On Rotation(68)
I could see it, then. I’d walked into this room with my shoulders tensed with worry, but Nia seemed light as a feather. This was not a Nia mired in regret, this was one who finally felt free. It was the same look I’d seen on her face when she watched Shae walk toward her at the improv show, the look that had made me put aside my grievances with Ricky.
“That’s incredible, Nia,” I said. “I’m really happy for you.”
I meant it. I was so happy for her. For so long, Nia had seemed a bit lost. She’d graduated college with dual degrees in communications and education but no real plan. For the first three months after graduation, she contemplated applying to culinary school, but couldn’t afford to take on any more student loans. After that, she worked at the front desk at an orthodontist’s office, but the pay was abysmal and her boss was a creep, and she came home from work every day a deflated version of herself until I begged her to quit. Then, at a medical school party, one of my classmates mentioned a gig tutoring some rich high school kids in the south suburbs. The pay was twice what she had been getting at the office, the hours significantly better. Nia leapt at the opportunity but swore that it was temporary. Until I open my catering business, she would say, or Until I get a real teaching job. But until never happened, and over time, we simply stopped discussing whether it would.
Nia’s smile wavered on her face.
“Angie,” she said. “I’m sorry. I said all of that stuff, about you treating me like I didn’t matter to you, because . . .” She swallowed, grabbing one of the throw pillows and squeezing it against her chest. “Honestly, the truth was that I was treating myself that way.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You weren’t totally off. It’s okay. I know I was being self-absorbed—”
“Stop,” Nia said, interrupting me. “I’m going first, Ange.” When my smile faltered, she reached over and flicked my cheek. “Look, I’m not an idiot. I know that you and Michelle are going through the ringer this year. And it wasn’t right of me to make you feel bad about telling me about your experiences. Or to quiz you about people you’ve never met to prove a point.” She squeezed the pillow tight. “I still think about what you told me, about the kid in the trauma bay. And how messed up that was. The fact that you two are able to get up and go back to the hospital after seeing something like that is wild to me. And . . . I think it made me feel like my problems were small in comparison. Like, what does my quarter-life crisis matter when you’re out there watching people die?”
“It’s not the same,” I said. “Your problems are different, Nia. Not less.”
“I know that,” Nia said. “And I know that if I’d said something, you would’ve told me as much.” She gave me a small smile. “I think, because you aren’t around as much, it was easy to fix a narrative on you. I felt stuck, and instead of figuring it out, I painted you in my head as selfish.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Which is wild, because you’ve never been selfish. A bit melodramatic, maybe,” she allowed, giggling when I gaped at her in faux outrage, “but not selfish. I created another version of you that sucked, and I got mad at it instead of just getting my shit together.”
“But you did get your shit together,” I said. “This is how it started, right? You’ve always loved baking. You’ve always loved talking to people. And now you’ll get to do both! And you’re so freaking talented that you practically got scouted for a job.” I looked down at my hands; she’d gotten the job before our fight. Was the set of papers she’d been grading at our dining table on the day she told me she was moving out her last? How many times had she wanted to tell me about the big moves she was making in her life, only for me to interrupt her to talk about the wards or the boy instead?
“Is it my turn now?” I asked. When Nia nodded, I pressed on. “I’m sorry too. I completely neglected you. You shouldn’t have to ask for me to see you. I should have done that on my own.” I curled my fingers together. “I’m proud of you. But that’s not enough, right? I should have been present for you, and I wasn’t. And so I’ll try to do that, yeah? Just . . . please don’t shut me out again.”
The smile that Nia gave me was sheepish; her eyes turned down to her lap, pillow clutched to her stomach like a shield. It was so different from the Nia she usually presented to the world. When I first met Nia, I’d been struck by her confidence. She had found me sitting alone in our middle school cafeteria and slammed her tray next to mine.
“Hey, nerd,” she’d said, as though we’d been friends for years. “Nice Inuyasha keychain.”
With time, I’d come to recognize her confidence for what it was: a front. But it was a solid one, a brave face she could slip on as easily as a favorite shirt. She wore it most of the time, even for me. I was so used to it that I could easily forget that underneath it, Nia was just as afraid of the world as I was. Maybe that’s why we needed each other so desperately.
Right now, Nia had stripped that front away, but I knew it would be back. It always came back. It was my job, as her best friend, to see through it. And, over the last few months, I had failed at that job. I’d known that Nia was struggling to define her direction in life, but I’d sidelined that, reassured by her jokes and easy smiles that she was okay. I would have to do better in the future.