Anight out. Fun. What was that like? It had been so long since I’d done anything recreational, I almost didn’t know what to expect.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to get ready for something that wasn’t work. I stood in the small staff bathroom at the back of the Stop & Go, mascara in hand, and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment longer than strictly necessary. The fluorescent light wasn’t doing me any favors, but even so—the dark circles were fading. My shoulders weren’t up around my ears for once. I looked, if not exactly like myself, then like someone who was getting there slowly. I put the mascara on, slicked on some fresh lip gloss, and decided that was enough. It was going to have to be enough. Tonight wasn’t about being fixed. It was just about being somewhere loud and warm withtwo people who didn’t need me to explain anything, and letting that be sufficient for one evening.
Harper was already there when I pushed out the back door into the cool evening air, leaning against Elizabeth’s hatchback with her arms folded. Elizabeth stood beside her, keys in hand, wearing the boots she’d been threatening to debut somewhere that wasn’t the Stop & Go for the better part of a month.
“Finally,” Elizabeth said.
“I was two minutes late.”
“In going-out time, that’s basically abandonment.” She unlocked the car. “Get in.”
Elizabeth’s aunts had taken over the store without ceremony, waving me out the door with smiles and well-wishes. The store was in good hands. I had no excuse, which was probably why Harper and Elizabeth had arranged it this way. I slung my bag into the backseat and climbed in after it.
The parking lot was quiet at this hour, the last of the evening commuters long gone, just a handful of cars sitting under the amber glow of the parking lights. I was pulling my seatbelt across when I noticed it. Far corner, near the pumps, engine off, angled just enough that the driver’s side caught the light from the street. Faded silver sedan. The shape behind the wheel wasn’t on their phone, wasn’t moving, just sitting there. But it made the back of my neck prickle. I looked at it a second longer than I meant to.
“You’re quiet. Everything all right?” Harper asked from the front seat, half turned toward me.
“Yeah.” I pulled my seatbelt across. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Elizabeth pulled out of the lot, and I watched the sedan in the side mirror until we turned onto the road and it disappeared from view. I told myself it was nothing. Someone waiting for a friend, killing time, sitting with the radio off. It could have been anything. I almost believed it.
The Twilight Tavern sat at the edge of Honeybrook Hollow, the next town over, tucked across from a hardware store and a place that sold antiques and appeared to be permanently on the verge of closing but never quite did. The Tavern itself was small and warm and loud in the best possible way, with string lights threaded along the ceiling and a band setting up in the corner that looked like they were going to be either very good or very chaotic, with no middle ground. We found a table near the back, and Elizabeth flagged down a server before we’d fully sat down. “First round’s mine,” she said, in a tone that invited no debate.
The drinks arrived. Harper lifted her glass. “To Becca,” she said, “who deserves one good night.”
“That’s a low bar,” I said.
“To Becca,” Elizabeth agreed, “who deserves one good night and is getting it whether she likes it or not.”
I laughed despite myself and clinked my glass against theirs. “Fine. To one good night, and maybe some nachos.”
“To nachos,” they chimed in, and we laughed.
The band turned out to be very good. That helped.
The conversation found its own current after our drinks arrived, drifting and loose and easy in a way that felt unfamiliar at first, like a muscle I hadn’t used in a while. Harper told a story about Bella’s most recent school project, and Elizabeth cried with laughter, both hands pressed to her face. I told them about Elizabeth’s coffee intervention, and Elizabeth defended herself with great conviction while laughing at the same time.
“I stand by it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You needed the coffee. You need the coffee every day. You are a person who requires industrial quantities of coffee to function, and I will not apologize for enabling that.”
“You made me drink four cups.”
“You’re welcome.”
Harper leaned her chin on her hand, smiling at both of us with the warm, settled expression of someone exactly where she wanted to be. “Okay,” she said. “Seriously. How are you actually doing? I feel like we barely ever talk anymore.”
“I’m actually doing okay,” I said, and surprised myself by meaning it. “Better than I was. Something feels different lately. Like I’m starting to get my footing back.”
Harper studied me for a moment, her head tilted slightly, the way she did when she was deciding whether to push further or let something breathe. Whatever she found in my face seemed to satisfy her. “You seem different,” she said quietly. “Good different. Like you’re actually here instead of just going through the motions.”
“I feel more present,” I admitted. “I don’t know how else to put it. For a while, everything felt like I was just managing. Getting through the day. And lately it’s started to feel less like that.”
Elizabeth pointed at me with her glass. “That’s called turning a corner.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. I work with you every day. I noticed.” She said it simply, without fanfare, and somehow that landed more than if she’d made a fuss of it.
Harper’s expression softened. “Is any of this to do with Levi?”
