Page 1 of Guy's Girl
Ginny isn’t sure which came first—the bad habit or the boy.
They showed up at almost exactly the same time, like two trains pulling into one station from opposite directions. And when they left, it took much longer for one to go than the other.
On the surface, the two seem completely disconnected—one a human being, the other a human defect—but at their core, they’re both powered by the same thing: false versions of love. One, the wrong way to love another; the other, the wrong way to love yourself.
She didn’t mean to become bulimic. Does anyone? Does anyone go out looking for mental illness? Well, she didn’t, in any case. It just kind of happened. Just the way things did with Finch—piece by piece, she fell into something intoxicating, something dangerous; and by the time she realized what was happening, it was already too late.
Adrian remembers the exact moment he decided not to fall in love.
He was eleven. His mother hadn’t stopped crying in a week. He didn’t quite understand what had happened with her and Scott. In fact, it would be years before he grasped the full breadth of his stepfather’s betrayal.
He climbed the rickety stairs of their new home in Indianapolis, one half of a duplex they shared with a cloudy-eyed couple who had strange pockmarks all over their faces. A bowl of porridge balanced in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. His mother wouldn’t eat, but he still had to try.
He nudged open her bedroom door. Inside, she was curled up with her head on the pillow. Even half conscious, she looked miserable. Wrinkled forehead. Puffy eyelids. Lips moving silently, as if in prayer.
He set the bowl and mug down on the bedside table.
I don’t want it, he thought.I don’t want it, and I never will.
PartI
Ginny Murphy is wasting away again.
She can feel it as she drags her suitcase up the fifth and final staircase of her friends’ walk-up in SoHo. The tremble in her limbs. The pop of stars at the edge of her vision. It’s 6 p.m. and she hasn’t eaten a thing all day.
If Heather were here, she wouldn’t let Ginny get away with starving herself. She would pull out her phone and find a list of every muscle, every neuron, every organ that needs energy to survive. Then she would force-feed Ginny a donut.
When she reaches apartment 5E, Ginny pauses to straighten her skirt and blink away the lights clogging her vision. She hesitates. Alone in Minnesota, where she lives, hiding her habits is easy. But here, visiting a group of boys who have known her since their freshman year of college?
Not so easy.
She raises one fist and knocks twice.
“There she is!” comes a voice from inside. She hears footsteps, then the door swings inward, revealing a bushel of red hair and a grin so wide it seems to take up the whole doorway. “Ginny fucking Murphy,” says her best friend, Clay. Then she’s swept up in a frenzy of freckled arms and spun around the hallway. Ginny laughs. She can’t remember the last time she heard that sound come out of her mouth.
Clay sets her down and grabs her suitcase. “Welcome to Manhattan.”
Adrian Silvas is on his 6 p.m. break. Fifteen minutes to leave Goldman and pick up a coffee from the Gregory’s on East 52nd: cold brew, no sugar, a splash of almond milk. A pick-me-up for what’s sure to be another long night. It doesn’t matter that it’s Friday. It doesn’t matter that the managing directors left already. Analysts are to stay at their desks until their eyeballs bleed.
Adrian went into investment banking because that’s what everyone said he should do. Just like he applied for the scholarship to Harvard because that’s what everyone said he should do. Just like he became the vice president of his final club because that’s what everyone said he should do.
When he signed with Goldman Sachs, he had no idea what he was in for. How long his hours would be. How mind-numbing the work was. How truly and utterly it would suck the soul out of his body. Now he’s a man with more money than he knows what to do with and no time to spend it.
“Eso után köpönyeg,” his grandfather would say.After the rain comes the raincoat.
Clay leads Ginny down the short hallway toward the living room. They don’t make it more than three feet before she’s accosted by a flurry of curly light brown hair and grey cotton.
“Gin-a-vieve!” yells the flurry, crashing into Ginny and squeezing her tight. “You made it!”
“Tristan,” Ginny says into her friend’s shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you? My real name is—”
“ ‘West Virginia,’ ” Tristan sings, releasing Ginny’s shoulders and throwing one hand into the air. Clay leans up against his roommate, and together they sing: “ ‘Mountain mama, take me hooo-me, country roads.’ ”
When they’re done, Clay grins down at Ginny. “Bet you missed us.”
“I saw you came in on a seven fifty-seven,” Tristan says, suddenly serious. “Was it wide-bodied? God, I would give my left arm to be on a sweet, sweet wide-body right now. Did you know it’s been over a month since I’ve been on an airplane? I think I’m going through withdrawal. But I downloaded this app, look at this, and—”
And he was off.
