Alex: the fanciest
Knowing he’s there and not here isn’t the reason I get Thai takeout and Sour Patch Kids before heading back to my apartment to watch Notting Hill. It also isn’t the reason I make up an excuse about feeling sick when Miriam invites me to her nurse friend’s art thing at DUMBO House. She doesn’t buy it (because she’s met me), and texts me, I’m calling you out, liar.
I am who I am, I reply. Love me or leave me, babe
She texts back four pictures: an Epi Pen, an acoustic guitar, a horticulture textbook, and the Mean Girls GIF of Karen coughing and saying, I can’t go out, I’m sick, followed up with a single message: are starter packs still cool?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You know,” Miriam says, “we could always just take a vacation to London.”
I turn and glare, but she’s too busy sniffing autumn squash varietals to notice. We’re meandering through a farmer’s market, the canvas bags on our shoulders already heavy with produce we know without a doubt can be eaten raw, since cooking is out of the question. The market smells like flowers, raw pumpkin, and coffee. Miriam’s in a bright fuchsia athletic dress, her short blond hair up in a clip, and I’m wearing ripped jeans and a LITTLE BIG TOWN T-shirt from a concert my dad took me to when I was nine.
I put my bag of produce on Miriam’s free shoulder so I can braid my hair back. “That’s cheating. Imagine if we’d said, ‘You know, we could always just take a vacation to Manhattan.’”
“What magazines are even based in London?”
“Take Me There, for starters!” I practically shriek. “The very best one!”
In a bored drawl, Miriam says, “That’s the travel mag, right?”
I scoff. “I know that you know it’s the travel mag, Mir.”
Scooping my bag back off her shoulder, I drift toward a seller shouting the price of chrysanthemums. They’re golden, ruby red, and orange, arranged in lines like a sunset.
“On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you this transfer is happening?”
Something clicks in my brain, and I spin to face her. Miriam becomes instantly fascinated with a mound of russet potatoes. But I’ve known this girl since we were eleven, and I’ve memorized all her tells. “They said it was all but guaranteed.”
She grabs a potato and inspects it. “For what job?”
I am … honestly not quite sure about that.
“Who cares?” I reason. “It’s London!”
Miriam huffs. “London’s not all that.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s my mother’s homeland you’re slandering. And besides, you know Marty never took me anywhere when I was a kid.”
Miriam flips her middle finger at me. “Cry me a river, Casey. You also never had to haggle on Craigslist for a resold concert ticket and avoid getting stuck with one of the dude’s seven cats he was also trying to get rid of, and it shows.”
We manage three full seconds of glaring before we dissolve into smirks.
I step closer and lower my voice. “What’s really going on, Mir?”
She rolls her eyes and shoots me a stubborn look. “Nothing. I was just making conversation. It’s a very common thing that non-antisocial people do.”
“I’m not antisocial. I just hate small talk.”
“It’s polite.”
“It’s pointless. And you’re trying to change the subject. Why don’t you want me to go to London anymore?”
“Of course I want you to go!” Miriam growls, stalking away.
I follow her to a coffee vendor, where she orders an iced latte for herself and a cappuccino for me. While we sit and wait for our drinks on the curb, I poke her in the shoulder over and over until she snaps. “I just don’t want you to never come back.”
I stiffen. “What? Of course I’d come back.”
“You moved here, and you haven’t been home since that one Christmas when you acted super weird the whole time,” she reasons. “You’ve hardly left the city. Will that be any different when you hop the pond?” Miriam rakes her fingers through her hair. “You’ve got this, like, tunnel vision for your future, and I think it’s cool you want to move to London, I really do, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t be a thing in your rearview, Case. I still need you.” She stumbles over the last words.
I peer at my best friend, understanding so completely what she’s trying to say. “I needed you when I moved here,” I tell her. “When Lance and I broke up, he accused me of following you here. Making a decision that wasn’t truly mine.”
Miriam’s forehead wrinkles. “That’s dumb.”
“Yeah, but he was right,” I admit. “You were a safety net for a really big leap. The biggest of my whole life. But moving to London—because it’s my idea, because it’s the life experience I want for myself—it’s the only way to know what kind of pluckiness I’m made of.”
“Pluckiness,” Miriam repeats, smirking, and I groan.
One of the greatest loves of my life is a platinum blond, foul-mouthed short girl who once pushed Ronnie Wilson off a literal bridge and into a literal creek for making fun of my speech impediment on the fourth-grade trip to the Nature Conservancy. When we were sixteen, on the playground of our elementary school, we sat side by side on the swing set and shared one warm Miller Lite we stole from her older brother. Every year on Mother’s Day, her parents send my family flowers. I have done her taxes twice now.
I throw my arm over her shoulder and set my temple against hers. There’s a quaver in my voice when I say, “Look, the Nashville thing … that’s in a separate box from New York, okay? I promise you I’m not going to vanish into thin air. Through fire and water, remember? We’re tethered, and either of us can tug on the string if we need to.”
I feel her shoulder sag against mine. “Good, because I’m always going to need you, like, at least metaphorically around. And you’re always going to need me to shove a needle up your ass when the restaurant fries your chicken in peanut oil.”
“Masey!” the coffee guy calls through the window of his truck. We stand up from the curb, and Miriam hands me my drink.
Our conversation makes me recall something we talked about years ago: “Hey, didn’t you want to do travel nursing at some point? What ever happened to that idea?”
Miriam blushes. “Brijesh. Happened.”
My lips pull up. “Remind me why you two aren’t just dating?”
“Because. I’m pretty sure he’s the one.”
“Explain that logic to me.”
“Bitch, I can’t even figure it out myself,” Miriam says. “I’ve told him not to wait around for me to stop being terrified of how much I like him—i.e., a fuckgirl—but he’s determined to smoke me out.”
“Sex is that good, huh?”
She punches me hard enough on the shoulder to bruise. Wincing, I turn away and rub at it. A spark of dark maroon catches my eye.
“Is that…”
“What?” Miriam asks.
I grin. “No way.”