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Lenna’s fingers wavered over the keyboard. She didn’t really know the technicalities of fertility treatments. Also, this felt so personal—she wasn’t sure Gillian should have shared it.
Gillian blasted off another text.She blames me. She’s pissed. We had a fight.
And then another text.
I ducking need to get out of here, Gillian texted.Are you free?
Lenna sat back, thinking about it. The last thing she needed was to get embroiled in someone else’s drama. At the same time, Gillian had been her shoulder to cry on about Rhiannon. It seemed only fair.
She met Gillian at Barney’s, which she’d never set foot in before because she presumed—rightly so—that everything was too expensive. They perused the shoe floor. Gillian kept picking up shoes and putting them down. Her cheeks had high circles of pink. She breathed, bull-like, through her nostrils.
“I should buy something,” she said miserably. “Make myself feel better.”
Lenna eyed the price tag on the bottom of the shoe. Twelve hundred dollars! “Did she take it out on you, or something?” she asked tentatively. Wouldn’tSadieneed to buy herself something to make herself feel better? She wasn’t sure where Gillian figured into all of this.
Gillian picked up another pair of shoes. “She’s crushed. She can’t believe it happened.”
“But why is she mad atyou,exactly?”
“Because that’s just how she is. Everything’s always my fault.”
Lenna’s phone beeped loudly in her pocket. The contact that came up was so startling she nearly dropped the device.
Rhiannon.
Something in Lenna’s expression made Gillian notice right away. “Who’s that?”
Lenna’s mouth was dry. “Um.” She tried to hide the screen without it looking like she was hiding the screen. She tapped the alert to open the text.Hey, Rhiannon had written.How are you?
Her mind spun. She’d wanted this for so long, but now that it was here, she felt paralyzed as to what to do next.
She didn’t hear Gillian sneak around behind her, but suddenly she was there. She scoffed. “You aren’t going to write back, are you?”
Lenna slipped her phone in her pocket, feeling embarrassed. “I mean…”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
The memory of the phone screen blurred before Lenna’s eyes. “You’re right.”
Gillian slung an arm around Lenna’s shoulder. “Let’s get a drink. Seems like webothneed to de-stress.”
That night, alcohol barely touched Lenna. Maybe it was because she was already so dazed, her mind already so scattered. Gillian kept talking about Sadie and her “weird quest to have a baby.” She’d become so shrill, all of a sudden. Lenna tried to stay present, but she kept thinking about Rhiannon.
Gillian’s voice rose higher and higher. “And, I mean, every time I walked into the kitchen, Sadie was shooting a needle in her belly. Her meds were always just sitting there. The tops open. Sometimes she left this huge mess on the table. Anything could have spilled into those vials, accidentally.”
Lenna hadn’t been fully paying attention, but suddenly she was present again. Gillian’s voice was playful, sly. “Wait,didsomething get into her meds?”
Gillian blinked innocently. “Of course not.”
Lenna made it through the rest of the night without looking at Rhiannon’s text. Yet with every drink Gillian ordered, her patience felt more and more frayed. Finally, when she said she wanted to go home, Gillian grabbed her arm and begged her to stay for just one more.
“I’m so tired,” Lenna protested.
“Come on,” Gillian whined. “All the times I’ve listened when you’ve bitched, the least you can do is listen to me.”
Lenna stood, not liking Gillian’s tone. “I think we both should just get some sleep.”
Gillian pouted. “But that means I have to go back and maybe face Sadie.”
