“Thank you,” she whispers.
For one, two, three beats, we sit in intimidating silence. Her sadness seeps through the line like a leaky faucet, every drip landing like burning acid on my heart. I’ve been a terrible friend to her over the past few weeks.
“Are you and Gretchen having fun?”
I sober immediately because there’s suspicion there. Uncertainty over whether or not Gretchen and I have a future beyond friendship aside, the things she confided in me tonight, the truth behind this trip—it’s not my story to tell. But Lauren deserves as much honesty as I can give her without breaking Gretchen’s trust.
“It’s not that kind of trip.”
“Oh. I thought Drew said it was some sort of birthday trip.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but it’s—” I stop to reorganize my thoughts. “Gretchen told me some things in confidence tonight that Drew doesn’t even know yet. I’m sorry, but I have to leave it at that for now.”
“Alright,” she says on a dramatic sigh. “Sooooo, how’s the weather out there?”
I snicker. “Is that the type of friends we are now? We don’t have anything better to talk about than the weather?”
“Shut up!” she laughs. “I’m trying here.”
“Okay, okay.” I lean back in my chair and prop my feet on the table in front of me. “It’s a beautiful night here, actually. Seventy degrees, not a cloud in sight. I’m out on the balcony staring at a sky full of stars.”
For the next several minutes we volley from one random topic to another. I ask about a project at work she’s been worried about. She tells me about her family’s upcoming trip to the Bahamas. The more we talk, the easier it becomes.
When we reach our first lull in conversation, she says, “We never did this.”
“Did what?”
“This casual, easy chat. The way friends do.”
Four words. A single statement that packs a punch large enough to draw our entire relationship into focus as though we lived with blinders on for the past two and a half years.
The way friends do.
Your person should be your best friend. But I wasn’t hers and she was never mine—a reality that’s hard to stomach after spending so much of your life with someone.
“I know,” I respond.
Silence falls again and I scrape my nails over my jaw, searching for some combination of words to fill the abject void. When I come up empty, Lauren says, “I’m not mad at you, Connor. Not anymore, at least.”
“It’d be okay if you were, though.”
“I’m not gonna say it doesn’t still hurt, but I heard what you said. Everything about how there really was love there, but maybe not the kind I deserved. If I’m honest, I think I felt the same about you.”
I tuck a hand behind my head and crane my neck back against the headrest to take in the stars above that feel like a weighted blanket settling over me—a calm sort of pressure that soothes more than it burdens. The vises of stress that have held me bound for weeks uncoil one by one in real time.
She continues, “I mean, Idolove you, but?—”
“You’re not in love with me,” I finish. “I still should have been honest with you sooner. I’m sorry. You deserved better.”
Her words come on a hushed breath, genuine and sincere. “So did you, Connor.” A fissure in my heart cracks, like a bone that has to snap in order to heal.
“I’ll take the blame for this one,” I say. “Do you think we could start over from here as friends?”
“I’d like that,” she says. “And if we ever can’t find anything to talk about, we’ll always have the weather.”
The sound of her laugh—of us laughing together—soothes the last bits of guilt I had been holding on to. This closure, I realize, wasn’t only for her. I needed it, too.
A door opens at the other end of the balcony. “Deal,” I say as Gretchen steps outside dressed in a white cotton pajama set with shorts and a button-up sleep shirt. Her hair, still wet from the shower, hangs in a single braid over one shoulder.
