Likes by Sarah Bynum (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

red hair, same wide red mouth. But how could we be sure? Asking would be rude. And she was difficult to have a conversation with, precise and cold in her way of speaking but nervous in her body, a little twitchy, her eyes darting about. Yet Sunny had wooed her, had undoubtedly slept with her! That haughty kook. At Halloween, they dressed up as a garbage collector and a bag of garbage. She was the hottest bag of garbage we’d ever seen, all silver duct tape and clinging black plastic, wobbling slightly in a pair of bondage boots. Soon after Halloween she and Sunny split up. “And a good thing too,” we pointed out, given the accidental comedy of their names. Julia had never noticed this before, and now she laughed and laughed, with genuine delight. “Sunny and Sher-i,” she repeated, eyes shining, and stretched her long limbs in the morning warmth of our apartment, already perfectly at home.

We liked it when Julia dropped in on us unannounced. She made us feel romantic. She’d peer at the photographs lined up along the mantel of the bricked-in fireplace; she’d compliment the ceramic salt and pepper shakers, shaped like French roosters, and open the flimsy kitchen cabinets to admire the plates and cups within. Settling back into the recently acquired club chair, our secret pride and joy, she propped her feet up on the matching ottoman and cried out, “I never want to sit in a papasan again!” It pleased us to no end. We were new to this, and sometimes just the sight of our clothes hanging companionably in the closet, or our large and small shoes jumbled in a heap by the door, would be enough to send us falling onto the nearest sofa in a sort of diabetic swoon. With Julia around, we wanted more than anything to while the day away discussing Sunny, and never have to send ourselves to the library, or to class.

Julia alone, whose soft knock on the door used to make us so happy, now fills us with a feeling similar to—we hate to say it—dread. Sometimes when she calls, we do not have the wherewithal to answer. We’re afraid that the conversation will go on too long, or that she’ll bring up Robert again and want to be affirmed. Sometimes we let her phone calls go straight to voice mail, and then allow a few days to pass before we even listen to the message.

“Aren’t you going to call her back?”

“I think it’s your turn. I’m pretty sure I did it last time.”

“Are you keeping score?”

“Keeping track is not the same as keeping score.”

“Seriously?”

“I just don’t want this to become exclusively my job. Like what happened with the pool.”

We can’t help wishing that maybe one of these days Sunny would give us a call. Before we even really knew him we liked him, from afar we liked him, and sitting next to him in class we were charmed by his sudden way of smiling and his jaunty haircuts, which he received weekly from his octogenarian landlord, who in a former life had been not only a barber but a classical music deejay. This was the sort of information he’d occasionally divulge, each casually offered aside accreting into an ever more subtle, complex, and absorbing picture. He enjoyed reading fiction, especially Nordic detective novels. He’d once played soccer at a very high level, and done massive amounts of drugs. He’d gone to a good boarding school but a mediocre small college, spent much of his twenties trying to save his family’s electronics business, and now here he was, making his comeback in medical school, where by all accounts but his own he was doing very well, with seemingly little effort.

We liked him, too, for not continuing to kiss Julia at parties. We appreciated the clarity of his intentions, and the way in which it flatteringly reflected our own: because what sane person wants to keep messing around at this age? That was what the undergraduate experience had been for, those four short and sweaty years. Now it was time to relax into something real. “He asked me on a date,” Julia said in wonder. “That’s actually the term he used.” We suggested she wear her hair down.

She had brought over some different outfits to model for us. It was like watching a parade of past Julias: a kittenish little number she’d worn during her year singing a cappella; a pleated skirt and sweater set that had been her daily uniform as a temp. She retreated modestly into our bathroom between each costume change. “None of this is working, is it,” she called from behind the door. We had a glass of wine waiting for her when she emerged again, plucking at the neckline of something cheap and brightly patterned, the kind of pretty dress found for half price on a sidewalk rack. She looked with longing at the wine but didn’t take it.

“Will you drink it for me?” she asked. “Wine turns my teeth purple, so I’m just going to stick with gin and tonics for the night.” She hiked up the skirt of her dress and climbed unceremoniously into the club chair. “Oh no. Do you think this place is going to have a full bar or just beer and wine?”

As we searched the bookshelf for our restaurant guide, Julia recounted tales of other boyfriends. She didn’t want to make any of the same mistakes again. One ex had followed her down to Ecuador during her semester abroad and camped out for two weeks at a nearby youth hostel, watching her glumly from an internet café as she walked in the mornings to the local clinic. And then, the year after graduation, she had become embroiled with a Ph.D. student who was supposed to be supervising her at the lab where they worked, doing gene sequencing in a mild stupor. He was already engaged to someone else, which had made things extra