Three minutes later, I’d successfully scanned the QR code on the parking sign I’d missed and navigated the app to avoid getting a ticket from local law enforcement.
I was walking the half block back to Apollo’s on the sidewalk when someone stepped out of a nearby business, directly into my path. I pulled up short as did the woman who’d exited.
She was wearing all black, from her flowy tee shirt to her sneakered feet. The familiar head of curly blond hair whipped around at the abrupt sound that left my lips.
“Lo,” I sort of squeaked.
A heavy beat of silence passed while we looked at each other.
“Candy, hey,” my former best friend eventually said, and for the first time in our long and disjointed history, I couldn’t read her expression. “I heard you were back.”
I had the urge to lunge forward and wrap my arms around her. To tell her I’d missed her and it was so good to see her face.
I’d kept up with her on social media, but her posts were rare and impersonal—a random share for a local business or a funny meme. She hardly ever posted pictures of herself or her family.
It was also through social media that I learned Lo and Joey McClain had married two years after high school graduation. I hadn’t been invited, but Lauren and Joey had been tagged in other people’s photos. I remembered seeing those pictures on my way back from class and sitting down in the stairwell of my dorm, scrolling in disbelief.
Lo had worn a short white dress with spaghetti straps while Joey dressed in church attire—khakis and a white button-up with a striped tie. They’d looked like kids, and I couldn’t believe she’d married someone without telling me. Hersisters had been her bridesmaids, and I could still recall the way that had stabbed at my heart. I hadn’t been there. She hadn’t asked me.
When we’d had our epic, last-blast road trip, we’d ended up in New York at the end of the summer, two weeks before the beginning of my first semester at Columbia. I’d been so excited for school to start, and maybe I hadn’t hidden that well enough.
Lo was destined for the community college twenty minutes from Kirby Falls. She was planning on living at home and saving money. Education had never been high on her priority list. Our dreams had ultimately been very different.
The plan had been for Lo to stay with me and help me move into my dorm room. My parents were driving up with a boatload of stuff, but not for another week or so. I’d wanted that time to settle into my new life, but also to find a way to say goodbye to my old one—to say goodbye to Lo.
In the end, she’d saved me the trouble.
There hadn’t been a fun move-in montage with trips to Target for bedding and posters. I never even got the chance to pretend Lo was my roommate until the real one showed up. As soon as we’d rolled into the city, my friend parked in front of my building and told me goodbye.
“We should just call it,” she’d said. We’d had a great summer—a last hoorah. I was her best friend, but our lives were going in different directions. There was no sense in trying to keep in touch. Lo had called itpointless. Said we’d grow apart no matter what. School breaks wouldn’t be enough, and it wouldn’t be the same, so we should just stop while we were ahead.
Initially, I’d been too stunned to question it, but then I’d found my voice—gotten angry and started crying. Lauren had been stoic and sure in the driver’s seat, her mind made up without any input from me.
She’d treated me like a high school boyfriend—someone not worth the time or energy of trying long distance with. But I hadn’t beenjustsome boy she was dating—those came and went. We’d had a decade and a half of friendship. You didn’t throw that away—or at least, that was what I’d thought.
I still remembered standing on a cement sidewalk with a backpack on and a suitcase at my feet, watching my best friend in the world drive away. The soundtrackto my arrival on campus had been the sound of an engine and my own angry tears.
I’d heard later from my mom that Lo dropped out of college and got a job doing hair.
Belatedly, I realized the building my former friend had rushed out of was the Hairport, a beauty shop in downtown Kirby Falls. Of course. That made sense.
Instead of reaching for her, I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s good to see you. How have you been?”
“Good,” Lo replied shortly.
I lifted my chin toward the building behind her. “You’re at the Hairport?”
She nodded stiffly. “I do the best color in two counties.”
I could feel my throat closing up at how painfully impersonal this was. Like I hadn’t borrowed clothes from this person. Watched her smoke a cigarette when we were fifteen and then held her hair while she puked for half the night. As if she hadn’t come to my house for dinner at least once a week our entire childhood. Like I was just some stranger asking intrusive questions that any resident in two counties already knew the answers to.
Forcing a smile, I managed, “Well, you were always really good at doing hair.”
She’d braided and twisted my own into an elaborate style before the homecoming dance our senior year. Something she’d seen in a magazine and was able to recreate flawlessly.
Lauren’s black sneakers shifted impatiently on the pavement.
In a rush of fear that she’d be gone again from my life just as suddenly as she had reappeared, I blurted out recklessly, with no thought of self-preservation, “Would you want to get coffee sometime and catch up? I—I—I can see that you’re in a rush, on your way somewhere. But maybe when you have time, we could get together.”
