Rebuilding Sabrina, part 3

“I wasn’t talking with Daniel anymore,” Sabrina said.
I just stared at her.
“And I did not want to get him involved,” she added.
Lame.
“Why were you not talking with Dan anymore?”
That had been one of the great mysteries, to me, in the last three decades.
She just shrugged. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said.
I watched her shamble to the kitchen.

I had never doubted, back in the day, that Sabrina and Daniel would end up together. Perfect match and all that. They were both smart and funny and they obviously enjoyed each other company. Dan was a nerdy-but-cool sort of guy, always reading science fiction books, always listening to strange music.
Spending some time with him and Sabrina was like watching some old time comedy. They talked a mile a minute and joked and  made weird references to books, films, shows, and it was an endless flow. I sometimes half-expected they burst into a song-and-dance routine, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
They were obviously very much into each other, and for a while I was pretty sure they were having lots of sex together, but keeping it strictly to themselves. I had respected that, even though the idea of a threesome with Dan and Sabrina had been one of the most recurrent masturbatory fantasies of mine at the time.

Sabrina came back with a pot of black coffee, a bowl of sugar cubes and two cups.
“So,” I asked as she sat down, “what about Daniel?”
She poured the coffee and did not answer.
I waved away the sugar, and took a sip. “I’m waiting,” I said.
“There were voices about him, too.”
“Really?” How could I have missed all this? Too busy sitting naked in the middle of an art class? “What sort of voices?”
“You know, that Dan and I—”
I froze, the cup halfway to my mouth. “That you fucked?”
“Rose!”
“What?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“And did you? Fuck, I mean.”
Her eyes widened. “No!”
“Pity.”
“Rose!”
“Oh, come on. He was a cool guy, and he was obviously into you—”
“Don’t be silly.”
“He was and you knew and you rather liked it.”
She stirred her coffee.
“But there’s one thing I don’t get—” I said.
More than one, but this was clearly an awful mess.
“What?”
I lit another cigarette, and offered her the packet. She gave me a hard stare. I shrugged. “You said there was gossip around about you and Dan being an item. And at the same time everybody believed you were available. Explain, please.”
She blushed.
“It was more complicated than that.”
“As in—?”
“They said I was a nymphomaniac. That I was using Dan as a kind of— you know, like a cover, and that behind his back I was constantly doing— things.”
There was more there. “And why did you not talk about it with Dan?”
She shrugged.
I dropped some ash in my ashtray. “You thought he was in on it too?”
Sabrina nodded.
I felt a sharp stab of fury. “Shit, girl, you had only two fucking friends and you thought they had both backstabbed you?”
“I did not know who I could trust.”
“You could have trusted me. And Dan. Shit, we were friends.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of everything. Of people talking.”
“They were already talking. And when you hear some shit about your friends, you talk with them about—”
I stopped. “Daniel,” I said.
Sabrina nodded. “He called me. He told me—”
“What did he tell you?”
“He told me what Mike Forlani was telling about me. About us. Me and him, Mike I mean. Daniel told me I should straighten things out with Mike, that he was harming me.”
“Dan was right.”
“I did not—”
Sabrina threw her arms up and winced. “I was afraid.”
“And so you cut Dan out.”
“He could cause trouble. For me. Do something stupid.”
I thought back at the goofy kid in the glasses, reading Kim Stanley Robinson and playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. “What sort of trouble could he have caused?” I asked, with a chuckle. “Would he throw a fireball at Mike? Called the Starfleet down on him?”
I stood. I started pacing up and down in the small parlor. So neat. So clean. “I know what he would have done,” I said. “He would have faced Mike publicly, and mocked and humiliated the fucker so hard in front of everyone, Mike would have needed a face transplant and a change of name.”
“He would have attracted further attention on me.”
“Jesus Christ, girl! He would have defended and protected you, and he would have given the gossips and the wankers another target. And believe me, people would have loved to take it out on that spineless creep Forlani.”
Sabrina was staring at me. “You liked him, didn’t you? Dan, I mean.”
“Yes, I liked him. I thought you liked him too.”
She shook her head. “He was all right.”
“All right?”
A shrug.
“And you left him behind to remain chummy with a guy that was spreading the shit about you all over campus? Because you did, didn’t you? You hung close to Mike and his clique of idiots.”
“I thought—”
I snorted. “Sister, if there’s one thing you didn’t do, was thinking.”
Her eyes blazed. “I was going through a rough patch.”
“But please!”
We faced each other.
“It completely destroyed my life,” Sabrina said. “Can you imagine it? I was so desperate I dropped out of school, and cut all contacts. My social life was totalled, I still have problems today when it comes to personal relations. I have no male friends, and I am wary of female friends too.”
Her face fell. “And I can’t keep a man for the life of me.”
“But I am still your friend,” I said.
I always thought about Sabrina as the level-headed, balanced one. The one with the good life, and the occasional bump.
“And I am your friend only because we exchange two phone calls and a greeting card a year, and meet once every five or seven years, isn’t it.”
I was the living out of a suitcase, always on the run.
And yet.
“It’s not like that,” she said.
But it was. I was still in her life because I had once been very close to her, but now I was not anymore. I was not a menace, or a possible source of gossip about her.
I watched her there, sitting as a lump on her stuffed chair, pale and red-eyed, holding an empty cup of coffee in her ruined fingers. She was more fucked up than I had imagined.But she was my friend.
I checked my watch.
“Let’s order dinner,” I said. “Pizza, or a take away. We need to talk.”
Sabrina looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean to put you back on your feet, sister.”