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“He’s got another semester and a half before he goes to high school, too,” I continue, ignoring her. “Like, there’s nothing I can do. Does middle school just suck this bad for everybody?”
“Yes?” She shrugs, pushing her frizzy hair back behind her ears.
I imagine middle school was probably pretty tough for a mixed-race lesbian badass, come to think of it.
“I don’t think that makes me feel any better.”
“Yeah, me neither,” she admits. “But these things tend to escalate. Kids are intense. If you have a way of getting him into another school, he could get a fresh start. A do-over. Maybe somebody else could pay his tuition…”
I glare at her over the rim of my glass. She flinches and sucks her teeth.
“Is your pride really that important?” she continues brazenly.
“This is not about my pride!” I hiss, leaning toward her so Ethan can’t hear us. “That door is closed. Wanda, I’m serious. That door has never even been opened! This is a two-person operation here. You know that.”
She shrugs and splashes more wine into her glass.
“I’m just glad I could help is all,” she sniffs.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” I sighed heavily. “I guess it is more of a three-person operation sometimes. Truly you are the best l
esbian friend I have ever had the pleasure of never pleasuring.”
“Practically a co-parent,” she mutters sullenly.
“Yes, practically,” I say as a joke, though part of me thinks it’s kind of true.
I watch her watching Ethan as she sips her wine and thinks. She really is a great friend. We met at work, when she had the project manager job I wanted. She leads the construction teams, mostly by doing a majority of the work herself. She helped me rehab this little two-bedroom house when I barely had two nickels to rub together. How to swing a hammer and everything. Did I mention she is a badass?
“Well… I guess you better get cracking, right?” she finally sighs.
“Nah,” I shake my head. “I’m not going.”
She flinches back in exaggerated surprise and reaches out to pluck the wine glass from my fingers. “Oh, you’re definitely going,” she barks back at me. “You are definitely going. You’re all packed and everything.”
I shake my head and glance at Ethan, who is currently virtually kicking the snot out of some kind of hyper-masculine ninja thing.
“I just don’t think this is the right time…”
“The right time?” she echoes incredulously. “When is the right time for a fifteen-year reunion, Penny? In five years it’ll be a twenty-year reunion! This is the only time. Go get your shit.”
“No… reunions are for high schools. This is weird. I don’t want to go.”
“Hold on,” Wanda huffs. “Is this about that guy? Clay?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with him,” I object.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, yeah, sure. Nothing to do with the man of your dreams, who will almost certainly be there?”
“I never said he was the man of my dreams,” I object, realizing that I might have actually said that several times. “I mean… He’s a man. I used to have dreams. That’s that.”
She purses her lips seriously and nods, wiping at a spot with a corner of paper towel.
“So this doesn’t have anything to do with some pact that you guys made, where you would resume your fairytale love affair if life turned out to be a big hairy disappointment?”
“No. Nope.”
“Even though it is, like, exactly fifteen years,” she continues, bouncing her finger in the air like a conductor keeping time. “And life is, to put it mildly, underperforming?”
