“Have you ever realized your house could be on fire and you might not know it?”
“What?”
Marcy, my best friend, looks over at me as she timidly removes her headphones. She’s probably been listening to something much more interesting than me, like Xdinary Heroes. The smallest bit of a melody I’ve retained from her favorite song softly trills in my head, but I can’t remember the words.
“What?” she echoes herself as if she’s a soundboard.
I make a slow turn towards Marcy, angling my body on the couch so it’s clear that I’m talking to her. I can’t play second fiddle to the band I introduced her to.
“Say your fire alarm died; your house could be on fire and you wouldn’t know it. Because if you’re sitting in a room with a closed door, the smoke can’t get in. Or at least, not for a little while. Y’know?”
I can see Marcy process the question. She nods slowly, like a hesitant vinyl record that can’t quite find its groove. “Anti-AMBER alert,” she says absent-mindedly, but pointedly, staring into space as she fiddles with the headphones that now sit around her neck. I bob my head rapidly in agreement. Marcy smiles at my enthusiastic reaction, and as her gaze naturally finds the carpeted floor of my living room, she breathes, “Isn’t this the kind of crack conversation you normally have with your boyfriend?”
I give an affirmative, “Mm,” and stifle a laugh, but she can hear the smile in my voice. “He’s out at a baseball game with his friends,” I say. “I started thinking about it, the smoke thing, earlier today when I was reminiscing on our first anniversary.”
Marcy startles and actually looks at me for the first time in the conversation. “When he nearly burnt the house down trying to cook you a steak?!” she says, the whites of her eyes louder than her exclamation. I hug my knees and laugh, unbridled this time. “He said it was cheaper than going to a fancy restaurant, and he wanted to do something special for me.” I look up at the ceiling, as if I can see the details of that day written on the stucco. “I was shut up in my room, writing or something. I didn’t even realize anything was burning until I opened the door.”
Ding-dong.
“The timing is impeccable,” Marcy quips as she rises to answer the doorbell.
“I’ll get it!” I suddenly jump up and volunteer, but no need. She’s already begun to meld with the sofa and put her headphones back on.
I open the door to Daviana, who’s always unsuccessfully preferred that I call her Davy. The first thing I notice about her is how pretty she is. Everything about her is always pretty, compared to my disheveled being. First of all, there’s her name: Daviana. “Davi,” which means beloved, and “Ana” which means grace or favored. I looked it up one time when trying to convince her Daviana sounded better than Davy.
Then there’s her hair. Her ivory-blonde locks are like opening blackout curtains to a summer day. You can almost hear the ocean if you look at them for too long. As for her outfit, Daviana’s wearing a blue varsity jacket that would look less stunning if it weren’t on her. She’s sported a fashionably athletic look ever since her mom dared to say she looked too tomboyish in high school.
Even the cigarette she drags from her lips looks pretty, the wisps of smoke fluttering in the mild wind like carcinogenic butterflies.
“Can I borrow some lip gloss?” The first thing out of her mouth after the cigarette. It strikes me as odd that she came all the way here just for some lip gloss, but I say “sure” with feigned nonchalance as I let her in.
Marcy peeks her head out of the living room as I open the door to Daviana. As soon as she catches sight of my visitor, she frowns and disappears from sight. She’s never liked Daviana because she has what Marcy calls “seniority.” Daviana is my best friend since high school, whereas Marcy is my best friend since college. I think Marcy feels threatened, which is silly. As if tenure matters in these kinds of relationships.
I lead Daviana to my bedroom, approach my vanity and start digging through various drawers and boxes for a suitable lip gloss. I ask, “What color do you need? Pink?”
“No color is fine.”
“Pink would complement the blue jacket.”
“No color is fine.”
“Glitter, then?”
“Clear.”
“Okay.”
As I continue rummaging, I glance up at the center of my room where Daviana stands firmly planted, noting how much she stands out. My room isn’t much to behold, which is what makes the contrast so stark.
My vanity, which would be sightly if it weren’t secondhand, has a large mirror. However, my plain, rumpled bedsheets bear a better reflection of me. My walls don’t boast many bookshelves. Instead, they weakly whimper that I used to be an avid reader, with a few forlorn titles tilting over between bookends.
The room’s a bit messy, and I fit right in with the scenery, a mess of mismatched pajamas and tangled hair thrown sloppily into a bun. No one ever comes in here, especially not Daviana. We usually hang out at her place because my habitual messiness makes her itch. She’s never gotten past my bedroom door.
Now, having crossed the threshold, Daviana looks so out of place that it feels like she’s encroaching on my territory.
Eventually I find what I hope is my least-used clear gloss and hand it to her. I watch as she swipes it on. For all my mess, I’m a bit of a germaphobe, and it’s weird to think that her lips are now where mine had once been. Daviana’s much more careless with the application than I would be, unevenly over-and-underlining her lips with shine. I scrunch my nose with distaste while watching. Once she finishes with it, she ignores my open hand and pockets the gloss in her jacket.
Then, instead of leaving the room as I expect, she plants herself more firmly by sitting on my bed.
I go sit beside her, hoping my face doesn’t let on that she still smells like cigarette smoke and I wish she’d get up; I’m afraid the smell will bleed into the bedsheets. Now that I’m right up on her, I can see that the varsity jacket she’s wearing is actually mine. I bought it a while ago when I was trying to gaslight myself into believing I liked sports. Up until now, it’s occupied a dusty, forgotten corner of my closet. I wonder when she borrowed it.
I’m just about to ask her when she pulls out her phone, drawing my attention to her acrylic nails as they clack across the screen. They’re painted the same shade of royal blue as the jacket, but there are white letters across each one. The letters spell out a name that I’m unfamiliar with, but I’m pretty sure it’s the name of a team.
My eyes slowly trail from her nails to her home-screen wallpaper, which is a pic of us from high school. No, it’s a pic of us from high school with my boyfriend standing in between. It was the day before graduation and we all had our arms around each other’s shoulders. But the photo has an awkward crop, so I’m kind of cut off, almost like I’m being shoved out of frame.
It’s at this moment that I think to ask, a bit incredulously, “Are you going to a baseball game?”
Daviana giggles, “Mm,” with a small nod.
She looks proud. Not proud like she’s better than me, but proud in the way a bad little kid looks proud when they think they’ve pulled one over on their parents. Like she’s playing a little trick and it’s kind of funny. Like it’s kind of amusing. But I don’t feel like laughing. Instead, I can’t help but think it’s unfair since I’ve known him longer. I introduced her to him. But I guess tenure never matters in these kinds of relationships.
To think, just a few minutes before I was worried about playing second best to a band I introduced someone to. As the smell of smoke wafts around and makes me dizzy, the song I couldn’t quite capture earlier reveals itself to me.
The lyrics of “until the end of time” spark like flint, flashing their way through my brain fog, and it strikes me that I forgot something.
I get up and close the door.