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“You can play with my hair anytime you want, Em.”
“Okay,” I said. My voice seemed too loud in the room.
I just kept staring at her face. This face that I knew better than my own. This face that I’d watched grow and change and turn into the woman she was now. The only addition was the little silver hoop pierced through one nostril. I wondered when she’d gotten that done. Had she cried? Had she been brave? What had she been doing in Arizona when I’d been in Maine?
As angry as I’d been at her, most of the pain had been not having her in my life. I needed her in my life. Things didn’t make sense when she wasn’t around.
“I missed you so much,” I said. She closed her eyes and I wondered if she was going to cry.
“I missed you too. I thought about you every day. I thought about contacting you so many times, but I made a rule for myself that I would wait for you to make the first move. So I didn’t do anything. Fate threw you in my path anyway.”
“Was it fate?” I asked. “I’m not sure I believe in that kind of thing.”
“It was something,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. We’d been leaning into each other without thinking. As if we were naturally drawn together.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t want this trip to end,” she said, closing her eyes.
“I don’t want it to end either.” And not just because I didn’t want to go back to work. Now that I had her back in my life, I didn’t want to let her go again.
Her eyes opened and she smiled. “You’re still my best friend, Em. Even after all this time.”
I trembled as I spoke. “You’re still my best friend, too. I think you always will be.”
Even in those years of being apart, I hadn’t been able to forge a connection with anyone like I had with Natalie. There was something different about how we were together, and I’d never been able to define it. She was just…Nat. My Nat.
“Em?” she asked.
“Yeah?” I asked.
She opened her mouth to say something and then changed her mind.
“What?” I asked.
She leaned back just a little.
“We should probably get ready for bed. We have to get up early.”
We didn’t have to get up any earlier than we did all the other days. She’d been about to say something completely different.
“What were you going to say?” I asked, as she got off the bed and set her champagne glass down with a shaky hand.
“Nothing,” she said, and then she rushed to the bathroom and shut the door.
Natalie was in the bathroom for a long time, and when she came out, I wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe she’d just been having digestive issues. I didn’t want to embarrass her by asking about it.
So I didn’t. I brushed my teeth and we turned down the bed together. She did that thing where she went all the way to the other side to avoid touching me.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, taking her arm and pulling on it. “You can come a little closer, I don’t have cooties.”
She protested, but did scoot a little closer to me.
“I’m just trying to give you space,” she said.
“I have plenty of space, you’re fine,” I said, and then I regretted everything I said.
