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That coconut conditioner she always had on, the one I used to roll my eyes at because it was so in-your-face tropical, so trying-too-hard. I'm holding a can of the same brand in the supermarket aisle, and suddenly I feel myself back at twenty-two again, seething at another dinner party where Rachel would take over every conversation with her garrulous opinions about things she'd read in The Atlantic.
God, I detested the sound of her voice. That's what I remember most vividly. How she'd cackle at her own jokes before anyone else, this piercing bark that cut through whatever music someone had been playing. She'd sit on the arm of whatever couch, wine glass in hand, and preside over discussions about gentrification or the male gaze or how we should all be composting. I'd catch Mark's eye across the room, my oldest friend since college, the guy who'd brought us both in, and we'd share this look that was tantamount to here she goes again.
But was it really true? Did Mark actually glance at me like that, or am I inventing this now because it's easier than owning up to the fact that I probably was jealous. Rachel had this ability to make you lean in when she was talking. Even when I was disposed to argue with her, particularly then, I had to hear her out.
The last time I actually spoke with her face-to-face was at Sarah's birthday party. That would've been. autumn 2016? No, spring 2017, since I recall the cherry blossoms were out and someone had opened all the windows in Sarah's apartment. Rachel was wearing this ridiculous vintage dress, one with little flowers that should've been dowdy but wasn't on her. She was in the kitchen, washing dishes that weren't even hers.
"You don't have to do that," I told her, if only because I felt obligated to help and resented that she'd gotten there first.
"I know," she answered, not even looking up. "But Sarah's been under a lot of stress at work, and dirty dishes just make everything worse."
I picked up a dish towel. We worked in silence for maybe five minutes, and then she said, "You think I'm obnoxious."
It wasn't a question. I should have turned it down, should have made some tactful sidestep, but instead said, "Sometimes."
She laughed, not the braying laugh from the far corner of the room, but something more muted. "Fair enough. You're not wrong."
We kept on washing dishes. She told me about her sister, divorcing and staying with Rachel for three weeks. "How she'd been covering overtime shifts at the non-profit where she volunteered because they lost their funding." "How she dominated the conversation at parties because she listened all day to everyone else's problems and sometimes she just wanted to hear her own voice.".
I don't remember what I said to her at the time. Something ordinary, I guess. About work, my own sister. Ordinary things. But I remember thinking that her hands were smaller in water, sort of more vulnerable. And when she passed me a glass of wine to dry, our fingers touched for a moment.
That's when it started, I think. Or maybe it had been starting for months and I just hadn't noticed because I was so set on not liking her.
The night things shifted was a couple of years later. Mark's grandmother had died: the woman who'd essentially raised him since his parents' divorce and a bunch of us had gone to the funeral. Rachel showed up in this little black dress I'd never seen her in, her usual crazy hair pulled back really tight. She sat in the back row and didn't talk to anyone.
After the service, we all went to Mark's apartment. Folks brought food, shared stories, the wake routine. But Mark was. not coping. He'd slip away into his bedroom, emerge red-eyed, attempting to host despite clearly wishing people would vacate.
Most people had cleared out by midnight. I was collecting empty bottles from the kitchen when I could hear voices in the living room, Mark's, all tight and angry, and Rachel's, low and level.
"I don't need you to fix it," Mark was saying.
"I'm not trying to fix it," Rachel said. "I'm just sitting here."
"Well, sit elsewhere. I don't need an audience."
I crept closer to the door. Mark was crying now, actually crying, and Rachel was sitting next to him on the couch, not holding his hand but close enough that he could feel her presence.
"She used to prepare these disgusting fruit salads," he burst out. "Canned peaches and cottage cheese. Who does that? But she'd bring them to every family gathering, so proud, and we'd all have to act like they were wonderful."
"Sounds awful," Rachel responded.
"It was. But I'd give my soul to have one of those fruit salads right now,"
They stayed there for another hour. I should have departed, should have given them privacy, but was unable to move. I watched Rachel not try to fix it, not offer solutions or inspirational sayings. Rachel listened while Mark described fruit salad and his grandmother's terrible sense of TV taste and how empty the apartment seemed when she was not calling them every week.
When Mark finally did pass out on the couch, Rachel threw a blanket over him and started cleaning up, moving quietly so she didn't wake him. I helped her get the dishwasher loaded, get rid of paper plates, and store leftover casseroles in the fridge.
"You're good at that," I said as we worked.
"Being what?"
"Being there without taking up space."
She looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was being sarcastic or not. "I have practice."
We finished cleaning in silence with each other, and then we were standing in Mark's kitchen at two o'clock in the morning, both of us knowing that we had to leave but neither of us moving towards the door. The ceiling light was too bright, making everything feel temporary and harsh.
"I used to think you were acting," I blurted. "At parties. Like you were playing this whole intellectual role."
"Perhaps I was," she said. "Perhaps we all are."
"Are you now?"
She thought about it, tilted her head. "No. I don't think so."
That's when I realized I was in trouble. Not in love yet—that would come later, gradually, in increments too tiny to notice until they'd built up into something unavoidable. But trouble, definitely. The kind of trouble that starts the moment you realize someone you've dismissed might be worth knowing.
I kissed her three months later, at another party, in another kitchen. She had the flavor of the beer we'd been drinking and something else, something I couldn't place. When we parted, she said, "This is going to be complicated."
She was. It was. Our friends teased us about it, Sarah said she'd been waiting for it to happen since that first dinner party. Mark said he'd known on the night of the funeral, that he'd watched us dancing around each other the whole night long as if we were doing some kind of dance.
"You know you've been staring at her for like two years," he told me later.
Had I gawked, though? I don't think so. I remember paying attention, how she'd wrinkle up her nose when she was thinking, how she'd shove her hair behind her left ear but not her right, how she'd brow this minute crease between her eyebrows when someone said something she didn't believe but wasn't arguing.
But maybe staring and seeing are the same. Maybe hatred and attraction are closer neighbors than I was willing to admit.
We've been married three years. Sometimes I'll sit and watch her reading in bed, or making coffee in the mornings, or screaming at the news on television, and I'll try to remember that hard-edged girl of the dinner parties. But she's softened, or I have, or we have. The coconut shampoo remains the same, though. I purchase it for her these days, and when she emerges from the shower, still damp, with hair I passively twirl into a turban-like arrangement that keeps everything out of the way, I inhale that tropical aroma and recall myself at twenty-two and so convinced of who I was and what I desired.
I got most of that wrong. But I'm happier that I was wrong.