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“Right, sorry. This is Echo Rosenthal?” He said her name as if he wasn’t sure of it. “Uh, this is my husband Heath, that’s Jason, Tom, Penny, and Katie. Echo’s the one who coaches the Bulldogs, who lost their gym in that fire.”
“Did they ever catch anyone?” Tom asked.
“Yes, it was a senior prank gone horribly wrong.” She shook her head and her hair swished back and forth. She had it down and it was a brilliant red under the lights of the bar. She didn’t look tired now. She looked gorgeous.
“Are you alone? Why don’t you sit with us?” Heath, said and I tried to kick him under the table for suggesting it, but he dodged me. Even Dom was giving him a look.
Echo smiled at everyone, but it was definitely directed at me.
“That would be lovely.”
And that was how Echo ended up crashing my Friday night. I saw her at the grocery store, and now at my bar. She was like a virus, infiltrating my entire life. What was herdeal?
I watched in horror as she pulled up an extra chair, set it right next to me on the end of the table and proceeded to act like she’d known my friends for her whole life.
I’d never seen her so at ease with people before and it just further served to confuse and infuriate me. These weremyfriends. Didn’t she have her own friends?
Sure, she’d said that she was lonely last night, but that didn’t give her the right to ruin my night off.
Still, I watched her as she laughed and chatted and my friends, even Dom, warmed to her. I didn’t know what to say. Dom nudged my leg under the table and gave me a look that I guess meant I should be more friendly, but why? I couldn't add anything to the conversation.
Then Lou came over and Echo got introduced to her and somehow we ended up with an extra plate of beer cheese dip, which was one of my favorite things ever.
I ate it angrily while Echo talked about her life, and I reluctantly learned more than I wanted to know about her. She was also an only child, and had a cat, which surprised me. I guess I just didn’t see her as the kind of person who would have an apartment and a cat and who would buy groceries and get gas and pay taxes. She’d always been more of a concept, a memory.
Seeing her as a person was unnerving.
“So, Echo, what do you do for fun when you’re not harassing Kiri and Dom?” Penny asked. She’d had a few drinks and I wished she hadn’t.
Echo laughed. “Not much. Cheer is pretty much my life, but I do enjoy hiking, climbing trees, throwing axes, and making custom dollhouse furniture.”
I just stared at her.
“Wow,” Dom said. “That’s a seriously cool list.”
“Can you tell me more about the custom dollhouse furniture?” Katie asked, her eyes gleaming. Five minutes later she and Echo had their heads pressed together above Echo’s phone as she scrolled through her social media accounts and shop for her creations. I would be lying if I said I didn’t look everything up on my phone under the table.
The cognitive dissonance in my brain was almost unbearable. If I had just met Echo in her current iteration, not in the past, and didn’t hold the grudges that I couldn’t let go of, I would have been on her like white on rice. Just absolutely would have jumped her bones. I mean, I already had, but that was the past.
I didn’t want to like her. I didn’t want to enjoy her laugh, or the way she kept tossing her hair over her shoulder. I didn’t want to like the way she asked my friends questions about their lives and was clearly listening and paying attention to the answers. I didn’t want to like any of this, yet here I was, with the girl I’d sworn to hate for the rest of my life, and my ice-cold heart was doing something I didn’t want it to do: thaw.
Lou called me over to the bar and leaned on it, her leather vest displaying her old-style tattoos. I looked from the anchor on her bicep to her face.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“If I say no, you’re going to give it to me anyway. That’s your job.” She snorted and pointed at me while grabbing a glass and then filling it up with one of the beers on tap for a guy down the end of the bar.
“You got that right. So, here’s what I’m going to say: let it go.”
I glanced back at the table, and Echo.
“Let what go?” I asked, turning back to Lou.
“You know what. Let it go.” She waved her fingers. “Trust me. Life is too short to hold a grudge that might fuck up your happiness and your future. If I hadn’t let go of a grudge, I wouldn’t have married Susie, but that’s a story for another time.” I knew most of the logistics of how they had met, but this part was news to me.
“Okay, Lou,” I said, pushing away from the bar.
“You take my advice. I’m an older, wiser lesbian. We always give the best advice.”
