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“I’m going to hear that joke a lot, aren’t I?” she said, meeting my eyes. Hers were sometimes blue, sometimes green. Right now they were shading toward green with the harsh airport light.
“Yes, for the rest of our lives. You know you’re stuck with me.” She’d been stuck with me since the third grade when I had tackled a boy making fun of her on the first day of school. She was new in town and I couldn’t take my eyes off her pretty dark hair and blue-green eyes. I hadn’t even known her name yet, but that boy was a jerk to a lot of girls and I hadn’t wanted him to hurt the girl with the beautiful ponytail. That was all it took for us to bond for life.
Emma knew me better than I knew myself, and vice versa. We’d been physically apart for a few years there for college (she ended up going to her parent’s choice of school instead of her own), but we never lost touch. Even if we hadn’t talked for weeks, we picked up right where we’d left off, as if we’d just taken a pause in the middle of one lifelong conversation.
“Forever,” she whispered, so low that I could barely hear it.
We made it back from Vegas in one piece, but a little worse for wear. The next day at work was totally brutal. There had been a convention that weekend and we’d had a glitch with the computer system, so people had gotten charged double for their rooms. I was in tears before ten in the morning, and not just because I was exhausted.
“Do you need to take ten and cry in the bathroom?” my coworker Linda asked, with a sympathetic smile. I’d been wiping my eyes while listening to a particularly nasty woman berate me on the phone.
“Yup,” I said, getting up and wiping my nose with a tissue. I kept a full box on my desk for days like this.
“I’ll cover you,” Linda said. She was about my mom’s age and I think, now that her daughter lived in Florida, she had adopted me as a surrogate daughter.
I got done with my crying fit, splashed some water on my face, and went back to my desk. I had to get the fuck away from this place. Jessika, my law-school coworker, had called in sick, so I couldn’t ask her about the annulment, which I’d been wanting to do. This Monday was doing its best to mess with me.
Somehow I made it through the rest of the day and, instead of going to my apartment and dealing with one or both of my roommates, I sent a message to Emma and said that I’d stop and grab wings, cheesy garlic bread, and sodas if she would let me hang out in her apartment for a little while. Emma lived alone, and being with her was the next best thing to being alone. There was always someone or several someones at my place and it was hard to deal with sometimes.
She agreed and said that she’d throw something in the oven for dessert. I wrote back asking what it was, but she just replied that I would find out when I got there. Emma always surprised me with sweets. It had started when we were kids and she’d have cookies or cakes or some other sweet thing in her lunchbox every day. It was my job to guess what the item was and then she’d always pull out an extra for me. She would let me guess until I got it right, even giving me hints so I wouldn’t have to wait too long. It never occurred to me that she had to sneak extras for me every day because her mom wasn’t the one putting in the extra desserts. Emma had always had my back, even then.
Once we’d gotten older, she’d kept up the game when I would come over for dinner, making all kinds of things from crepes with homemade jam to lemon tarts to macarons to mini cheesecakes with multiple layers that were so perfect, they could have been sold in a patisserie. She was a dessert genius, but it was a hobby that she didn’t want to monetize because hey, when you took a passion and made it a job, you sucked a lot of the fun out of it. If I were talented at anything, I’d probably feel the same way.
I started sending Emma guesses immediately. I kept a running list of what she’d made me before since she didn’t make the same thing twice within a short time span.
Emma buzzed me into the apartment and the scent of warm chocolate hit me in the face as I opened her door. I never bothered to knock when I came over.
“Brownies?” I yelled out.
“Nope,” she called from the kitchen. If Emma ever made anything as common as brownies, they’d be baked with expensive chocolate and layered with marzipan or something. I didn’t even know what marzipan was, but it sounded like something that rich people would eat.
“Chocolate,” I said to myself, scanning my list. “Hmm.” I set the bag of wings, garlic bread, and sodas on the counter as she peered into the oven. I tried to see over her shoulder, but she quickly moved and blocked my view before slamming the oven door and spinning around to face me, using her body as a shield between me and the baking dessert.
“I don’t think so. You don’t get it until you guess right.” I huffed before grabbing a stool and sitting at the little kitchen island that was just big enough for two.
I decided to do what any self-respecting woman with a smartphone would do: I looked up and named every single kind of chocolate dessert I could find.
“Nope,” Emma said, digging into the bag of food and yanking out the box of wings. If I didn’t hurry up and guess the dessert right then. I was going to lose out on the wings.
“Mousse? Cupcakes? Chocolate Cream pie?”
“No, no, no,” she said, sucking sauce off her fingers. My brain blanked for a second and I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing.
“You going to keep guessing?” Emma asked, discarding the bone in a bowl. I snatched a wing out of the box, eating it with one hand and scrolling my phone with the other.
Eventually, I gave up and let Emma wear the smug smile of victory because I was hungry and I knew she was going to give me whatever it was anyway. Emma broke the garlic bread in half, putting some on a plate and pushing it toward me.
“Hey, you gave me the smaller half,” I said, checking it against the half she’d taken for herself.
“You got an extra wing. The number was uneven.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s okay then.” I devoured the bread and Emma asked me if I wanted some wine. She had a new bottle of a sweet and spicy red that she thought I might like.
“Just one glass,” I said. “I’m still suffering from this weekend. Why did we decide to go to Vegas? All of that stuff wouldn’t have happened if we’d gone to... to... Nebraska.” Emma snorted as she poured a decent-sized glass of wine for me.
“What’s in Nebraska?” I took a cautious sip and my eyes rolled back in my head. Oh yeah, that was damn good. I’d have to pace myself so I didn’t suck down the whole bottle in one sitting.
“I have no idea. It was the first random state to come to my mind. Anyway, whose idea was Vegas again?” Emma gave me a sardonic look.
