“You should go to the football game.” Still busy placing and stapling her rainbows, she didn’t spare me a glance. “You can’t take a year off just to sit in a big old house and drink wine and eat microwaved rice every night.”
“I don’t eat microwaved rice every night.”
“I like how that’s the part you’re disputing.” She gave me a quick grin. “You wanted to live in the sweet little small town, doll. You wanted to get back to your granny’s farm. You’re there, now you need to do it all the way. Go to the football game. Eat from the food trucks. Cheer for the home team. All of it. If you’re not going to do that, you should pack up immediately and come home. You can live with me. You can sub in any district around here until you find something permanent. But you cannot stay there and do nothing.”
I stamped my foot on the kitchen floor. “But Jaime—”
“But Shay,” she interrupted. “I have confirmed with my own eyes that you’re alive and well enough to put on a pretty shirt and go to that football game. It’s time for you to get some real practice with living again, doll. Go. Get there. Do something real, even if you hate it.”
* * *
I wantedto say that nothing about Friendship High School had changed in the years since I graduated, but like everything else in this town, it had a fresh new look. The 1960s-era building with its flat roof and brown exterior had been replaced with a three-story structure, all windows and clean lines and solar panels. Where there had once been a dusty, pitted field better suited for the wanderings of geese and bunnies than any form of athletics now stood a shining sports complex.
Since coming here to Friendship, I’d had it in my head that I’d run into people from high school all over the place. People other than Noah. I figured it would happen at the grocery store or the library or maybe the coffee shop in town where I ate a balanced breakfast of iced coffee and cookies when I ran out of pudding cups. To this point, I hadn’t seen another familiar face.
I guess it made sense. This wasn’t the kind of small town people struggled to leave. Friendship wasn’t remote or isolated, not in any true sense. Of course I hadn’t bumped into anyone from high school in the produce section. They’d moved on.
Not that I was complaining.
I’d had friends in high school but it was mostly the superficial kind of relationships, the ones where I’d catch glimpses of their lives on social media now but I had to pause and remind myself how I knew them.
With that cheerful thought in mind, I strolled along the track loop, taking in the food truck options. The school’s clubs and intramural sports had tables set up in the middle and the booster club was selling t-shirts.
I had to admit, it felt good to do something. Before the debacle with the ex, I went out all the time. I was an outgoing person, dammit. I was social. I liked being around people.
Now, I spent most evenings walking the Twin Tulip grounds while listening to audiobooks or podcasts and drinking wine from a stainless steel water bottle. If I could exhaust myself enough, distract myself enough, I wouldn’t have to think about all the bruises and broken things. But this felt good. Strange good, like I didn’t know what I was doing here but neither did anyone else.
I followed a string of students in marching band regalia into the building and asked them to point me in the direction of the restrooms. Once I was alone in a stall, I glanced at the time on my phone. Another half hour until game time.
“A healthy stream is at least ten uninterrupted seconds.”
I glanced around the stall. Was this person talking tome?
“If you’re not consistently urinating for ten uninterrupted seconds, you should consider pelvic floor therapy.”
Again, I looked around as if I’d find some explanation for the woman who seemed to be speaking to me.
“Okay,” I said tentatively. “Thanks?”
“Do you find you often have interruptions in your stream?”
“I—” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. I’d had a lot of weird conversations in public restrooms.A lot.This was the weirdest by far and that included the time someone asked me if I’d meet their friend because they believed I was her long-lost twin who’d been separated from her at birth. Spoiler alert: I was not her twin. “I’m good. No worries.”
“In my professional opinion, it doesn’t sound like you’re all good,” she chirped.
“Are you…listening to me pee?”
She laughed. “Occupational hazard.”
“Or intrusion of privacy,” I muttered. I finished up, thankful for the noise of the flush for drowning out any additional comments.
Until I stepped out of the stall.
On the other side of the door stood a tall, slender woman. She aimed a huge smile at me. “Hi. I’m Christiane.”
I had to scoot around her to get to the sink. “Hi,” I said over the water.
“I’m a physical therapist. One of my specialties is pelvic floor dysfunction. Here’s my card.”
