We Were Never Here(10)
The breakup with Ben: a knife in my psyche’s tenderest flesh. Banished to Kristen’s apartment, discombobulated and glum. At the time, my friend Angie, a plucky redheaded linguistics major I’d met in chess club, had shared the burden of nursing my broken heart, stepping in with ice cream and sympathy when I needed a break from Kristen’s screw-him MO. When, a few weeks after the split, Angie suggested it would be nice to go home for Christmas and have my mom “dote on me,” I burst out laughing.
“When I told her we broke up, all my mom said was ‘Huh, I was just starting to like Ben.’?”
Angie’s jaw dropped. “She didn’t, like, ask what happened?”
“Why would she?” My folks, who’d divorced when I was a teenager, had met the physical requirements of Acceptable Child Rearing to a T and, come college, seemed relieved they no longer had to attend to my comings and goings.
Angie considered. “Well, I don’t know what she’s talking about—we all hated him.”
I stared at her for a moment. Angie’s verdict—something I’d known for weeks—still burned, the secret everyone at school had been keeping from me practically since freshman orientation. Everyone but Kristen.
At home the next week, my scalp prickled with wonder as neither my mom nor my stepdad mentioned Ben on day one, day two, day three. The topic of my long-term boyfriend grew shy and conspicuously quiet in my mind, like an empty cemetery. Kristen and I spent the next two Christmases on our own in warm places: Fort Lauderdale, then Puerto Rico. The trips were Kristen’s brilliant idea, sun-splashed jaunts that cemented her spot on my personal family tree, the one that matters: the Family You Choose. Your folks don’t give a crap about your feelings, she’d pointed out. Why do you owe them your time?
Kristen selected a Chilean lager and sent the server on his way. She folded her hands. “Think about it, Emily. You said yourself that all your friends there are married and having kids.”
But I want that. Tears pricked at my eyes, several strands of frustration fusing into one: annoyance with myself for pathetically wanting a boyfriend; shame that I couldn’t be all carefree like Kristen, couldn’t drop it all for six months of wanderlust.
“Oh my God, don’t cry!” Kristen’s hand flew down to mine, threaded through my fingers. “I’m sorry—I’m saying this all wrong. I just mean…so many people would kill to have your freedom. All our college friends are lugging around diaper bags and burp cloths now, right?” We both chuckled. “I just thought…hey, we’re turning thirty. Isn’t now the perfect time to try something new? And I got excited thinking what our lives could be like on the road. Like it used to be, only better, because we’re grown-ass women now.” She sat up straighter, still clutching my hand. “You know I love our trips. But seeing you once, maybe twice a year isn’t enough. I miss you like crazy.” She looked down at the placemat. “And…and last year, when you were having a tough time, I felt awful that I couldn’t be there for you in person. You’re the most important person to me, you know?”
This time last year. My stomach flipped, picturing last spring, post-Cambodia: how I’d floated through work in a stupor…on the days I managed to make it in. How I swung between deep, spastic sobs and wild, thrashing panic, a single thought like a subtitle: I’m going to die.
“It’s not just that, though,” she went on. “I miss watching Netflix on the bed when we’re too lazy to go out. I miss discussing a single topic over the course of days or weeks and not, like, mentally organizing a life update with bullet points for one of our three-hour calls. I dunno. Just me?”
I shook my head and laughed. “Yeah, no, me too. It’s just—it never crossed my mind. It’s not something I ever imagined doing.” I sat back, took a sip of wine. “Kristen Czarnecki. You crazy bitch.”
She laughed. She had the nicest laugh—full and musical. “We can totally do this. Why not? Other people do it all the time. Hell, we meet them on our trips, and I’m always jealous. We could be the people everyone else is jealous of!”
She stared at me then, smile broad, her eyes pleading—the same look she gave me whenever she was trying to convince me to go on an adventure with her. Climb into this abandoned cave with me; follow these strangers to a speakeasy in another neighborhood. Her cajoling always paid off, always led to the most magical and memorable pieces of a trip, so I never regretted following her fearless lead.
Look how things had turned out the one time I’d tried spontaneity on for size.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I wouldn’t think of that now. I met Kristen’s gaze over our empty plates, bits of avocado and quinoa speckling the surfaces. All that was behind us. This week—this proposition, which flipped and frothed inside me—proved it.
“Please tell me you’ll consider it,” she said.
“I’ll think about it.” She squealed and clapped and I felt myself blush. Okay, another delay in telling her about Aaron—I wasn’t going to ruin the moment now. I’d see how I felt in the morning.
Back at our inn, we followed a twisty stone staircase to a plateau, where an oval pool winked up at the sky. We lolled on its lounge chairs, batting leaking from their seams, and counted shooting stars. I saw five; Kristen, six.