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“I’m really going to miss you, girl,” said Monica.
Her eyes seemed to glaze over like she was fighting back tears, and I couldn’t tell if she was choking from eating the fries too fast or if she was just overcome with emotion. Either way, she stopped eating and licked her fingers.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” I sighed.
Monica and I had been close friends for about six years after we worked together at a call center. We both quit on the same day because we realized that that just wasn’t our calling. I went off and joined the military, and Monica went off to start bartending. Both of us were happy with our decision to leave.
“You ever think about going back to the Waverly Center?” I asked, jokingly, already knowing the answer.
“Hell, no,” she said, her words chilled with anger. “You?”
“Of course not,” I said, rolling my eyes. “When I walked out those doors, I knew that I would never look back. And plus, the army has kept me busy. I’m proud to wear my uniform, just like my father and brothers did.”
“Yeah, and Joshua,” she said, grinning sneakily.
“He’s single again,” I said, half to myself and half to Monica.
I almost couldn’t believe that he had broken up with yet another girl this year. What was this? Number six? I had lost count.
Joshua and I were best friends. We had grown up together, living right next door to each other for over twenty years. I still remembered the day that his family moved in. There was a spot at the living room window where I would sit in my little wooden chair and observe everything that happened in the neighborhood.
“They have a dog!” I called out loudly to my parents after I watched them struggle to bring Tandy, their half German Shepherd and half Labrador Retriever, into their house. It wasn’t until I turned back around and sat down that I saw the timid little boy hiding behind the tree — his long, untrimmed dark hair all but hiding his face. I remembered being curious about him but wanting to wait to see what happened with the other kids before talking to him.
As it happened, my brother, Greg, was the first one to talk to Joshua. Actually, he hit him with a baseball.
“Whatcha standing there for, huh?” asked Greg, flailing his arms wildly in the air. “Throw it back!”
And just like that, Joshua became a part of our squad. He was two years older than me, but we went to the same school, so we would walk to school together and talk every day. As the years went by, we became best friends. I could tell him anything, and the same went for him. As we got older, we stayed really close.
“Why haven’t you guys ever hooked up?” asked Monica, pulling me back to the diner.
I blinked a few times before taking a sip of my soda, eyeing her closely to see what she knew. When I realized that she didn’t know anything, I simply shrugged.
“Joshua and I are just friends,” I mumbled, hoping that she would accept my answer and leave it alone.
“Well, you know what they say,” said Monica, winking at me across the table. “The best relationships are between people who are best friends.”
I laughed and told her that she was crazy then fell silent, thinking back to a night a few weeks ago.
Joshua had just been dumped by his girlfriend, Christa. He really liked her, so he was hurt that she broke up with him. So hurt, in fact, that he went out to the bar and got really drunk. I got a call from the bar’s owner, Charlie, at about one in the morning, asking me if I could come to pick Josh up.
When I got to the bar, Joshua was stumbling all over the place, laughing and talking loudly to everyone.
“Hey, Nadia!” he slurred, stumbling towards me.
His dark brown hair was a wet mop on his head, and he reeked of whiskey and beer. I knew that he had been drinking for a while because he had sent me a text at about 9 p.m. inviting me to join him. I pretended to ignore it because I was almost sure that I knew what would happen. And I was right.
A guy at the bar helped me toss Joshua in the back seat of my car. It was about a twenty-minute drive to our houses, and Joshua sang loud rock ballads the whole way, craning his neck so that his head hung out the window. I chuckled to myself while I drove, shaking my head.
Once we got to his house, I helped him inside. There was nobody home. His family had gone to visit his father’s mother in New Jersey because she was sick. Joshua didn’t go because he had planned on taking Christa out for dinner and proposing to her. Instead of accepting the proposal, she broke up with him, saying that he just “wasn’t her type”.
