But now…now I’m more excited than apprehensive to talk to Nissa. Yes, I’ll have to give her the bad news, but I’ll have good news to share with her, too. News about the baby. And that makes me more eager to go and see her? to finally tell her what’s really going on in my life.
Thankfully, the opportunity to tell my friend didn’t arise unexpectedly. Nissa hasn’t been over to visit since we got back and I told her before we left Europe that we’d need a day or two to recuperate once we got back to the States. She seemed fine with that, as though the request wasn’t out of the ordinary. It probably helped that we’d emailed back and forth several times each week while Nate and I were in Europe. I sent her tons of pictures and told her of our adventures, so she wasn’t champing at the bit to talk to me the instant we landed. But the time to tell her is finally at hand. Today is the day, and I’m cautiously, nervously excited.
As soon as I wake from my surprisingly deep sleep (between the disease and my pregnancy, I’m so exhausted all the time that I sleep like the dead), I go straight into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I step into the kitchen, I see that Nate is already up and making himself some coffee.
“Goin’ to Nissa’s,” I tell him as I push my arms into a light jacket and my feet into fuzzy slippers. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” he says sleepily, yawning into his fist.
On my way by him to the door, I pause to give him a quick peck on the lips and a firm slap on the butt. It’s too tempting not to touch that perfectly formed posterior of his.
“That’s right,” he says as I open the door. “Get you some of that fine ass.”
I’m still grinning as I dart across the yard to Nissa’s back door.
I raise my hand to rap my knuckles on the glass, but the door is yanked open before my skin can make contact. Nissa squeals once and jerks me into her arms.
“You’re back! I’m gonna beat you for making me wait this long! What the hell?” she asks, leaning back to give me a mock-angry look.
I smile and remind her, “I told you we’d need a couple of days to recuperate, O Ye of the Short Memory.” She shrugs, unconcerned, and I laugh. “Can I come in?”
Nissa rolls her eyes. “Can you come in? Whatever! What are you, a stranger? Of course, you can come in! Mi casa es su casa.” She turns and walks off, heading to the coffee maker and taking a clean mug from one of the hooks above it.
I stop her before she can pour. “None for me.” From the corner of my eye, I see the open-mouthed, shocked expression on my friend’s face. I never refuse coffee.
Never.
“Okay, so I’m the last to know,” Nissa finally says on a sigh.
My head flips up in surprise. “Pardon?”
“I’m obviously the last to know that we’ve been invaded by aliens. Or there’s been a national disaster. Or you’ve converted to some weird religion that doesn’t allow nature’s finest beverage. Something is going on, and I’m obviously the last to know.”
Again, I smile. “None of those things, but I do have something to talk to you about.”
Nissa’s face falls into a rarely-seen serious countenance. I can almost feel the unease radiating from her, like a soft touch that stretches across the span of the kitchen to lightly tickle my perceptive antennae.
I watch as my friend and neighbor methodically tops off her own coffee, adds another splash of cream and a sprinkle of sugar, and then turns toward the breakfast table. She resumes the chair she’d no doubt been seated in before I interrupted her.
After several long seconds and a sip of her hot-again coffee, Nissa raises her wary blue eyes to mine. “Okay, come and sit. Talk to me.”
I do, taking the chair across from her. I set my hands on the table and entwine my fingers. “I have something to tell you. Well, two things actually. Then I have a favor to ask. A big one.”
“Anything,” Nissa says definitively. There is no hesitation, no reservation, no question. Because that’s the kind of friend she is.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. Whatever it is.”
“You should at least wait until you know what it is.”
“It won’t matter. I’d do anything for you. If it’s within my power, you ask and it gets done. Period.”
It strikes me, and not for the first time, how very fortunate I am to have a friend like Nissa. She’s the thick-and-thin type, the loves-me-anyway type. She’s the until-the-bitter-end type. The type that I will need in my life now more than ever.
And I won’t ever be able to repay the kindness. I won’t ever be able to do the same for her one day.
That’s yet another tragedy about this situation.
“I love you. Have I ever told you that?”
“Not nearly enough,” she says, trying for flippant but failing miserably. The apprehension in her eyes belies the nonchalance of her words. With a sigh that can be felt more than heard, Nissa reaches across the glass mosaic table and covers my hands with her own. “Tell me.”