“You don’t get to talk.” He put his hand on his hip. “I have asked you repeatedly to be there for me for this. You”—he pointed a red-nailed hand at me—“repeatedly stood me up. No—” His finger stabbed in my direction as I felt a protest forming on my lips. “You’re the one listening now. I’m always there if you need me. I’m there if you’re having a bad time with your mom. I enable your denial about your love life. But I’m no longer interested in being your friend if you can’t be mine.”
His eyes were red-rimmed. My throat constricted.
“I need someone to root for me. Hell, I’m not asking you to answer all my calls, but maybe I don’t know, 45% of them?”
“If you just let me explain, Otis, this was an emergency?—”
“Why?” He whipped his hand around. “Was there a house on fire? Did you have to rescue a kitten? Did you appear on an episode of ‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant’?”
“It’s John. He is?—”
“NO,” he shook his head. “No. You don’t get to talk about your love life anymore. You don’t get to ask me to cover your shifts or use me as an Uber driver. I need someone who stands by my side.”
I shuffled on my feet. “I majorly fucked up.”
“Amen.”
“Tell me, how can I make it up to you? How do I fix this?”
He pressed his lips together, tilting his head toward the ceiling. I knew that face. It was his break-up face. It was just never directed at me before. He crossed his long legs as he leaned against the makeup table, picking stray glitter from his lashes. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I will take your shifts for the next month,” I said. I may as well.
His brow rose, but there wasn’t any fight left in him. “I quit.”
My stomach sank. “Why?”
“Because you can barely pay me. We both know that.”
It was time to study my feet again. I had to fix this, but I just didn’t know how.
“I don’t know if I can do this without you,” I said.
“What?”
I waved my hands. “Life.” I looked up at him. Now he was crying. He brushed a hand over his cheek, making a mess of his eyeliner.
I pressed my knuckles into my eyes. “It’s so fucking complicated. The whole thing with Mom and...with John. It’s a fucking mess.”
“Figure out what you want, Nora.” He straightened, brushing past me. One hand on the doorframe, he looked back, finding my pale face in the mirror. “I love you. I truly do. But I love myself more.”
Then he closed the door, and I was left alone with the devastated version of myself staring back at me and the half-naked lady now smoking a cigarette.
“Seems like you majorly fucked up,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Today’s yoga pose is Downward Spiral.
My life fits neatly into cardboard boxes.
John and I were never real.
My phone had died by morning. I had the vague sense it was around eight—not because I felt rested, but because my eyes had refused to shut. I’d stared at my teenage room’s dark ceiling, counting the minutes, rolling the numbers down one by one. If I focused on that, on time passing, I wouldn’t have to notice the burning pressure that built behind my ribs or how my head felt like the wreckage after a hurricane—bruised and in pain.
There was nowhere I had to be. Nothing I had to do. I wondered if this was what Mom felt when she got up. A sort of sad emptiness where life should be.
My heart had gone into shock when I pulled up to my flat. I was in a catatonic state as I stuffed my things into boxes, my now-former landlord helping me load them into the trunk of the Uber.
