24
Sabrina
I spendSunday working at the senior center with Mom and Jitter, who probably does more work than I do for all of the joy he brings the residents. Seeing Grandpa and hearing stories from the old days from everyone at the center is usually all it takes to cheer me up, but it doesn’t work.
Mom spends all day telling me to go see Emma.
I keep insisting Emma will come to me when she’s ready. That she’s behind at work. That she’s processing things and needs space.
Even though I know I’m hitting a breaking point.
And going home, knowing I’m sleeping mere feet from Grey? That he’s on the other side of the wall? Hearing him moving around, occasionally clearing his throat or running water in the bathroom?
It’s torture.
Absolute torture.
I sleep like crap. When I doze, I dream Emma’s feeding me to a pot-bellied giraffe that her dad’s stuffing for his taxidermy business, and that she keeps sayinggossip is for assholeswhile Laney and Theo ride mating hippopotamuses.
I am not okay, and I finally break.
I call in sick, and then I go huddle in my kitchen at the farthest point from the wall I share with Grey and Zen, and I call Laney. “Are you working today?”
“Let’s see… It’s a Monday, so in theory, I would be doing the things I usually do on a workday, except I’m exploring this wholebe more funside of my personality, but the last time I skipped work, I broke my leg, so—”
“You didnotbreak your leg because you skipped work,” Theo says in the background on her end of the phone.
I slide to the floor in front of my fridge and rub Jitter’s belly when he flops to the ground and rolls over like he’s trying to get into my lap. “It’s remarkable how much I agree with him these days.”
“If I hadn’t skipped work that day—” she starts, but she cuts herself off with a shriek of laughter. “Okay! Okay! I would’ve just broken my leg in the breakroom instead!”
“Is he tickling you?” I am not jealous of my friend. I do not want a man in my life. I am not contemplating knocking on my neighbor’s door and asking if we can get naked in the name of stress relief when I’d be secretly thinking it was something so much more than that, much like I suspect he’d think it was more than that after everything that’s happened between us since he got to town.
Dammit.
“No, he’s piling kittens all over me and they’re climbing on my head,” Laney says. “And I’m working from home today. Are you working today?”
“Called in sick.”
“Are you sick?”
“Physically? No.”
“Are you avoiding your boss?”
“Some.”
“You want to go talk to Emma,” she says.
This is what Laney and Emma and I have always had. We’ve known each other for so long that we can practically read each other’s minds.
“I saw her Saturday and she’s just notherand Ihatethat,” I tell Laney.
“And she’ll know what Chandler loves.”
“No. No.” My hand curls into Jitter’s fur. “I willnotdrag her into this.”
“I can,” Theo calls.
