Romantic Comedy

By Molly Ketcheson

“You won’t say anything, right?”

Lyra shakes her head numbly, her fingers idly twisting the hair tie on her wrist. This cannot be happening. She feels laughter start to rise in her throat at the sheer impossibility of it all, and she would let it out, if her thoughts weren’t slicked with fear.

“Lyra?” Jack turns to look at her, worry creeping into his voice. His pace slows on the cold path to their class.

“Yeah, sorry,” she says, pushing a strand of coiled hair behind her ear. Her voice is breathy, and feels far away. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed and all that.”

Jack stretches out a sigh, hiking his backpack up his shoulders. They are quiet for a moment, Lyra wondering vaguely if she’s imagining this whole exchange.

Then, Jack asks, “So do you think there’s any chance Casey likes me?”

“I, uh, I really don’t know, Jack,” she says. It feels like there’s a stampede of horses rambling through her stomach. This is going to make such a good story eventually. Once Lyra’s figured out how to manage her best friends’ newfound romance while still being a vital member of their triumvirate. She can picture herself at a party, in a gold sequin dress, sipping champagne and entertaining all the guests with the story of the time her two best friends told her a day apart that they were in love with the other. And her laughter would clink off the chandelier as she’d explain how she found a fabulous solution to the problem and managed to not be sidelined by this romance and her friends were happy and everyone would be in awe of her and her perfectly applied red lipstick. Of course, in that universe, she is someone who wears gold sequin dresses and gets invited to parties where they drink expensive champagne, but those seem like the more attainable parts of the fantasy at this point.

Lyra spends the entirety of her and Jack’s Economics class playing out different scenarios in her head. She can still hear Casey’s voice as she pressed out the words, the small smile on her face as she told Lyra she liked Jack but wasn’t sure what to do about it. That had worried Lyra a bit, her thoughts immediately jumping to they won’t want to hang out with me anymore. But Casey was quiet and, though Lyra wanted her friend to be happy, she didn’t think she would act on her crush anytime soon. But now that they had both confessed their feelings, fate was bound to interfere.

Lyra can’t do nothing. That would be unfair to her friends and to herself; this information begs to be wielded. Despite her fear, Lyra likes having the power to choose her fate. The control stills her jittering fingers as she considers that as much as she wants to be the cool friend in the romantic comedy who encourages their friend to go with it, it’ll all work out, she can see how that would come back to erase her from the drawing. They wouldn’t do it intentionally, of course, but new relationships are soft and fuzzy around the edges and soon Casey and Jack would only want to spend time with each other. First they would invite Lyra along with them, her sitting on the other side of the red pleather booth as they laugh and smile that grin that only in love people know how to do. They would eventually remember her presence and ask her questions about her classes and laugh at the newest story of the grumpy barista at the coffee shop next to her dorm. But they would be holding hands under the table, sending secret messages through finger squeezes. Lyra would always be looking through the window of those moments.

And then, like snapping the rope between a lifeboat and a ship, they would stop inviting her. It would have nothing to do with her, really, but Casey and Jack would want to spend some time alone and they wouldn’t want to make Lyra feel awkward and so they would go the movies and share a popcorn as Lyra sits in her dorm, writing an essay for Women’s Studies. Just like that, they would no longer be LyraCaseyandJack. they would be CaseyandJack and then, a few beats later, Lyra.

She can’t let it happen. She won’t walk to Econ alone, won’t sit in the coffee shop studying for hours by herself, the timbre of Casey’s music spilling from her headphones replaced by the Starbucks folk playlist.

Lyra knows that she’ll be the character in the romcom that everyone curses at from their couches. She will not get marooned by a love boat.

“Hey, Lyr, you okay?” Casey asks, leaning over their almost-empty popcorn bowl to pause Legally Blonde.

“Yeah, just a lot on my mind.” She’s been trying to find a moment all night to bring up Jack but there hasn’t been an opportunity. Or maybe she just secretly knows she’s going to hell for this, and her subconscious is trying to save her soul.

“Me too,” Casey says, tucking her knees up and resting her chin on them. “I’m not sure I really like Jack. Maybe I just thought I did. What do you think?”

Lyra sees her chance and takes it. “I don’t know, Casey. But I did see Jack talking to Stella from our Econ class yesterday. They were laughing a lot.” This is true, but Lyra knows that Jack had just wanted to ask her for answers to the homework that neither of them had completed.

“Oh.” Casey’s voice is small, her eyes focusing intently on the gold ring on her middle finger.

“But I don’t know,” Lyra repeated, her stomach clenching like the toy in a claw machine that has finally found purchase. She lays a hand on top of Casey’s. “It could be nothing.”

“Maybe we’re better off being friends,” Casey says, eyes flicking to Lyra’s.

“Yeah, maybe.” Lyra squeezes her hand once, and Casey’s mouth flits into the glance of a smile before she leans away to un-pause the movie. This is what you wanted, Lyra thinks as she glances at Casey. They would have left you behind.

Lyra all but forgets about the quasi love triangle she’s found herself in for a while. The weather takes a turn for the freezing, and the three friends start going ice skating underneath sparkling skies and staying at the Cineplex all day, just to see how many movies they can watch before they get caught. Everything is right again. Yes, Jack sometimes glances at Casey for a little too long, a quiet smile shadowing his lips. But Casey turns her crinkling eyes to Lyra and they giggle and Jack joins in and none of them know what they are laughing about but it feels bright.

But then Casey starts to date this guy from her Astronomy class.

At first they all hang out together, but then Jack starts having a lot more work than he used to. Lyra and Jack still walk to Econ together, but it is different, words falling through cracks in the thawing pavement.

And then Lyra calls Casey on one of the first warm nights, the sun just setting outside her window.

“Hey!” Casey says as she picks up the phone. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Lyra replies, lying back on her bed. “What movie are you feeling for tonight? Because I was thinking we could tackle the modern classic, Titanic. Young Leo makes everything better.”

“Shit,” Casey says, her voice distant. “I completely forgot.”

“Forgot? We’ve been doing movie nights on the third Friday of the month since September.” Lyra tries not to let the hostility creep into her voice, but she can tell by Casey’s hitching breath that she fails.

“I know, and I’m so sorry, but I’m going out with David today. He’s been planning some special dinner all week. I don’t even know where we’re going! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“He’s so sweet; I honestly don’t know how I got so lucky. But we’ll do Titanic tomorrow or next week okay? You know I can’t say no to young Leo.”

And then Casey says she has to go, David knocking on the door in the background, and Lyra feels her heart pull back towards her mattress.

She watches Twilight alone that night, but even Robert Pattinson’s absurdly sparkling skin can’t make her smile.

She starts walking to Econ alone. First it’s because Jack is sick, but then the next week she walks in and he is already there, sitting next to Stella. She bites her tongue hard enough to taste iron to stop herself from crying.

She tried so hard. Is it really such a bad thing to want to hold onto happiness? Lyra supposes it is. It must be.