I laughed, and the barista delivered our drinks. Amber lifted hers and took a small sip, closing her eyes as she did. “Do you have to work tonight?”
I nodded. “Yeah. My schedule lately is Friday through Tuesday. More incidents and accidents on the weekends.” I thought of the last call of my shift the previous night, which had been to a house where an older man had fallen down the stairs. When Mason and I arrived, the man was bleeding profusely from a gash in his head, as well as from a fracture in his forearm that had broken through the skin. As we treated him, his feeble wife stood too close, hands wringing anxiously. “Is he going to die?” she kept asking as I tended to the man’s wounds. Her thin, high-pitched voice wobbled. “They’ll put me in a home if he dies.” The house was a mess, both of them smelled like urine and sweat; it was clear they hadn’t emptied the garbage or showered in weeks. Neither of them seemed very coherent, so, after getting them to the hospital, I had to report their living situation to Adult Protective Services. It was a part of the job I hated. Almost as much as when, despite my best efforts, someone I treated died on the scene.
“So you took a Saturday off to come to my party?” Amber asked.
“I figured you’d kick my ass if I didn’t show.”
“You figured right.” She grinned, then set her mug on the table. “I just got around to opening my gifts last night.”
“Well, that’s good. I was a little worried when I didn’t hear from you.” I paused. “Did you like it?”
“Are you kidding?” She reached beneath the collar of her jacket and pulled out a thin chain, pressing the small circle of pounded silver between her fingers. Upon it, I’d had the jeweler etch the words “Just Ask Me” in a pretty, scrolled font. “It’s perfect. I love it.” She gave me a shy smile. “Thanks, Ty.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, and my chest burned with pleasure, knowing that I’d made her happy, that she and I were the only ones who understood what the engraving meant. “So, I take it Daniel’s in Seattle?”
“Yeah.” A shadow passed over her face as she looked down at the ring on her finger. “He left this morning.”
“Miss him already, huh?”
“I guess.” She didn’t make eye contact as she spoke.
“Is something wrong? Did you guys have a fight or something?” I kept my tone as casual as possible, considering the flash of optimism I felt.
“No.” She sighed. “I guess I’m just overwhelmed with everything. Graduating, getting engaged, now having to be apart from him, moving again in September . . .” Her voice trailed off, then she looked at me with bright eyes. “Never mind. I’m being an idiot.”
“Being overwhelmed doesn’t make you an idiot,” I said. Keep cool, I thought. Don’t let her know how much you want her to realize this engagement was a mistake. “It makes you normal. It’s a lot to have going on.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It is. I love him, Tyler. You know that. But I just feel so . . . awkward, somehow. He’s really the first guy I’ve been really serious with.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“And the only time we ever even talked about marriage was when he told me that he would rather do it before he actually became a doctor, so he’d know the person he was with wasn’t pretending to love him for his money. I thought he was just being theoretical, you know? Like we were just having a general conversation, not planning our future. We haven’t even been together a year.”
“So it feels like he made the decision without you? Like it’s more about want he wants instead of what you both want?” Careful, I thought. Don’t criticize him too much.
“Exactly!” she said. “I knew you’d get it.” She sighed again. “But he’s so great. I don’t know what else I’d want from a guy that he’s not already giving me.”
I bit my tongue to keep myself from blurting out anything that might prevent her from telling me more about what she was feeling. The more I let her talk about it, the more I’d know how to fan the flames beneath her doubt and turn her attention toward the possibility of having a relationship with me. It wouldn’t be the first time a girl finally realized that the guy who has been there all along, her reliable best friend, is really the one she loves. It could happen to us.
“You remember that I went home with him over spring break and met his parents, right?”
“Yep.” Tell me it was horrible, I thought. Tell me his family is a bunch of assholes.
“They were awesome. His mom made me a special fleece blanket because Daniel had mentioned to her that I tended to get cold easier than most people. I mean, Jesus. How would it have looked if I had said no when he proposed?”
It was everything I could do not to ask, You thought about saying no? but I didn’t think I could contain the glee in my voice if I did. “What do your parents think?” I asked, instead.
“They think it’s a little fast, but as long as we don’t get married right away, they’re good with it. They like him. And you know they got married when they were both twenty-two, so it’s not like they can tell me these kinds of relationships never work out.”
“That’s true,” I said, disappointed that Helen and Tom hadn’t shown their usual overprotectiveness of Amber in this particular situation. Either they really did approve of Daniel and the engagement, or they expected the relationship to run its course and end on its own without their interference.
“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes, as though she was annoyed with herself. “Enough about that!” She reached over and smacked my forearm. “Tell me about this neighbor girl of yours.”
I waited a moment, contemplating what details to share. “Her name is Whitney,” I finally said, deciding to keep it simple. “She’s a business marketing student, very smart and very cute.” If Amber was going to believe I had been dating someone, she might as well know that the girl was intelligent and attractive.
“Oh, really?” Amber said, widening her eyes. “And how old is Whitney?”
“Twenty-one,” I said, fudging the truth by a year. I worried that, somehow, seeing a girl who couldn’t legally drink yet would make me seem perverted.
“Hmm. Is it serious?”
I shook my head. I wanted Amber to be a little jealous or, at the very least, relieved that I wasn’t pining for her, but I didn’t want her to think that I was unavailable. “We have fun,” I said. “But we’re not in love or anything.”
“Well, good. Because she needs the best friend seal of approval before you can say that.”
“Ha! Like you waited for my approval with Daniel?”
“I know,” she said. Her tone was soft, and a little regretful. “I’m sorry it took so long for you to meet him. And I appreciate how supportive you’ve been after a sort of a . . . rocky start.”
“He seems like a good guy.”
“He is,” Amber said, but I couldn’t help but latch on to the tinge of ambivalence in her voice, thinking that, with the proper amount of convincing, my dream of a life with Amber might actually have a chance at coming true.
Amber