Exasperated, I set my guitar down, happily trading my open hand for a full glass of whisky. The liquid burned going down my raw throat, in thanks to all the screaming I had directed at a mini pony.
An hour prior, I had exhausted all the rest of my tears into a piping-hot shower, washing unrequited love, horse, and barn off my swollen and bruised body. Garrett and I loved each other. And he was going to marry another woman. One plus one did not equal two. It would have been an easier death if our physical connection didn’t match our platonic one.
I stared into the hot flames, eager for them to burn me alive. Summer nudged me with her elbow.
“C’mon, you said all the things. You can’t have any regrets. He’s the one who is going to go forward with a lifetime of wondering, ‘What-if?’ Plus, it’s not all doom and gloom here. Let’s focus on the positive.”
“I now have a rational fear of miniature ponies?” I offered.
Summer stood up, extending her glass of whisky toward my puffy eyes. I stared back at her blankly. She rolled her eyes and lifted my whisky-clad hand up toward her.
“You, Maggie Vine, are about to make it. It’s your career’s turn to shine, and I won’t let some dude take that joy away from you. And the cherry on top of your career sundae: the hottest movie star on the fucking planet has every intention of ripping your clothes off. So, cheers.”
Summer took a sip and stared me down until I did the same.
“We don’t know that,” I said, coughing into my drink.
“We do, you little dipshit.”
Summer plopped her body back down on her chair, her smirk lit up by the moon. I looked down, seeing her phone brighten. She clicked on a text message, and a photo popped up on her screen: Valeria making a kissing face into the camera. Summer beamed, taking in the photo of the woman she loved. I shook my head at my best friend, jealous of how their union came together so effortlessly.
“What?” Summer asked, studying my expression.
“Nothing. It’s just…you found your person, and it works. You don’t have to turn the world upside down to be together. You don’t have to blow up your lives to exist. I’m such an idiot, Summer.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am. I believed Garrett was my person for so long, even though I didn’t have one claim on him. It was idealistic and stupid, and I know that—yet, here I am, still crying over him. I took one look at that guy, and I believed in All The Things, and then life kept him from me the way I wanted him, which frankly, sucks. It sucks. You’re lucky. Your person is just your person, without all the suckage. I want that.”
“Mags, it’s not all roses and caviar.”
Summer turned her head away from me, examining the deer darting along the stretch of deep woods on the other side of her property. I leaned forward, trying to read her expression.
“What do you mean?”
Summer kept her eyes on the deer.
“I love my wife. She drives me wild in good and bad ways. I couldn’t love her more if I tried. But I don’t know if we’re going to make it.” Summer let the statement leave her mouth emotionlessly, so blankly that I was sure she was joking.
Her eyes floated back to mine, and all at once, her whole face appeared heavier. I scooted in closer to Summer, trying to read the newfound pain behind my best friend’s eyes.
“Summer, what’s going on?”
She looked away from me, studying her wedding ring.
“My wife wants children. And I don’t want children.”
I clenched my jaw, trying to keep my chin from hitting the pavement.
“I thought…I thought you did,” I said gently and quietly. “I thought you guys were about to start the process?”
Summer etched her nails into the bottom of the crystal whisky glass in her hand.
“Me, too. But the last year I keep waiting to feel it, and…I haven’t.”
“Haven’t felt what?”
Summer locked her eyes on me.
“That pang. I look at kids, and I don’t feel any ache in my chest. I don’t feel like there’s a missing piece inside of me, waiting to be filled with ten little fingers and toes. I actually—I feel the opposite. I’m so goddamn happy. I love my life, just the way it is. I don’t want children. Valeria, she needs and she wants a child to feel whole—she wants one badly. And I’m going to lose her because of it. I’m going to lose my person over this. And I know I have to tell her, but…fuck, I don’t want to.”
Tears hit Summer’s eyes, and shockingly, she did nothing to temper her pain. I had only seen Summer cry once, and my heart did flips as she let tears fall without a fight. I scooted my chair closer to her and folded one of her hands into mine, and just like a grief time machine, I was brought back into my seventeen-year-old body, to the day I lost a father who was barely mine to lose, and gained a best friend.
* * *
SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD SUMMER AGGRESSIVELY SPRAYED ANGEL perfume in the middle of our tiny dorm room and stormed through the wet air with her platform sandals, just as I fell to my knees below her, tears breaking across my face. She stared at me blankly, not saying a word—as I sobbed into my cell phone while my mother all too calmly told me my dad had died of a heart attack. I theorized my mother was remaining stoic so she wouldn’t break down. But her delivery made me feel like I’d been punched in the gut and left on the curb with no one there to mourn alongside me. I was glued to the floor for hours, frozen in unimaginable grief. Summer left my side only once, to go to the vending machine in the lobby. She brought me back a vanilla Coke and peanut M&M’s. I was embarrassingly touched that Summer knew what my favorite snack was, even if she’d never cared to know one thing about me up until this point—and we had been freshman-year roommates for three months.
“I thought you hated me,” I said, blubbering, my face turned upward to Summer.
She looked dismissively out the window, sucking in red cheeks.
“I could still hate you and know your vending machine order. I mean, we’re roommates. I have eyes,” she said, biting her bottom lip in flimsy deflection.
Along with emotional intimacy, Summer was not a fan of receiving praise.
I cracked a peanut M&M between my teeth. The candy was bitter against my tongue, and the chocolate shell moved down my throat like a chain saw. I remember wondering if all the things my dad and I loved together would become a casualty of his death.
“I have to go to Boston tonight,” I said to no one. I didn’t know how to move my legs. How was I going to board a train to face my father’s side of the family?
Summer shrugged. “I’ll come with you. I like Boston.”
Years later, I learned that Summer actually hated Boston. She held a sizable grudge toward the entire state of Massachusetts, because she didn’t get into Harvard. Summer Groves was not someone who lost gracefully.
Later that afternoon, Summer and I shared a train car to the city she secretly hated. I cried the entire time, while Summer stared wide-eyed at every other passenger but me, searching for an eject button like a frat bro in the same room as a screaming infant. Finally, thirty minutes away from our Back Bay Station destination, Summer decided to throw me a bone.
“My mom died three years ago,” she said. Summer’s eyes stayed on the moving trees out the train’s window, refusing to look at me, refusing to hold up a mirror to her own grief. She continued, “You’ll be okay. But…it’s going to be shitty for a while.”
I was desperate for a grief timeline, but I was too new to grief to recognize that no such thing existed. I wrongly assumed that my mysterious roommate was a professional.
“For how long?” I asked.