You Love Me(You #3)(38)

You’re not Nancy, Mary Kay. You’re not happily married. But you’re not texting me to meet up for a drink and that’s the problem. I cross the street and head for the T & C and Melanda’s phone buzzes. It’s you again—shocker—and you want to know what she’ll wear for the big job interview. This is sadly normal for you two. She sends you her date outfits and you weigh in—I like the red—and she argues with you until you eventually give up—What matters most is how you feel in it. Gotta run. Phil’s home and as we know this is a miracle—but right now you’re in the salon, you’re bored, and you badger Melanda a second time.

Need pictures! Let me live vicariously through you.

There are so many problems with this statement, Mary Kay. Melanda can’t send you a selfie. She’s wearing the T-shirt she had on when she attacked me—A GIRL IS A GUN—and you are too young to feel like the only living you have left to do is vicarious. I turn the screw.

lol that is so sad. No offense but I feel like the Joe stuff is making you crazy.

You deflect and say that you might get bangs today—just fully become my mother—and that’s a cry for help but Melanda is a bad friend. I read enough to know what she would say so I lie to your face: Do it. You can rock bangs! You have the face for them and you are NOT your mother. Send me pic if you do gotta run so busy before flight lol

You give a smiley face. Send pics! I’m here! Excited for you, M!

You’re acting out. Cutting your hair instead of coming clean with me just because your best friend is about to get on a plane. You text again.

Pics please!

Melanda has 24,985 pics in her phone, most of them pictures of her, standing in front of a full-length mirror. I choose a recent selfie and send it to you with the shrugging brunette girl emoji—her favorite—and you are typing. A lot. This isn’t a fucking essay contest. It’s a yes or no question and then here you are.

Wait I thought you returned that blue dress last week? When we were in Seattle?

My heart alarm goes off and no. NO. This would be easier if there weren’t ten thousand texts between you two and so many fucking pictures of so many fucking outfits and I close my eyes. WWMD.

Ugh long story but more like get me off this rock no offense lol just excited to go

That was cruel, maybe too cruel and you’re silent. I send another photo of Melanda in mustard pants and a green sweater—was she trying to be vomit for Halloween?—and once again: nothing. I studied your conversations and this isn’t how it goes. Radio silence is bad and it makes me nervous for me, for you. Are you telling the stylist about what just happened? Did I fuck up?

I type for Melanda: You there? Sweetie I’m sorry just frazzled lol you ok?

More silence. You’re in the salon, in the chair, exactly 1,058 feet away from me. You have nothing to do but write back to your friend and are you suspicious? Do you have a sixth sense? Did you run out of the salon? Are you pounding on Melanda’s front door? So help me God if a selfie that isn’t even mine brings me down and I can’t take this silence from you. I need to know that you’re not on a paranoid mission to find your friend. I need to know that you’re not at the police station, where they’re not used to this kinda thing and I have to find you because it’s not like you to drop off. I walk toward Firefly and I loiter by the gazebo—I miss lingering with you—and then the door to the salon opens.

It’s you. And you didn’t get bangs.

You wave at me and I wave at you and I’m holding Melanda’s phone but you don’t know that. Thank God I took off the FEMALE FIRST case—Smart Joe!—and you put your hands in your pockets and you’re heading my way and you’re Closer every second and now you’re here. You touch your hair. “It’s a little much, right?”

“Well, Mary Kay, you did just step out of a salon.”

You laugh and I’m safe. We’re safe. You don’t suspect anything—I can tell because if you did, you’d be holding your phone as if it contains evidence—and you don’t think it’s weird that I’m here because this is Cedar Fucking Cove. We live here. “Well,” you say. “It’s good to see you, but I should probably get home…”

Liar. You just told Melanda you want to drink. “Oh come on. How about a drink?” I took a blow to my ribs for you and I hold your eyes. “Hitchcock?”

You nod. “Hitchcock.”

Your hair bounces when you walk—we are in motion—and I tell you I need a haircut and you say that Firefly takes walkins and I open the door for you and you thank me and we sit up front by the window. You bring your hands together.

“Okay,” you say. “I feel bad that things have been so weird.”

I take a sip of my water. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mary Kay. I get it.”

You pick up the menu and act like I meant what I said and you don’t know if you want wine or coffee and this is new for us. This is a first for us. You’re ordering a glass of Chablis—last time we drank the hard stuff—and pulling your turtleneck over your chin. You just said you felt bad that things were weird but look at you now, such deliberately tiny sips as you run your hands through your hair, as if I’m blind, as if you’re hungry for a compliment, as if I’m in a position to tell you that you look good.