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There was a pause then. Lenna suddenly wondered what Gillian was hinting at. “Oh, Gillian, my apartment is tiny. I don’t think—”
“I wasn’t asking if I could stay with you,” Gillian interrupted sulkily. Her shoulders drooped. “Forget it.”
This was the awkward part of friendships Lenna never knew how to navigate. When someone was emotional and erratic like this, what could you say to pull them out of it? All she wanted to do was retreat. Not deal with this sort of thing.
“Okay,” she said eventually. “So…I’m going to go…”
“Actually, hang on.” Gillian’s head whipped up. There were tears in her eyes. “I need to tell you something. I know I’ve been really weird tonight. I’m sorry. It’s just…I’ve been really triggered by Sadie’s baby thing.”
Lenna frowned. “Why?”
Gillian tipped onto the bar, then hiccuped. “It was really, reallyhard. I had to go through it all alone. And then I had to pretend it was all good.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gillian’s eyes were closing. She put her cheek on the bar. Lenna looked around, wishing someone else would help.
Then Gillian stood. “I’ll go home,” she mumbled, stumbling off the chair, tripping over someone else’s purse. “I’m fine.”
Lenna walked her to the curb and called her an Uber. When the car arrived, Gillian fell inside. The door slammed shut. Lenna watched the car through several traffic lights, something gnawing at her gut.
She was grateful to be alone back in her own apartment. The evening had unnerved her. Maybe this was the simple truth: Lenna was someone who couldn’t really be there for friendships when things got tough. The moment she was needed emotionally, she left.
She picked up her phone. There sat Rhiannon’s text:Hey. How are you?
Lenna wanted Gillian to be right about leaving Rhiannon alone, she really did. But at the same time, the pull to reply to her was undeniable. She pictured Rhiannon on the other end of the phone, waiting for Lenna to respond. Hurting that she hadn’t.
Finally, she gave in.Doing okay. You?
Dots appeared immediately on Rhiannon’s end. And then disappeared. And then appeared again. Lenna swallowed.
Is everything okay?Lenna wrote.
The dots appeared again. A text popped up.Not really.
Traffic hummed. Lenna repositioned herself on the bed. She composed a dozen replies, but deleted them.Where are you? Do you need help? Are you mad?She wanted to ask outright how Rhiannon felt about being fired fromCity Gossip…and if she knewwhy.She also wanted to know why Rhiannon went to Oregon, and if what Gillian had speculated about her was true.
But in the moment, with Rhiannon on the other end,paying attention to her,some of her anger faded. How much did that stuff matter?
Have you been watching The Bachelor?she chose to write instead.
They watched the show, sometimes; the latest season had aired earlier in the year, but Lenna and Rhiannon had been catching up on the episodes together before Rhiannon took off. In fact, Rhiannon had left mid-season, when things were just getting interesting. Lenna felt like it was a safe enough topic.
Rhiannon answered that she hadn’t watched any more episodes. When Lenna said she’d gone ahead and watched a few new ones, Rhiannon asked Lenna to catch her up. She filled up text bubbles, her fingers moving so fast, her body full of so muchjoy.
There were other things she needed to tell Rhiannon. Important things,goodthings, like how she could now do a headstand in hot yoga, or that she’d been given an assignment at work, or that she had a new friend. But she didn’t write about Gillian or work, because Gillian and work seemed way too close to a conversation about harder truths.
It was late when Lenna ran out of things to write. Rhiannon typed back she should probably go to sleep. Oh, how Lenna ached to ask something as simple asSleep where, exactly?But finally, she got up the nerve to type something real.
I hate how things were left between us.
She sent it off and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, there were no little dots indicating Rhiannon was replying.
Ten minutes passed. Still no answer. An hour. Well, that was that, then.
Finally, Lenna went to bed. She slept fitfully. She dreamed she and Rhiannon were very old, stooped and wrinkled, walking side by side around a lake in Iceland. Lenna had never been to Iceland, and yet this dream was telling her that it was in Iceland and nowhere else. All at once, all of the geese on the lake took off at the same time. The sky was filled with them, flying elsewhere, and then the lake was empty. Then Rhiannon turned to her. Except it wasn’t Rhiannon at all. It was a baby’s face.
“Boo,” the baby said.
