On Rotation(53)

For a moment, I thought that Nia would blow me off again. Her gaze was hard. I had seen her direct that look at others, people she didn’t care about, those she wanted to give her space, but in the decade since we’d declared ourselves besties, never at me. My throat tightened.

Nia sighed.

“Angie,” she said. “It’s really . . .” Her lips tightened into a line, and suddenly her mask fell away and she squeezed her eyes shut. I watched the transition happen in shock, feeling my stomach sink into an abyss. “The friends I went out with today. What are their names?”

I recoiled, not expecting the question.

“Your friends? You mean, the Lesbrigade?” I asked, flustered.

“They have names. I’ve told you what they are a hundred times,” Nia insisted. “What are they?”

I stared at Nia blankly, trying to remember the people in her new friend circle. I’d seen them onstage at the improv show, and in the photos Shae shared on social media, and yes, Nia had been bringing them up more often these days, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names.

“I . . . think the blonde’s name is Beth?” I tried.

“Beck,” Nia corrected. She crossed her arms in disgust. “That’s all you got? Really? Because I know that you’re working with a resident named Gwen, that she’s originally from the Bay Area, wants to do MFM, and sometimes comes to work smelling like patchouli. What do you know about Beck? Clearly not her name.”

Flustered, I threw my hands up.

“Okay. So yes, I’m bad at names, and you want me to know more about your new bosom buddies. I can do that—”

Nia let out a huff of laughter, wagging her head with frustration.

“No,” she said. “I want you to actually give a fuck about what’s going on in my life.”

That left me speechless. I had to pull the reins on my defensiveness, shocked that Nia could make such an accusation. To me? Her best friend? As if I didn’t ask her about her day every day? As if she hadn’t been responding with a halfhearted “fine” for the last week?

“What do you mean?” I said instead, clenching and unclenching my fists.

Sensing a challenge, Nia tossed her head.

“I mean, do you actually know what’s going on with me? Do you care? Because it feels like you don’t. I try to talk to you, but it all goes in one ear and out the other.” She bit her lip. “It’s like, these days, no one’s problems are as big as yours. Like what I do isn’t important.”

“That isn’t true,” I said beseechingly. I took a deep breath; I would have time to parse through her words for truth later. For now, all I wanted to do was to fix us. “Nia, I’m sorry if I’ve been up my own ass lately. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t care about your life. I do, promise.

“But I’m not going to lie. You haven’t been around much. You go off with Shae and Beck and . . . the others, and it’s clear that I’m not welcome to come too, even if I could.” I shrugged. “I just assumed that you wanted to keep us separate.”

And I understood that, I really did. Despite her vibrant demeanor, Nia was an introvert. With me always within spitting distance, she’d never really been motivated to find a group of queer friends, even while she craved a place in her community. And now, thanks to Shae and an improv class, she had a new crew of people who shared her experience. I missed her, but I could never begrudge her that, had actually encouraged it for a while. But I’d always felt confident that I would remain her number one. Hubris, I thought mournfully.

“You think I’m not around?” Nia said. “You’re not around. And I get that, I know that medical school is tough. But when was the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t about your school, and your problems? You just tack me on as an afterthought.”

“I . . . ,” I said. The cup noodles I’d had for dinner threatened to come back up. “I didn’t mean—”

I watched Nia’s eyes well with tears, and reflexively, mine followed suit. Her fingers twitched on her doorframe. Then she swallowed and steeled herself.

“I’m moving out.”

Whatever I had expected to come of this conversation . . . that had not been in it. I felt like someone had dunked my head underwater. I remembered us driving up to Chicago a month before graduating from college, scoping out apartments, tittering with excitement about finally having our own place in the Big City. The drama with our first landlord, who had downplayed the severity of his property’s mouse infestation. Breaking our lease right before my physiology exam. Moving out in the dead of the Chicago winter to our new home . . . All of it had just felt like another chapter in Nia and Angela’s Big Adventure. We had run through the empty rooms of our new apartment, pointing out where we would put paintings and dressers and TVs, rolling down the warped, sloped hardwood floors in our secondhand office chairs. The giddy excitement of knowing that I would be continuing my journey toward doctordom with my favorite person by my side had saturated that memory.

And now it felt like all that had been a charade.

“Moving . . . out?” I said, not understanding. “Wait. What? Why?”

“I just . . . ,” Nia said, her voice cracking. “I feel like this is something I have to do. Don’t worry about my rent—I’ll keep paying it until I find someone else to take over my lease.”