Oak pushed her thick red-rimmed glasses up on her nose and motioned with an eager wave of her hand for me to continue. “So, with chemistry like that, what happened? Why’d you guys break up?”
“It’s a bit complicated, but I guess it comes down to the fact that we were on different ships sailing in opposite directions. Gabe was such a good guy, is such a good guy, so passionate about making the world a better place, so unlike Adam. The polar opposite, actually. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that there has to be a reason the phone booth brought me to his doorstep, now, after all this time. Maybe it’s because we’re finally on the same page?”
“I guess it’s true what they say: the greatest love stories are rarely a straight line, now are they?” asked Lyla, who looked like the human version of the heart-eyes emoji.
“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions,” Sevyn interjected, her voice monotone and her face full of skepticism.
“Tell me you did not just throw out an Ariana Grande quote and try to pass it off like prophetic wisdom?” Lyla called out.
Oak chimed in from beside me. “Actually, Ariana Grande may have repeated it, but that little nugget of wisdom belongs to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”
“Really? Well, whatever, it felt fitting whoever it was that said it. My point is there is no preordained love story; these days you gotta write your own.” Sevyn shrugged and crammed another heap of noodles into her mouth.
Lyla tossed a decorative pillow at Sevyn, who deflected it like a ninja and sent it flying into the kitchen. “Don’t listen to her, Avery. She’s a salty Gen Zer who’s been on one too many bad Tinder dates. She’s cynical of all happy endings.”
“You’d be cynical too if you went out on a date with the Tinder Swindler,” Sevyn snapped.
Oak clapped her hand to her mouth. “OMG, I totally forgot you went out with the Netflix guy!”
“And amazingly, he wasn’t even the worst of them,” Sevyn deadpanned.
My eyes went round. “Worse than the Tinder Swindler?”
“Lyla, tell Avery about the guy who constantly clogged our toilets.” Sevyn threw up her hands dramatically. “I just can’t do it. PTSD.”
For the next ten minutes, Lyla regaled us with tales of Clog the Toilet Guy, an investment banker Sevyn dated for a few months who, for reasons still unknown, liked to flush random objects down the toilet.
“You have no idea, Avery. It was crazy-town. He flushed magazines . . . shoes . . . his own iPhone. And then, one day, I noticed my pet turtle had gone missing,” Lyla said, her tight voice holding back emotion.
Upon Lyla mentioning the turtle, everyone, between gasps of laughter, cried, “OHHHH HAAAAANNNKKKKK!!” in unison. And then they really lost it. Their laughter was contagious, and after a deep snort from Lyla, Oak spit out her matcha, spraying the couch and me with a mist of green tea, causing me to break into a fit of hysterical giggles along with them. The apartment was near silent except for the squeaks and wheezy breaths of side-splitting laughter. And the strange sounds emitted from our mouths caused us to laugh even harder.
Tears streaked down my face, and I grabbed for some paper napkins from under a container. But being unable to see through my wet lashes, I instead stuck my hand right into the fried rice, sending me almost to the floor in a whole new fit.
When I could finally see straight and my lungs reinflated, I sighed heavily and shook my head. I hadn’t laughed that hard in God knows how long. Actually, I did. About six years. The unadulterated joy felt fantastic, as if a weight I didn’t know I’d been shouldering since my fight with Marisol suddenly lightened.
After Montauk, I should’ve called her and tried to fix our friendship, but I was so enraged by her no-holds-barred disapproval of my choices, it was just easier to cut her out, like I did with pretty much any challenge I faced at the time. So that’s what I did. I cut Marisol out and tried to pretend her absence hadn’t left a big gaping hole in my life. But my new roommates reminded me of how essential female friendships were for those belly laughs, the tough times, and everything in between.
“Oh girl, Sevyn’s bad dating stories make me grateful to identify as asexual. And if her nightmare dates crack you up, then you are in for an eternity of giggle fits just like this,” Oak remarked, working to blot out the matcha spattered all over the leather couch with her sleeve.
“Well, that sounds nice, actually,” I admitted, smiling at the girls as I surveyed the living room. With unexpected clarity, I was beyond grateful—for the laughter; the whole silly, comfortable moment; the bliss of the day with Gabe; all of it. My heart felt remarkably full for the first time in a long while, and I allowed myself to just settle into the sensation and relish in it as long as I could.
“Whew, I haven’t laughed like that in a very long time,” I admitted.
Sevyn wiped her eyes in agreement. “Me either. But it seems like a good way for me to end the night. I have an early-morning Zoom call for work that I’ll be sleeping through if I don’t get to bed.”
She grabbed her plate, put it in the sink, and blew us kisses as she made her way to her room.
“How about you, Avery?” Oak asked. “This is a far departure from your usual bedtime. Don’t you have work tomorrow?”
“Thankfully, I have the day off. Good thing too, I need to give my cords a rest. I’ve had some real brutal sets at the diner followed by even more brutal open calls this week. A day of physical, mental, and vocal rest sounds like just what the doctor ordered.”
At the comment, Lyla’s face brightened and her eyes grew wide. “Actually, if you are looking for help with your vocals, I know this amazing Reiki master downtown. She works with a lot of the servers at Mimi’s. I can shoot her a text in the morning and see if she can squeeze us in.”
As had become typical with my new roommates, I needed Urban Dictionary or Google Translate to figure out what was being said, but not wanting to blow my coolness cover, I just nodded and said vaguely, “I don’t know. Um . . . that’s not really my thing.”
“Come on, Avery, open your heart chakra and mind. Trust me, Reiki is amazing.”
Still not completely sure what I was agreeing to, I finally caved and said, “Okay, okay, you don’t have to Reiki me over the coals, I’m in.”
Chapter Twenty
The next morning, I followed Lyla out of the subway and into the heart of Alphabet City, the area of New York that extended roughly from Avenue A all the way to the East River.
“I used to live on Avenue C,” Lyla said, motioning to the street sign overhead, “but my scummy super wanted to raise the rent over twenty percent. That’s when I decided to move to Bushwick. But I suppose everything worked out the way it was supposed to, or else I never would have met my besties.”