Cheers, Somebody by Katie Lewis

Author:Katie Lewis [Lewis, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories, women authors, relationships, Middle Americans, Midwest, personal demons, ghosts
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Published: 2017-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Rae

I don’t remember meeting Rae. Somewhere along the way senior year, her knotted bob of ever-changing hue came into view, her head topping off just below my chin. Maybe I’d missed her before, not looking down to find this tiny, chain-smoking Filipino who had arms of uneven lengths and bandaged her breasts in doubled-up sports bras. Her non-alcoholic drink of choice was a Surge Big Gulp, light ice, from the 7-Eleven next to the interstate.

She’d dated the charming white Russian for two years, ending the relationship the last month of college. They’d met at 7-Eleven while she pumped gas and slurped her Surge, her eye on the balding man without a shirt and with an accent. He had served one tour of duty in Iraq, which he used as an opening line of entrapment: “Can you spare five dollars for a veteran? I’m a veteran. I fought for you.” Rae always gave money to people like this, but she didn’t always date them for two years. Her phone number went on the back of the gas receipt, in lipstick. Theirs was a volatile relationship, one buoyed by offers to cover the next round—my boyfriend and I couldn’t keep up with them that time at the off-campus bar—and then spiraling down down down to screeching arguments and fistfights and all-caps texts about cutting off his dick. The pregnancy happened when they allowed a tender, sober moment, and she was composed when telling me about her plan.

We sat in the hallway before class, the inset bench creating an alcove. Rae’s concern about disappointing her professors kept her fifteen minutes early to classes. I always knew where to find her at quarter-to the hour. Our books balanced in our laps, book bags at our feet. I leant close to smell the orange and ylang ylang essential oils she dotted on her clavicle as perfume. “That’s a hard decision to have to make,” I’d said.

“No shit.” She bit off the hard pieces of skin lining her thumbnail.

“What does the white Russian think?”

She licked her thumb and wiped it against a dark smudge on her thigh that turned out to be a bruise, stalling until a group of backpacked students passed earshot. “He doesn’t know.”

A beat. “Are you going to tell ... .”

“I don’t know, OK? I don’t know yet. It wouldn’t make a difference. He’s going to ... It wouldn’t make a difference. Just trust me.” She used the long, red straw to poke holes in her Big Gulp’s empty Styrofoam cup.

I did trust her that year, with all of my inside thoughts. I counted her as one of my two closest friends, disclosing the thoughts buried in shade, unearthed only for a kindred spirit’s accepting hands. I talked about my longtime boyfriend and feelings for a co-worker, and she talked about the plans for her lolo’s trust fund. She wanted to take a year off after college to travel around Asia. When asked how her mom felt, she said, “Oh yeah, my real mom’s dead.

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