Say You Still Love Me(12)

We clink glasses and I revel in the first sip, savoring the meld of black currant and elderberry.

“So how are you really doing?”

She sighs. “I think this is really it, this time.” Her tone is missing its typical chirpiness.

“You’ve said that before.” In the five years since they started dating, Chad and Ashley have broken up a handful of times, twice while living together. It invariably unfolds the same way: Ashley has enough of Chad mocking her—her eclectic style; her oddly close relationship to Zelda, her psychic; the fact that she has a psychic; the “wasted” amount of time, effort, and money she puts into her fledgling event-planning business, a passion that he claims will never take off. He gets defensive when she calls him disrespectful and complains that he’s sick of supporting her financially, then they have a huge fight and break up. The separation usually lasts two or three months, until Chad comes crawling back, asking her to give him another chance.

And she takes him back. She always takes him back because her confidence in herself is sorely lacking.

Her button nose crinkles. “Yeah, but this time feels different. More final, you know?”

If only . . . I reach over to give her shoulder a squeeze. “You guys have been trying to make it work for five years now. Maybe there’s someone who you’d mesh with better?” Chad and Ashley are as opposite as you can get, and not in a good way. Ashley is all about organic foods, vegetarianism, and protecting nature, while Chad had a deer head—from a deer that he shot—stuffed and mounted above their bed. Ashley uses laundry baskets instead of dresser drawers to store her clothes, while Chad vacuums the vacuum cleaner. Ashley will spend hours on Pinterest, looking for ways to up-cycle a chipped teapot to avoid it going into a landfill; Chad is an engineer for an energy company—that Ashley has protested outside. Ashley spends a few hours every Thanksgiving working at a soup kitchen; Chad thinks the homeless are all lazy people looking for a handout.

Basically, Chad’s a dick and Ashley’s way too good for him. I don’t know how they ever ended up together in the first place, or how they’ve given each other five years of their lives.

I suck back a large gulp of wine before I say any of this out loud, though, because it’ll only make things awkward as hell when they reunite.

Ashley sighs with resignation. “Well, I guess the silver lining is that the three of us get to live together. Who knew that would finally happen, right?”

“Who knew . . .” I echo, tapping my wineglass against hers again. “And it only took thirteen years and a few jerks.” More like, who knew that the Camp Wawa trifecta of oddly suited girls would last beyond that summer in the first place. But it has, through out-of-state colleges and boyfriends, polar-opposite social circles, contrasting priorities, and, at times, an abrasive rubbing of personalities. Ashley and Christa have become my two most trusted and loyal friends. Sometimes I’m amazed by that, but then I think back to that summer, to the aftermath, and it doesn’t seem so crazy.

With a resigned sigh, Ashley holds out her hand and makes a soft, tongue-clucking sound. “Here . . . kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Elton pauses in his obsessive bathing ritual to glare at her.

“Why won’t he come to me?” Ashley complains. “Cats love me!”

“Not him. He hates everyone.” I savor another mouthful of wine. Christa was so desperate for a cat that when an elderly friend of her family was seeking a new home for Elton, her “loving and affectionate” blue point Siamese cat from “impeccable purebred lineage,” Christa didn’t think twice before adopting him and bringing him home to the condo she shared with her younger sister, Carrie.

And Ginger, Carrie’s Jack Russell.

It didn’t take long to learn that loving and affectionate are not the most accurate words to describe this animal and, after four months of vet bills to treat Ginger’s scourged face and the discovery that Carrie’s chronic sinus problems were in fact a cat allergy, Christa had to either give up Elton or find another place to live.

“He hates everyone?” Ashley asks with incredulity.

“Everyone. People, other animals. Even plants. Basically, anything that consumes or produces oxygen.”

“Plants, too?”

“Carrie stepped out to walk her dog and came home to every last houseplant uprooted and shredded.” She claims it was a premeditated massacre.

Ashley’s gaze flashes to the dozen or so potted aloe veras and succulents sitting in a box in the corner.

“Yeah, you’d better keep those in your room, with the door closed at all times.”

“So weird.” She eyes Elton, who’s gone back to licking his front paw. “Is he still doing that weird thing with his—”

“Yup.” Turns out Elton suffers from severe anxiety, which only surfaced after Christa adopted him. He spends half his day trying to outrun his tail and the other half attacking it.

“Too much inbreeding, I guess.”

“Too much of something,” I murmur, letting my head sink into the plush cushions as I stare up at the seventeen-foot white ceilings. My nostrils catch a faint odor. “What is that?” I inhale sharply. “It smells like . . . cigarettes?”

“Seriously?” Ashley presses her nose against the cushion again, and then groans. “I’ve shampooed and doused this thing with vinegar, like, five times. I thought I got it all out!”