Significant Others

Is there anything riskier than throwing a 40th birthday in a small rural town? Come see in these two short consecutive sections from Chapter 5 of Zoe Eisenberg’s debut novel Significant Others. In the book, we follow the three thirtysomething main characters, Ren, Jess, and Ren’s brother Theo, whose birthday it is. 

Together seemingly forever in a pod fashioned from friendship and convenience, they live in the same house in Hilo on the Big Island. Like most locals their age, they face the treadmill stresses of resort-centric work, flat love lives, and the risk of emotional withering that comes of growing older under limited horizons. It’s a powerful concoction brewing under one roof, one familiar to many in these Islands, and Eisenberg’s crackling style and unflinching fidelity to real-world detail heralds the arrival of a major new Hawai‘i talent.  

“R” is for Ren, “J” is for Jess.

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R

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The afternoon of Theo’s party I went with Jess to pick up the cake. It was a Saturday, the sidewalk hot as the hood of a car, the cake box heavy as we moved down bayfront. My mouth tasted like metal, I’d forgotten my sunglasses, and with no free hand to shield my face I was forced to squint against the violent sun. At midday, the island wore a deep, brilliant blue, the color a regional trademark, something about the way the sun reflected off the lava rock. It was one of the first things I noticed when I landed here, the shade so precise, so familiar, a déjà vu kind of color, like it was returning to me from a dream.

Recycling bin blue, Jess said when I met her, flat and matter-of-fact. It was one of the first things she ever said to me, already in the dorm when I’d arrived with my two huge suitcases, my nervous chatter about the color of the sky. She’d picked the bed away from the window, leaving the best space for me. It was one of the first things I noticed about her. Recycling bin blue. I’d felt like an idiot for not recognizing it.

Up ahead on the sidewalk, she moved like she always did, with no hesitation, as if pulled by an invisible string. She looked back at me, her hair swinging over the top of her shoulder, and said, “Hurry up. The frosting will melt.” She’d called the bakery three times that morning to verify the pickup time, to change the color of the piping, to double-check the spelling of Theo’s name. I quickened my pace, my heel grinding painfully into the back of my shoe. We ducked quickly toward the road to bypass a family of five spread thoughtlessly across the sidewalk, their sunburned faces peeling, oblivious to everyone as they made their way to lunch, shopping, a snorkel excursion. At times, living here felt like working at an amusement park, existing solely to help everyone else ride the roller coasters. Jess scolded me when I shared this observation, spat facts I already knew about the defilement of the islands’ culture and resources, but still I often felt this way; I just never mentioned it again.

She had parallel parked in the shadow of a malnourished palm. I slid the cake box onto the back seat and pulled off my shoes and socks. My feet looked swollen, and already a blister raged on the back of my left heel. I peeled off a tender sliver of skin as Jess cranked the AC on high. I rolled the window down to deposit my cells onto the hot pavement and immediately she told me to roll it up, leaning into the back to prop open the cake box, Happy 40th Birthday Theo! written in neon-orange frosting. It was jarring, Theo turning forty, not only for what it meant for him, but what it meant for me. I closed the window as Jess tilted the AC vent toward her face, her eyes closed, the air blasting so hard that stray hairs danced around her forehead like those inflatable men outside used car dealerships. “How many people do you think are coming?” she asked.

I squeezed my foot, watched the blood retreat, then released my hold to watch it return in a blooming, aggressive purple. “We don’t know that many people.”

“Do you think I ordered enough pizza?” 

“I’m sure.”

“Should I call and add a few more?” I could feel her anxiety pulsing out like some sort of electric force field.

I pulled my sweaty sock back on. “Jess.”

“I mean with the keg we really should make sure we have enough pizza, yeah?”

“Jess.”

She looked over at me. “What?”

“It’s just a birthday party. It’ll be fine.”

She looked away, straight ahead at the convertible parked in front of us with its top rolled back. “I know.”

“Say it.” 

“Say what?”

“It’ll be fine.”

She tipped her head back onto the leather and closed her eyes. “It will be fine.”

I closed my eyes too, sat listening to the ocean move in and out like breath, like we were housed inside someone else’s body. After a moment I said: “I wonder if people like living by the water because it sounds like being in the womb. Like we remember it somehow.”

She opened her eyes then, turned around and checked the cake again. Her fixation, I knew, was an extension of her own unease, a single facet she could exert control over, her way of coping with a situation she did not enjoy but tolerated because she loved us. That was the thing about Jess. Her rigidity came from a place of deep, intense devotion. I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. The random metallic taste lingered in my mouth, my body aching with exhaustion despite the nine hours I clocked last night. If we went straight home, I might be able to get a nap in. As if she knew what I was thinking, Jess gave me a soft smile, released my hand, and shifted us into gear.

J

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The strangers began arriving around ten, their cars creeping down Kalaniana‘ole like a funeral procession. By eleven, our house was infested. From the lanai I watched a man in a neon tank piss on a fern in a blackened corner of the yard, his body swaying like palm fronds.

Inside I recognized no one. My chest vibrated painfully. I found Theo in the living room talking to some skinny kid with long hair the color of dying leaves. I touched Theo’s back and he turned.

His eyes were glassy.

“Who are all these people?” I strained my voice. A Grimes song shrieked from the surround sound.

“All these who people?” He smirked, then looked away. Over his shoulder, the mousy kid looked at me with a surprising note of apology.

I shoved back through a narrow forest of people. I needed to change my tampon but the thought of forcing my way to my bedroom felt arduous. In the kitchen I dug under the sink for a trash bag then moved to the center island, the granite swampy with greasy napkins and empty pizza boxes.

I began filling the bag with sticky cups and folded paper plates. Beside me, two tanned men discussed a class they were taking at the university.

A tight knot of resentment formed inside of me. I thought of the cake, still in the fridge.

It had been expensive.

There was no way I was feeding it to this army of strangers. I looked to the man closest to me and asked him how he knew Theo.

His left eyebrow was pierced and the skin looked infected. “Sorry, what?”

“Theo,” I repeated. “How do you know him?” His expression remained blank. “Theo Kelly?” He shook his head as if he didn’t understand the question. “You’re at his birthday party.” 

His inflamed brow reached for his hairline. “This is a birthday party?”

I lifted my hand to my chest and pressed down to calm myself as I told him, yes.

“Oh, weird,” he said, looking to his friend again. “We just saw the wet post.”

“Which one is he?” the friend asked, craning his head around the room.

“Wait, sorry. You saw the what?”

“The post,” pierced kid said. “On wet?” Sensing my confusion, he wiped a hand on his jeans and pulled out his phone. Swiped around. Faced it toward me.

The screen was so bright it hurt, and I squinted. HOUSE PARTY, the post read in all caps. SINGLES ONLY. Below was a photo of Theo’s abs glinting in his bedroom mirror and our address. WHET, read the app banner in a rainbow sans serif.

I felt as if my chest was about to explode.

In the living room I grabbed Ren’s elbow and marched her toward my bedroom. “What?” she asked, wrenching her arm away. “Ow, Jess, what?”

I was too angry to speak.

When I opened the door two men sprang apart on my bed. One wiped at his mouth. The duvet beneath him lay wrinkled. “Out!” I ordered. “Get out.” The beardless one scowled unattractively. I steeled my voice. “Get. Out.”

“I’m parked up front,” the bearded man said to the other in a low grumble. I looked pointedly away as one readjusted himself at the beltline.

As they passed us the beardless guy muttered, “Pushy fucking dykes.”

My mouth opened to the slam of my own door. Ren giggled. She looked more than a bit drunk.

I stalked into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. “Did you know Theo posted this on some app?”

She appeared over my shoulder in the mirror. She was wearing a shiny sort of lip gloss that made her mouth look like glass. “Really?”

“I think it’s a sex app.” Ren snorted. 

“A sex app?”

I could hear myself. I sounded old. I couldn’t help it. “He posted our address.”

Ren gazed at her own reflection, then touched her tongue and used her spit to smooth one curl, then another. “What an idiot.”

“So you didn’t know?”

She seemed to startle. “Of course not.” She blinked once, twice, as if making sure I was serious. “Obviously I’d have told you.”

There was an easing in my sternum then. A release of grip. I lowered myself onto the lip of the tub. The porcelain was cool against my calves.

I tried not to think about the sections of floor growing sticky with beer.

The red cups Easter egging beneath the furniture.

She’d have told me, I thought, and watched Ren dab her finger into her mouth.

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Excerpted from Significant Others by Zoë Eisenberg. Copyright © 2024 by Zoë Eisenberg, used with permission from MIRA/HarperCollins.

Image by Prosha Amiri.