“Me either, to be honest,” I reply with a shrug.
“How have you been, Ellie Bellie? Like,reallybeen?”
I stare into my mug, contemplating the lies I’ve been telling myself for years–Everything is fine, work is great, I’m really happy in Boston, I don’t have time to date, and no, I’m not lonely.For once, I decide on the truth.
“It’s been kinda bad lately, Abs,” I admit in a quiet voice. “I’m not doing…well.”
She reaches across the table, squeezing my hand.
“Tell me what’s going on, my love.”
“I just…haven’t felt like myself in a long time. Most of the time it’s not so bad, but some weeks it feels like I’m going through the motions in a daze, like everything is simply happeningtome and I’m not an active participant. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching my own life from the sidelines.”
“Are you still seeing Dr. Kelsi? Are the meds helping?”
Kelsi, my therapist, who isnota doctor by the way, decided about a year ago that I would benefit from an antidepressant in tandem with our weekly sessions. Best decision I’ve ever made. Maybe the only good one, actually.
“Yes and yes. It’s been so much better than it was before, but sometimes the lows get excruciatingly low again, and I just sort of have to ride it out,” I explain, drumming my fingers absentmindedly against the side of my mug. “But it gets easier every time.”
“I am so proud of you,” she says, voice shaky, eyes watering. “You’re the bravest, strongest, prettiest girl I know.”
I reach up to stroke her cheek, wiping away the errant tear that broke through. “Well, thank God I’m still pretty,”I say with a chuckle. “Who knows where I’d be without my devastatingly good looks.”
“You’d still be running circles around those jackasses at your firm,” she grumbles. “I mean what do they even do around there? It feels like you’re nevernotat the office these days.”
She looks up, her face guilt-ridden.
“I shouldn’t have made you come back,” she says, her voice wobbling again. “I should have told them we can do this without you.”
“I’m glad I’m here, Abby,” I say emphatically. “It’s going to be good for me, I can’t hide from it forever. I made my bed, it’s time for me to lie in it.” When she opens her mouth again, I cut her off. “C’mon, let’s get ready. We have a party to plan.”
“God, it’s going to be so weird to see everyone,” she says, grabbing both of our mugs and setting them in the kitchen sink. “Obviously I run into some of them around town, but being all together again in the school cafeteria?” She shudders. “It’s going to feel like we’re fifteen again.”
“What a nightmare,” I tease, heading to my room to change. Our first reunion committee meeting is today, and despite the nausea climbing its way up my throat, I’m determined to make the best of it.
This will be fun. It’s one party, and then I can leave again. There’s no reason to panic.
Like hell there’s not.
***
Wind whipping through my hair, I take in the familiar town around me as I sit in the passenger seat of Abby’s car, windows rolled down and breathing in the crisp autumn air. Flashbacks of driving these streets in a different passenger seat, with a different person behind the wheel, knock the wind out of me like someone punched me in the stomach.
“You want to remind me how I got roped into this?” I yell over the sound of the air rushing past us.
“That’s what you get for becoming an East coast hot-shot,” Abby yells back. “People here don’t know the difference between ‘project manager’ and ‘party planner’.”
“This is stupid, I’ve never planned a party in my life,” I counter. “You told them that right?”
“Well I would have, but that would be a damn lie,” she says, a wide grin spreading across her face. “Everyone knows you planned the best weddingthis town has ever seen.”
Nowthoseare some memories I could re-live over and over. When Abby and Aaron got engaged, I threw myself into their wedding the way I do with any project–meticulously, wholeheartedly, obsessively, like my life depended on it. I mean really, planning a wedding couldn’t bethatmuch different than architectural project management, right?
News flash–it is, in fact, wildly different. But that didn’t stop the entire town showing up, invited or not, and not to toot my own horn, but itwasthe best wedding Larkspur has ever seen.
“That still doesn’t mean I’m the right person for this,” I argue, but only halfheartedly. I know deep down that out of all our former classmates, I’m absolutely the right person for this. Determination to manage something flawlessly quickly overrides the painful reminiscing from a few moments ago.
“Shut your mouth,” she says, whipping into a parking spot at the front of the school. “You’re going to kill it, and everyone is going to worship the ground you walk on.”
