Why Are You Here

By Kristen Siegel

Anya adjusts the sleeves of her sweater, stretching the wool over her bitten cuticles and thinks about life’s unknowable qualities. Was it the humanists who argued that existence is ultimately meaningless and that any sense of purpose is fabricated by our consciousness? On the porch, two steps and four degrees of sobriety above her, Jane fiddles with the ends of her blonde waves. The January wind snatches away their breath clouds and Anya can tell Jane’s freezing despite her turtleneck and what looks like Daniel’s Carhartt jacket, thrown hastily over her narrow shoulders. Impatient to get back to the party Anya has unsuccessfully crashed.

“Bit of a philosophical question, don’t you think?” Anya addresses the handful of stars claiming weak victory over Cambridge’s light pollution. She can feel the bottle of merlot strumming odd chords in her brain matter. It reminds her why she started dry January. Not to cleanse, or reset, or slice an unnecessary ten pounds off her lean runner’s frame. Not because fuzzy hangovers translated into sloppy hands pouring soy milk instead of oat during opening shifts at Vibrant Coffee, leading to her coworker and recent-girlfriend, Fia, getting that pinched-nose-look particular to employee screwups and flooded restrooms. A look which always made Anya feel the shame of a kid who flunked a math test. No alcohol means no intrusive thoughts — or at least, a stronger sense of control around managing them. Tonight, however, marks an exception.

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.” Jane won’t look Anya in the eye either, continuously flicking her gaze over her shoulder toward the closed door. Anya can’t tell if this is out of paranoia or hope. Her old roommate was always tough to read, a master of the art of delivering a persuasive “I’m fine,” when truthfully, a stew of emotions boiled under the surface of her reassuring smile.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jane continues, her voice level. Calculated. How many times has she imagined having this conversation? How many nights has she spent rehearsing her script in the liminal moments before sleep? Put imaginary Anya on her imaginary knees in a snow drift or perhaps a bed of coals and made her — of all people — beg forgiveness? As if Jane can claim a scrap of her self-appointed martyrdom.

Anya takes a wobbly step onto the first stair, half anticipating Jane to flinch away, but she stands her ground. Her eyes meet Anya’s for the first time since intercepting her on the porch three minutes ago. Up close, Anya notices patches of excess powder dabbed clumsily on the fragile skin beneath Jane’s lower lashes. Crumbs of mascara suggest tears scrubbed away with Kleenex in the bathroom. Anya wonders who it was this time. Wonders how old she was.

“We both know I’m not here for Daniel,” Anya says.

“Well, I don’t either. Want to talk to you that is.”

Perhaps it was the existentialists who took the glass-drained-dry approach to human existence. Fia, former Philosophy major, present Sartre enthusiast, would be disappointed to know her lunch-break-lessons weren’t sticking. More so if she found out Anya had come here tonight. Fia disliked Jane with the same single-minded hatred she held toward corporate CEOs and people who kicked dogs.

“I acknowledge that you have a shit-ton of complex feelings about her,” Fia had said during one such break last week, swirling her spicy tuna roll in soy sauce before popping it in her mouth. “But I don’t think she’s a good person.”

Anya picked at a splinter in her chopsticks. Until that morning, she’d done a good job of barring Jane-thoughts from her head. Her therapist had advised her to redirect her energy toward pursuing new, positive endeavors, and for the most part, she’d succeeded — she’d signed up for a half-marathon in April, recommitted to journaling, stopped holding Fia at arm’s length. Yet, for whatever reason, she’d found herself on Jane’s Instagram that morning while waiting for the Red Line and there it was: the engagement announcement.

The thing was, Fia was probably right — scratch that, Fia was always right about everything from tea flavors (green tea with peach reigned supreme) to if Anya should dye her hair darker (an emphatic no). But she didn’t know Jane like Anya did. Had in fact never met her, except through Anya’s frequent recounts of their tumultuous friendship. Perhaps this latest version of Jane Bardot-soon-to-be-Carson wasn’t a good person, but that hadn’t always been the case.

Four years ago, Anya couldn’t imagine her life without Jane in it. Freshman year, they’d been the random-roommate success story, bonding over a shared appreciation for Dolly Parton and late-night confessionals sustained by Tostitos and Diet Coke. When the panic attacks got worse, Jane had been the one to climb into Anya’s lofted bed and hold her until her heart unclenched and her lungs could hold oxygen again, smoothing her dark hair, and distracting her with silly stories. Nobody but Anya knew about Jane’s sophomore year visit to Planned Parenthood, or her brother’s month in rehab, which the family insisted on referring to as a “wellness retreat.”

In another life, Anya might have allowed herself to fall fully in love with this girl who was addicted to green sour candies and could recite, in completion, the first five scenes of Mamma Mia. Sometimes, she could even pretend to imagine Jane might feel similarly given all the Saturday nights she’d come lurching into Anya’s room, smelling of cheap tequila, bummed cigarettes, and some guy’s cologne, complaining that all men were pigs — “Seriously, fuck ‘em all, Anya. Let’s go live together in a cottage. By the sea. Us and like six dogs and every morning we’ll drink coffee in the dunes and do crosswords.”

But by morning, the drunkenly constructed Sapphic fantasy would be forgotten, buried under a hangover, replaced with wild tales of all the boys who’d bought her drinks, begged for her number, stolen a kiss in a booth sticky with spilled beer. Anya swallowed her feelings the way captured spies cram encoded messages down their throats. Forced herself to find contentment in close friendship, guiltily savoring crumbs of “something more” whenever she discovered them in Jane’s playful touches.

Things only grew more complicated when Daniel entered the scene — arrogant, possessive Daniel who Anya had (at first) begrudgingly tolerated for his ability to make Jane happy. Though, if recent gossip was any indication, he’d lost a bit of that talent along with his lax-bro figure and an inch from his hairline.

“I wish you’d listen to me.” Anya watches silhouettes flit by the curtained windows. Partygoers likely wondering where the bride-to-be is hiding.

“He was twenty-one, Anya. People make mistakes.” Jane’s voice is as hard as the diamond ring hugging her finger.

“She was sixteen,” Anya says, remembering the weekend her sister, Ryan, came to visit her at Boston College. Ryan, always the more mature one, wanted to go drinking, collect a scrapbook of risqué college stories to share with her friends during free period. Figuring Daniel’s birthday party to be safer than any of Jane’s bars that were frequented by pervy seniors craving an easy lay and run by bouncers who wouldn’t card you if you slipped them a twenty, Anya obliged. She couldn’t have predicted how wrong she would be. Could never have imagined that, while looking for a bathroom stocked with the luxury of toilet paper, she’d stumble upon Daniel pressed against Ryan in a bedroom, one hand covering her mouth, the other snaking down her jeans.

“He was drunk — we all were.” Jane’s excuse hasn’t changed in the last four years. Evidently, nothing has. Anya remembers when she told Jane what happened, gripping Ryan’s shoulders as if the pressure alone would keep everything from splintering apart. She’d thought Jane misunderstood her, watching her best friend instantly transform into something ugly. Something cruel. Something that screamed, “You fucking slut! You disgusting, dirty little whore,” while Ryan sobbed that she hadn’t wanted to. That he’d told her they were going upstairs to take shots of the expensive vodka he kept in his room.

“He hasn’t changed though, has he?” Anya asks. She hears things — awful things — from the handful of friends who haven’t written her off as a liar, an attention seeker, a jealous bitch trying to destroy Jane’s relationship for her own selfish reasons. (Reasons which shriveled like a frost-damaged plant once Jane made it clear where her loyalties fell). One of those friends — the one who told Anya about the young intern who was giving Daniel more than his cold brew every morning — is in the party right now, drinking Veuve and toasting the happy couple. Anya doesn’t possess the same confidence that marriage will finally straighten him out.

Jane takes a step backward toward the door, still tugging at non-existent split ends. The curt brush-off will come any second now. This is the longest conversation they’ve had in four years. All of Anya’s other attempts resulted in declined calls, unopened texts, doors cracked and then closed after less than a minute. Maybe this is a sign Jane knows she’s right, that she’s ready to hear the truth. The words Anya came here to say — the ones she’d needed all that merlot to finally dislodge from the pit of her stomach — perch on her lips.

“Jane, you can’t—” she’s cut off by the woosh of the door swinging open, the lively hum of party chatter bubbling out into the night, the appearance of Daniel’s hulking form in the doorway. The light throws his elongated shadow onto the porch, the outline of his head landing next to Anya’s boots. She shifts her weight to stand on it. She should’ve slapped the real Daniel back then. Should’ve kneed him in the balls. He probably didn’t even get a bruise from when she’d shoved him off Ryan and he’d fallen into the corner of his desk.

Daniel steps out onto the porch, draping an arm over Jane’s shoulder in a way that communicates “fuck off” as clearly as if he’d thrown Anya the middle finger. “Jane, come back inside. It’s freezing.”

Jane nuzzles into his shoulder and Anya feels her stomach drop through the floorboards. “I’ll be right there. Anya just stopped by to say congratulations.” Her words are tinted with a threat — whatever you were going to say, don’t. Not now.

Daniel nods sharply, as though trying to dislodge something from his head. “Mitch is giving his toast soon. Don’t stay out here too long.” His gaze remains fixed on Jane, on his fiancé, while Anya’s bores into his navy sweater that looks as if it costs more than half her month’s rent. She imagines neon green lasers shooting from her pupils to burn a set of eyes in the wool below his collarbone. Eyes that will meet hers and bubble over with Daniel’s worst secrets.

“Right.” Jane’s tone is flat, and Anya can see her working to puzzle out the end of Anya’s aborted sentence. Jane, you can’t — what? Can’t do this? Pretend to love Daniel anymore? Continue to shove your best friend away? In college, they’d played a drinking game where one player would sing the first half of a lyric and the other had to supply the next part correctly or drink. Jane always won, pulling out obscure the Mowgli’s tracks and forgotten pieces of the Beatles’ expansive discography during her turns. If she can’t solve this, it’s because she doesn’t want to.

Daniel squeezes Jane tighter to him and begins to retreat toward the house. Posed in the porchlight, they remind Anya of a wedding topper— him, tall, dark, and handsome, towering over his angelic blond-haired bride. Happiness etched into painted wax; bodies fused in a never-ending embrace. Someone’s — maybe his, maybe her, maybe both of their — idea of what marriage looks like. Anya backs off the porch, feeling nauseous, progressing too quickly through the Five Stages of Drunkenness.

“Anya, would you like to come in for a drink?” Jane asks suddenly, surprising all three of them. Her smile is hesitant, prepared to withstand rejection. And why shouldn’t Anya say no? Better yet, why should she say yes? Act as though all the pain of the past four years can be erased by top-shelf champagne served in a “Mr. and Mrs. Carson” flute? Pretend the fallout from two people’s awful decisions hasn’t torched her life and strewn salt over the ashes with every ignored phone call? Jane was right — why was Anya even here?

She can see herself walking away. Begging too much wine if she chooses to be civil, laughing at Jane’s limp olive branch if she doesn’t. She’ll go home, make tea, maybe call Fia even though Anya knows she’s asleep by now and anyways wouldn’t be thrilled to hear where the bottle of Decoy they’d ironically set aside to celebrate completing dry January had lead Anya tonight.

But then she notices Jane’s fingertips brush at the powder under her eyes. Linger where the thin skin has puffed. Contract into a tight, manicured fist that disappears into her pocket before Anya can even be certain it’s real. A sequence of minor gestures. Innocuous, inconspicuous, apparently mindless, but all together a sign — the first buttery daffodil nosing through frosted soil, the opening notes of a robin’s song at daybreak, a violet-and-rose-streaked sunset stretching past five at night. The declaration of a shift in the seasons. A promise of the coming thaw.

THE END

Author Bio: Kristen Siegel (she/her) was born and raised on Cape Cod. She graduated with a BA in English from Duke University and is currently pursuing her MFA at Emerson College where she is a senior reader for Redivider. She was awarded the 2021 Gish Jen Fiction Fellowship from the Writers’ Room of Boston and also received the top prize in fiction for the Emerson Graduate Awards for her short story, "Gratitude Journal?" in 2021. Her work is forthcoming in After The Pause.