“I saw Reggie not long ago,” I found myself saying. “She looked horrible. Strung out and wasted away. It was pretty scary to see.”
Dania gave me a knowing look. “Because it reminded you of what you almost became?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, it did. But I felt bad for her. Reggie’s not a bad person.”
“Just sort of stupid,” Dania retorted, not unkindly.
“I was going to say intelligently challenged,” I mused, arching an eyebrow.
Dania leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, still holding the stuffed bear. “I would have ended up like that. If it weren’t for Lyla. She saved me. Then I met Chris and things just seemed to fall into place,” she remarked quietly, looking almost embarrassed.
“Is Chris the hottie in the pictures on your fridge?” I asked, teasing her just a bit, trying to interject some of our old ease into the conversation.
Dania flushed. “Yeah, that’s him. He works over at the lumberyard. I met him when he came in to have his teeth cleaned.”
I whistled. “Now that’s how you meet a guy!”
Dania laughed. “Yeah I know. Oh how times have changed, huh?”
“I’d say,” I agreed, returning her grin with one of my own.
We sat there smiling at each other for a while and then Dania sobered.
“Are you happy?” Dania asked suddenly. That seemed to be the question of the millennium. I was starting to get a little tired of answering it. Maybe I should tattoo my answer on my forehead.
Dania cocked her head to the side regarding me. “I can’t really tell. You seem…content…but I’m not really sure.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I growled, becoming unreasonably angry.
“I know you, Ells. I know what you look like when you’re happy and this isn’t it. I can tell that you want to be. That youthinkyou should be, but I’m not sure you are,” she remarked, and I rolled my eyes.
“That is the absolutely the lamest thing I’ve ever heard, Dania. You know what I look like when I’m happy? I think I should be happy but I’m not? Seriously? Did you sprinkle a fortune cookie in your cereal this morning? Since when did you start channeling the Dali Lama?” I mocked with more than a hint of annoyance.
Dania leveled me with her blue eyes that at that moment saw way too much. “You forget that even though you decided to cut me out of your life for three years, Iknowyou. I’ve seen you at your lowest, Ells. But I’ve also seen you happy, even when you tried to hide it.”
I snorted, trying to dismiss what she was saying. I felt as though I had wandered into the Twilight Zone. Dania was officially freaking me out.
“D, when you and I hung out, I wasn’t exactly known for my sparkly optimism and sunny outlook on life. I can’t imagine youeversaw me happy. Hell, I’m not sure you ever saw me really smile. I think I was actually allergic to that particular expression for years,” I joked, hoping to change the subject.
While I had come to Dania’s hoping to bury the proverbial hatchet, I wasn’t looking for some sort of soul-searching diatribe. Dania had never been the type of girl to give much attention to anyone other than herself. I had walked into this apartment blind to this apparently very changed woman.
“Yeah, you definitely had the whole emo thing down cold,” Dania smirked. “But I saw you happy too. You tried really hard to be sneaky about it but you didn’t realize that I saw it all.” I frowned, not sure what she was talking about.
“You and Flynn. Back in school. I knew you were hanging out with him. I knew that when you disappeared, that’s where you were. You thought you were hiding it but you sucked at it. Whenever you were with Flynn, you’d have this look on your face like you had just won the lottery.” I didn’t get embarrassed. I didn’t flush. And I certainly didn’t deny it. Those days were long over. I would never deny my feelings for Flynn ever again.
Dania chewed on her bottom lip and watched me closely. “I was jealous, you know.” I raised my eyebrows in disbelief.
“Jealous? Of what?” I asked, not sure I had heard her correctly.
Dania fiddled with a loose string on her pajama top. Self-reflection had never been her strong suit. I knew admitting any sort of shortcoming was akin to pulling teeth.
“I wanted what you had with Flynn. I saw the way he looked at you and I hated him for it.” Her words didn’t hold an ounce of self-pity. They were just fact. Pure and simple fact.
“I wanted someone to look at me as though I were the most amazing thing they had ever seen. But I didn’t have that. You had that with Flynn. And even though you denied that you cared about him, I knew. And I was jealous of it.” She hung her head. “I hated him because I knew no one would ever look at me that way. I wanted it so badly. So I ruined it for you.”
“We were horrible to him,” I said quietly.
“And he learned to love you anyway. That’s amazing.” Dania shook her head as though in awe and I could tell she meant what she said.
