“I think we need to figure it out,” April said. “Because I don’t want to keep doing this. Feeling like this. It’s not good for either of us.”
Ramona nodded. “Let’s start there, then. Howdoyou feel?”
April took a sip of tea to order her thoughts, but they weren’t so muddled after all. They were pretty damn clear, in fact.
“I feel lost,” April said. Her voice cracked on the last word, but she forced herself steady. “And I feel left.”
Ramona didn’t look surprised or affronted. She just looked sad.
“How do you feel?” April asked.
Ramona’s eyes were shiny in the dim light. “I feel guilty.”
April frowned. She wished she could be as unsurprised as Ramona seemed to be at her own declaration, but she wasn’t prepared for those words. “Guilty?”
Ramona nodded. “I know I left. I know I’m far away. I know I’m ha—”
She cut herself off, looked down at her tea.
“Happy,” April said. “You know you’re happy.”
Ramona nodded again.
“Iwantyou to be happy, Mona,” April said.
Ramona tilted her head. “Do you?”
April’s fingers tightened on her mug. “Yes. God. Of course.”
“I know,” Ramona said, shoulders drooping. “I know that, but lately, it hasn’t felt like that. It feels like you’re always annoyed with what I’m saying or how I’m saying it or what I’m not saying.”
“I found out about your engagement through a tabloid.”
“That wasn’t my intention though.”
“And Iknowthat,” April said. “But it still happened, and it wouldn’t have if you’d just called me the night Dylan proposed. Texted. Anything. I want you to be happy. I’m glad you’re in love and getting married and living in LA where you want to be, doing what you want to do, but I never thought I’d feel so outside of it all.”
Ramona’s brows dipped.
“I can be happy for you andsadthat I don’t feel like your best friend anymore,” April said. “Two things can be true at once.”
“You don’t make it easy, April,” Ramona said. “You tally everything I do, every missed text, every time I don’t lead the conversation off with a question about your well-being. And then you take all that hurt and go silent. You didn’t tell me about you and Daphne. You didn’t tell me about closing your shop, renting out your house. God knows what else you’re hiding away for a rainy day.”
“A rainy day?”
“When it suitsyouto tell me.”
They both went quiet then, and April knew Ramona was right. All of it. She held a grudge, she knew she did. She tucked hurt feelings away inside of her, taking them out every now and then to croon over them like Gollum and the Precious.
But April was right too, and she could tell Ramona knew it. And maybe neither one of them was really to blame. She trusted Ramona, and knew Ramona trusted her. They’d never do anything to intentionally hurt each other. For so long, they’d been Apes and Mona. Or Apes and Llama Face. Or Apes and Ra and Ram and all the nicknames April had called her over the years, a closeness that bordered on dependency, at least on April’s part.
Maybe now, they needed to figure out how to be April and Ramona.
April took a breath and circled around the island to stand next to her best friend.
“Maybe we’re just changing,” she said. “And I think I’ve been really scared of that. Becausechangingfelt likelosing.”
Ramona took her hand and squeezed it. “You could never lose me.”
