“Soooo.” She draws out the vowel for a second. “Forgive me for being a little bit confused about why you asked to meet after all this time. This feels like an apology I’ve been waiting on for a while.” It’s not exactly aggressive, but she isn’t being warm and friendly, either. She’s regarding me with a look of suspicion as the waiter brings us our salads, Delia’s piled high with a rainbow assortment of veggies, beans, and chicken, mine a classic Caesar.
She’s clearly still on guard around me after everything that happened—not that I blame her. But she must’ve also been curious, at least some part of her, because we’re sitting at a local café in town over lunch, and she’s giving me the grace of at leasthearing me out. And even if her tone is as prickly as ever, it feels like a breath of fresh air to realize that maybe noteverythingabout my life has completely and utterly changed.
“First of all,” I say carefully, rearranging the salt and pepper shakers on the table as Delia’s eyes track my every move. “I want to say that I’m sorry. For everything that’s happened in the past year and a half.” When she just nods silently, eyes scanning my face, I continue awkwardly. “So…how are things with your girlfriend?”
“We’re jumping straight into it, are we?” Delia’s eyebrows practically rise to her hairline. “You knew about that?”
“I did.” But I don’t tell her that I only found out recently, the shame eating me up whole in the middle of the restaurant. “How’d that…go? You know, with your parents?”
Delia sighs matter-of-factly. “They flipped out after I told them about Cassie, obviously.” She shrugs, pretending like it’s no big deal, although it clearly is. “I knew it wasn’t going to go well when I told them, but I did it anyway, because she’s a really great person and doesn’t deserve to be hidden like that.” And that, I totally understand. Delia is a lot of things, but she’ll be damned if she ever has to be anybody’s secret. Or make anyone else feel even remotely close to the same way.
Still, she can’t resist the chance to throw in at least one barb, no matter how well-deserved. “But these are things you would’ve known if you didn’t just ghost me after the drama between you and Tyler, you know.” The crunch of the lettuce in her mouth punctuates the end of her sentence, and my face heats up in shame.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” I retort weakly,although in my head, I can’t help but think,Is it?“I…these last few days have showed me a lot of things about myself that I didn’t really notice before.”
She rolls her eyes again. “Of course you didn’t, Ol. Most of the time, wedon’tsee ourselves super clearly. That’s why it’s up to the people in our lives to keep us in check.” She points her fork at me accusingly. “Like our best friends. Those who, when we ignore their warnings, usually turn out to be right.”
I let myself cling to the small glimmer of joy at hearing my old nickname again, and I’m not quite sure when I stopped hating it. Maybe it was somewhere between stepping onto that flight a few days ago and kissing Tyler at the airport.
Yeah. It has to be somewhere in there.
“You’re right,” I say at last, shame heating up my face. “You’re right about all of it, D. Every last bit.”
Her voice is surprisingly choked up when she replies. “I wish I wasn’t,” she sighs, batting away a stray tear. “You know, Olive, I understand you’ve had a lot of shit going on in your life since the breakup, but so have I. And…and I thought you’d become one of my best friends, and then suddenly, when things with Tyler fell apart, you just vanished, too.”
Her revelation turns me cold. I want to open my mouth and tell her that she’s wrong, that no, it washerwho turned her back onmeafter the breakup…but the more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe that isn’t quite true.
As if she can read my mind (which I wouldn’t put past her), Delia speaks again. “I stopped textingyoubecauseyoustopped textingme.Stopped seeking you out in the hallways at school, because whenever you’d catch sight of me, you’d practically sprint in the other direction. Eventually I got tired of trying tochase you. So I stopped. I already deal with trying to convince my parents to like me for who I am—I’m not going to try to convince you, too.” She grips her fork tightly, her knuckles turning white, and it suddenly becomes abundantly clear to me how much she’s been hurting this past year and a half.
You’re so stupid, Olive,my brain chides.So stupid and selfish.
I hate how meek I sound when I reply. “I was avoiding you because I was afraid you were going to rip me a new one for everything that happened with Tyler, so I figured it would be better to just keep my distance. I shouldn’t have, and I’m realizing that now.”
She’s thoughtful for a minute. “I mean, you’re probably right. Iwouldhave ripped you a new one for a minute or two, because even if you didn’t want to hear it, you definitely deserved it.” She takes a shaky breath and pushes on. “But then we would’ve moved past it and gone back to being best friends, because Tyler or no Tyler, you still mattered to me. You didn’t matter to mebecauseyou were with him, you know.”
I think back to that first sleepover we had, with the scary movies and the popcorn confetti. Of the warm—and surprised—look in Delia’s eyes when she admitted that maybe I wasn’t too bad.I think I just realized that you’re kind of one of my closest friends now, and that’s kind of weird, because I don’t really make new friends.
And those are exactly the words I need to hear to lift my spirits and push me to say the words I know I need to.
I sigh down at my plate, gathering my nerve. “I’ve been a sucky best friend—a sucky friend in general, really. I totally understand why you chose Tyler after everything that went down. I’m sorry, D. I can’t tell you how sorry I actually am.”
“ChoseTyler?” Delia laughs incredulously, her choked-up nature gone and replaced with her usual prickly—yet still loveable in a tough-love way—self. “Ol, I didn’t choose him. Youleftall of us to go be with your uppity new Jackassboyfriend. I wasn’t the one who made that choice.” Her words are sharp, but what stings more is the realization that Tyler wasn’t the only person who I made a decision for back then. It’s clear the hurt is still festering, long after the actual events happened.
“You’re right.” I swallow the embarrassment of admitting it. “I know I was a shitty person who made a lot of shitty decisions back then. But after talking to Tyler about everything during the trip, I feel differently. About a lot of things.”
Delia’s eyes pop as wide as saucers as she leans forward, placing both hands on the table and rattling her glass of water. “Hang on,what? What trip? You talked to Tyler?Recently?”
I furrow my brow in confusion. “He didn’t tell you?” Delia was always the person the two of us told everything to, unless that changed—not that I’d know, with how long I’ve been out of the picture.
She lets out a low whistle and leans back in her seat, crossing her arms again. “Damn. Shit must’ve gone down for him to have talked to you again and kept it away from me.”
Understanding dawns on me—Delia really doesn’t knowanythingof what went down this past week. “I didn’t only talk to him. I waswithhim.”
I didn’t think it was possible for her eyes to pop any wider. “Okay, I think we need to backtrack, and you need to start from the beginning, right the fuck now. Because this sounds like a way juicier story than I was anticipating.” She’s sitting so far forward that our noses are practically touching, confusion radiating offher, an excited hunger glinting sharply in her eyes. She looks so much like the Delia that I remember that my heart squeezes painfully at the reminder.
You can have this again,my traitorous brain whispers in the back of my mind.You can have all of this back. Your relationship with Tyler. Your friendship with Delia. All of it.
Instead, I tell my brain to shut up. Because nothing good ever comes from wanting things that you know could be complicated.
