1
Maren
It was the box on the kitchen counter labeled ‘Maren’s crap’ that broke me.
I’d been keeping my shit together all week. All. Week. Even though I led the pack of people most justified to have no amount of ‘shit together’ in any way, shape, or form. I’d been taking regular showers, keeping my hair semi-acceptable in a messy bun, and traded in my pajamas for sensible sweats. For Liv. Because none of this was her fault.
Then this fucking box…
Tears came as the tan line on my finger mocked me, but I went ahead and scraped butter over my burnt piece of toast like a person whose heart was still whole. I was gonna miss this toaster. Always heavy on the toastiness no matter what setting we tried.
A choked-up laugh got caught in my throat and I swallowed it down with a generous helping of carcinogens.
If anyone was to blame for this unfortunate turn of events it would be me. I was the dumbass who believed him when he said he’d never felt this way about anyone before. I was the idiot who blubbered (fucking bawled like a baby, with snot and everything) through a pathetic ‘yes’ when he asked me to be his wife.
“You’re crying into your toast again.” Liv said it more as a matter of fact than any cause for concern. Her days of sympathizing were over, it seemed.
Her philosophy had always been: seventy-two hours to feel through it, then suck it up and move the fuck on. She was this way with breakups, deaths, anything, and it left me both in awe and terrified of her resolve.
By my calculations, I was on hour ninety-two, and therefore overstaying my welcome on her last nerve.
She stood there with a bag of hallway-closet-trash in one hand, damp cloth in the other, and impatience written all over her face. Her beautiful, dimple-chinned face that had been laughing at my stupid jokes over breakfast for the past three years.
The lump in my throat grew three sizes.
“Why don’t you just burn it all down while you’re at it?”
She rolled her eyes with the severe lack of empathy that only a bestest friend in the whole universe could get away with. “Why don’t you help me get the last of this shit packed before the movers show up?”
I stared through the hatch in the kitchen (and my tears) to where her boxes were all neatly stacked in the living room. The stack was steadily building. The time drawing nearer.
“Everyone I love betrays me eventually.”
“Oh, brother.” Liv dropped the trash and jumped onto the counter, blowing the bangs from her eyes with a puff of air. The look on her face said she was listening, but wouldn’t be entertaining any more of my wallowing.
“You wanna know what’s worse than being on the wrong side of budget cuts at work?” I wallowed anyway.
“War, incurable diseases, entire species driven to extinction by–”
“Getting dumped by your fiancé two weeks before your wedding day,” I sniffled. “Wanna know what’s worse than that?”
Liv’s tone didn’t falter. “At the risk of repeating myself… War, incurable dis–”
“Being homeless.”
“Oh, my God, Maren, you’re not homeless.” She threw her hands in the air, frustration grinding the end of her sentence. “We have a few more days before we have to be out of here, and I promised you could stay with Jonathan and me if you haven’t found a place by then.”
“You and Jonathan,” I echoed, turning back to her. “It was so easy for you to just up and leave me. Why would I follow you over there?”
“The only reason I made any plans to move in with him in the first place was because you up and left me, remember?”
How could I forget? It had only been ninety-two hours and forty-seven minutes, after all.
The laugh that came out of me was dark and bitter. Like my soul. “How does a BU graduate with a steady job and bulletproof ten-year plan become… me, here, now? Three years from thirty and nothing to show for it.”
Exasperated, Liv hopped off the counter to rifle through an open box next to the refrigerator. “I was gonna wait until our last day to give you this but– here. To prove that you don’t have nothing.”
She whirled round and brandished a long, slim gift bag that she thrust toward me. It was covered in multi-colored balloons, likely recycled from some other birthday party we hosted here in a happier time.
