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“What do you mean?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“I just…I graduated and I’m supposed to be finding jobs somewhere amazing, but I’m crawling back to my parent’s house,” she said.
It didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t you get a job in Arizona?” I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder and wiped her face. “I don’t know. I liked it there, but I was just so lonely. I tried to make friends, but then I’d cancel on hanging out with them and eventually they stopped inviting me. Plus, I was focused so much on school, I put that first. I guess I just wanted to be somewhere familiar again. Somewhere easy,” she said.
Now that made sense, but I had the feeling there was a little bit more to it.
Natalie inhaled through her nose. “I was seeing someone and it ended. Everywhere I looked, it reminded me of her,” she said.
“Her?” I asked. I hadn’t known that. As far as I knew, Natalie exclusively dated guys. She’d dated the class president and baseball captain all four years of high school, and shocked everyone when she decided to go to college in Arizona. We’d all thought that she was going to go to college in Maine with him, or at least stay in Maine.
“Yeah. Does that surprise you?” she asked. I didn’t know how I felt knowing that Natalie had dated a girl.
“Maybe?” I said.
“A lot has happened in four years, Em,” she said.
Well, that was the truth. I hadn’t officially come out until after high school ended, so she’d already been at college.
“You’re right,” I said, sipping my wine. I’d been savoring it, but I was almost done and I really wanted another glass.
“Do you want something? I’m going to call for another glass,” I said.
“Sure, I’ll have one too,” she said, and I put in the order.
“Has anything changed for you since I left?” she asked.
“Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want me to confirm something you already know?” I asked.
She made a frustrated sound.
“Can we just have a normal conversation?” she said.
“I don’t know, can you go back in time and change everything you did to me?”
Silence fell between us.
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, standing up. “Everything that happened is your fault. You were the one who stopped being friends with me. Or do you not remember that?”
Was I losing my mind? How was she trying to turn this around on me?
“Let’s not talk about this,” she said, turning back to the TV, which had been muted for a while. She turned the volume up. I guess we were done talking.
The wine arrived, but I didn’t really feel like drinking it anymore. I still did, because I wasn’t going to waste it, but the mood had changed. She’d ruined it.
Natalie didn’t say anything to me for the rest of the night and that was fine. I was tired as hell anyway. I went to sleep without saying anything to her.
Only five more days.
