved a condom, holding it between two fingers.

I stood and slipped out of my remaining articles of clothing. What if I didn't do this right? What if I
couldn't
do this?

“Harvey,” Alice said, her voice slipping through my insecurities. “Harvey, I need you to be in this moment with me because you're the only one I'd ever want to share it with.”

Her words swept away my doubt. I lay down next to her, propping myself up on my side with my elbow.

It was true. I didn't know how long we would have after this. It could be five days or five years, but no matter how short or long our time was, I could no longer spend it as friends. I didn't need a label to own her with. I needed to know that we were
more
, that she would belong to me just as much as I had always belonged to her.

“Is this . . . have you done this before?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

A little bit of the tension inside of me settled. Not that I wanted her to be a virgin or anything. I wasn't like that. It was that this would be as new to her as it was to me. “I can't be just friends after this, Alice.”

“I know,” she said.

“You're okay with that?”

She nodded. Her eyes told me she loved me. Tonight, she loved me. Even if she could never say it. Does love still exist if you can't say it? If you can't admit it? I wasn't sure, but her eyes had told me enough. I took her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers. She tasted like Chapstick, waxy and sweet.

And I found out sex wasn't this perfect, airbrushed, mind-blowing thing. It was quiet and sweaty and personal. But it felt good. And I'd get better at it. I wished I could get better at it with Alice.

I had loved her for so long. I didn't think it was possible for me to feel any more for her, like she had already maxed out all my feelings. But that wasn't how it worked. That night Alice swallowed up a whole piece of me I never knew existed. She ruined me that night.

When you'd loved the same girl for your entire life, it was hard to believe that there might be anything after that. When you've loved one person so wholly, do they take that love with them? Was that how it worked? If so, I was okay with that. I loved every bit of Alice, even the horrible, ugly parts of her that made other people cringe. If this was all the love I could ever give, then my love had been well spent. When Alice was gone, she would take all my love with her. Whether she was floating through some heaven or decomposing six feet under, that part of me would always go with Alice.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

I
woke up to blinding sunlight and the blankets pushed down around my feet. The humidity from outside filled the room. I reached for Harvey, but he wasn't there. I blinked my eyes into focus and saw him, kneeling in front of his duffle bag.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning. Smells like hash browns.” We were still okay. The goodness between us hadn't disappeared.

“I closed the door so you could sleep a little later,” he said, pointing to the door. “Bernie was in such a good mood she didn't even notice.”

I inhaled the aroma and realized I was starving. I skipped down the ladder and grabbed a pair of denim shorts to change into.

“I put your swimsuit in the bathtub to dry,” said Harvey, his hand on the doorknob.

“Right, thanks,” I said, yawning. “Close the window, Harvey. It's freaking hot in here.”

“Can I talk to you after breakfast?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

He left, and I changed quickly into my shorts.

It seemed that starving was a common theme at the breakfast table. My dad made hash browns and waffles. Every crumb disappeared in minutes. The much more beach-appropriate weather had lifted everyone's spirits. Harvey volunteered us for clean-up duty while my parents and Natalie sipped coffee.

I scooped up a handful of soapsuds and blew them into Harvey's face. Unfortunately for him, his mouth was open, and he coughed so hard I was surprised he didn't hack up a lung.

With Harvey still coughing and our parents deep in conversation, the doorbell rang. I ran to answer the door with a greasy iron skillet still in my hand.

“Alice! Hey, Alice, let me get that!” yelled Harvey, his voice raspy, as he chased me down the hallway with his hands covered in soapsuds.

I ignored him and swung the door open to find Debora. Debora with a small overnight bag on her shoulder.
No
. I held my breath, hoping that she wasn't here to be with my Harvey, even though I knew she was.

“Alice.” I turned around to find Harvey with his eyes on Debora, but my name on his lips. This was a mistake. This was a
family
vacation. Debora was smart, nice, and cute, but she was not family.

Natalie rushed down the hallway with my parents at her heels. “Oh, Debora! I'm so glad you were able to make it.”

I whipped back around to Debora on the doorstep, eyes wide as Natalie gave her a quick hug. Behind her, a silver Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. Again, I turned around to face Harvey, hoping for some kind of explanation.

He stood with his mouth open.

But then it slid over me like wax. He'd invited her here. And they all knew. My mom, my dad, Natalie. All of them had known she would be here. And Harvey, he let me put myself out there last night. I pushed air in and out of my nose, forcing myself to remember to breath. I wanted to crush him.

“What. The. Hell. Harvey,” I growled, my voice low and angry.

“I tried to tell you. Last night, remember?”

In the water, before he thought he had lost the keys. We were talking about today, and he wanted to talk to me about something, I remembered. This morning, in our room. “No. I don't remember.” Each word clipped.

The narrow hallway was too small for all of us. Debora still stood at the door, unsure of what to do with herself. I wanted to rip out her goddamn hair. That's what I wanted to do. I pushed through Harvey, Natalie, and my parents, weaseling out of each of their attempts to grab me. The iron skillet was still in my hand, swinging at my side. My mom chased after me into the living room as I walked through the sliding glass door and onto the patio.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” she demanded, sliding the door shut behind her.

“Go away.”

“Alice.” Her voice wasn't kind or gentle. Everything in me was withering, and she chose now to yell at me. I closed my eyes and saw the pictures. The flowers. The candles.
Rest in Peace.
No matter how fast Harvey and Dennis had managed to take down that display, it would always exist. I would always see it. I would never forget.

“I
said
go the fuck away.” It wasn't the words themselves, but the way I said them that would create a big wave with my mom. Heat from my ears spread down my neck and across my chest.

She grabbed my wrist (the one not connected to the skillet) and squeezed hard. My hand began to turn white, and I could already feel her fingerprints branding my skin. “I don't know when you turned into such a little bitch, but things are going to change in a big way.”

Most mothers don't talk to their daughters like that, but my mom and I had never been most mothers and daughters. I remembered reading about wolf packs when I was younger. Each wolf pack could only have one alpha, one chief. This was the very unfortunate truth of my mother and me. We were two alphas who could never coexist in peace. The only time we had was when she thought I was dying.

I was angry. Boiling. Last night I chose Harvey. This morning Harvey chose Debora. And now this: My mom was finally biting back at me, like I'd been waiting for. She had changed so much when I was sick, so much to the point that I doubted she was even the same person anymore. Of all days, she chose today to fight back. Everything beneath my skin felt like it was on fire. I wiggled my wrist out of her grip. With the skillet still in my hand, I swung my arm. Then I let go, sending the iron skillet straight through the sliding glass door and into the living room of the beach house.

My mom's jaw dropped. Very few things could shock my mother, but
this
had. Hell, it shocked me too. At the sound of shattering glass, Natalie, my dad, Harvey, and Debora all flooded the living room, the glass crunching beneath their feet.

“I saw you,” I whispered. “I saw you with a man that wasn't Dad. I waited for you to tell me.” And now I was sobbing, screaming and sobbing. “For you to be
honest
with me because
we always tell the truth, even when we think it does more harm than good
,” I said, reciting her own words back to her. “You should've left us then. Ripped the Band-Aid off. Because the lies are destroying us,” I said, my voice catching on every syllable. “You ruined me. You made me this way. This.” I motioned to myself, my chest heaving now. “Is your fault. And now it's too late to fix it.”

Then I ran, as fast as I could, as far away as I could.

I couldn't look at my dad. I couldn't bear to see what this truth did to him. But it was out now. I didn't know who I'd been lying for, who I'd been keeping Mom's secrets for. But now there were no more secrets between them, and it was up to my parents to decide what they would do with that truth. As for me, I was done with it.

When the beach house was only a speck on the horizon, I collapsed in the sand. I didn't know how long I sat there before Harvey plopped down next to me.

“Leave, Harvey.”

“Not until I explain.”

“No,” I said, “let
me
explain.”

“Alice, I—”

“You are in love with me, and you always have been. But this is the
truth,
Harvey: I don't love you. Not at all. Not you, not anyone, not anything.” And because that wasn't enough, because I hadn't done enough damage, I said, “You're sad and pathetic. You have no spine, and the fact that you think someone like me could ever love someone like you only proves my point.”

“Stop it.”

“I used you. You know it. I know it. Everyone fucking knows it.” Each word built one on top of the other like a brick wall. Harvey didn't want me, but I couldn't let him be the one to close this door. I couldn't. “Everything you thought was real is a lie. Don't pretend like you don't know that. You were a means to an end, Harvey. There's nothing else you can do for me, so leave. I don't need you. I don't want you.”

He sat there for a moment.

“Leave.”

“This is it, Alice. This is really it. When I leave, I'm not coming back to you. I'm not saving your ass. I'm not going to be your partner in crime. I'm not going to be that guy for you anymore. You never seem to be done with me, but trust me when I say, I am done with you.”

Then he left, and with him he took the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything inside of me that might have been good.