I folded my arms across my chest. “I hope you told him that we’re on a lease. Unless you’re planning on leaving me high and dry?” I’d meant the last part as a joke, but the words came out sounding accusatory. A byproduct of a turbulent childhood, my emotional pain tended to reveal itself as anger.
“Do you think I’d bail on you like that?” Liz asked, looking pretty angry herself. “And, in case you’ve forgotten, our lease is up in sixty-three days.”
The specificity of the number told me that she’d preemptively looked it up, which annoyed me. She’d known I was going to put up a fight, which is why she’d been trying to muster the nerve to tell me. She was right about our lease being up. I’d been thinking we had at least a few more months. How time flies when you’re destitute.
“So, what, then? I’ve got two months to figure it out?” I felt sick, and not only because of the wine. “I know my money issues are not your problem, but you know how broke I am. How am I supposed to come up with a deposit for a new place, not to mention money for a U-Haul and the gallons of gas I’ll need to drive around looking for apartments? And who the hell is going to rent to me, anyway? I don’t have a job.”
“This isn’t some personal attack against you,” was all she said, as if she hadn’t heard me.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.” I’d meant what I’d said, that my shitshow finances were not her problem. Still, two months—sorry,sixty-three days—wasn’t much time. As my best friend, she could have at least acknowledged the situation she was putting me in. Not that it would change anything if she did; seemed she’d already made up her mind.
“David and I have been datingforever.Moving in together is the next step.”
“I guess.”
“Youlived with Nick, remember?”
I grunted. “And look at how well that turned out.”
“I seriously hope you aren’t comparing Nick to David. Like I’d ever be with somebody like him,” she said nastily, her words overlapping together even worse than before. “I’d rather die.”
Now itdidfeel like a personal attack. Was she trying to say that I had no standards? “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ignoring my question, she said, “What exactly were you hoping for, anyway? That we’d keep living together until the end of time—sit on the front porch in rocking chairs, two old biddies sipping chardonnay and bitching about how shit men are?” Like the sixty-three days comment, her words sounded prepared. I pictured her trying out each zinger on David like he was a judge at a talent show.Yeah, use that one. It’s a little mean, but funny. She’ll be laughing so hard she’ll forget how much poorer she’s about to be.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore!” I exclaimed, hoping to end the conversation. My head was pounding.
She leaned on the wall for support. “Oh, yes you do. You’re not fooling anyone. It’sso obvioushow pissed you are that I’m with somebody and you’re still single. Which is funny, since you shut down completely whenever anyone suggests you start dating. You’re your own worst enemy and you don’t even see it.”
I gaped at her, incredulous. Sure, we’d had petty tiffs before, but this was absurd. “Angry drunk does not look good on you, Liz.”
“Okay, whatever you say. News flash—we’ve all got issues, Olivia. So, maybe it’s high time you got over yours and stopped using what happened with Nick as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself.”
Where the hell was all this coming from, and what did any of it have to do with her moving in with David? Had she just had too much to drink, or were these things she’d been mulling over since we’d started living together? It was so left field that I suspected the latter; alcohol is an excellent truth serum.
I thought of all the times she and David had gone quiet after I’d left the room. Had they sat around dissecting me behind my back, shaking their heads at my pitifulness? Had they smugly congratulated themselves for having found one another, thanking their lucky stars that they weren’t a lonely, pathetic mess like me?
“I’m a grown woman, Liz. I don’t want or need advice from you.”
She barked out a laugh. “Well, maybe you take some, since you haven’t had sex in over a year.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Whatever. Not every woman needs a man’s penis to validate her self-worth.”
“That’s why I’m with David, I have low self-esteem.” She rolled her eyes. “Know why you’re so bitter that I’m moving on with my life while you’re stuck on your own, spinning your wheels? Because you have nothing going on now that you’re out of school. You don’t work, you don’t date, you don’t see friends. All you do is mope and whine about how broke you are. I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt, but this is something you need to hear: you’re no fun to be around. And you’resurprisedI don’t want to live with you anymore?”
Ouch.
Ouch times infinity.
“I’m so sorry that I’m too much of a loser for you!” I shouted, my eyes stinging as I held back tears. “But while you were busy self-righteously dissecting my life, did the reason why I’m so broke ever occur to you? Did it? It’s not like I have no money because of some crack addiction! I went to Dewhurst! Fucking Dewhurst!”
She snorted. “Big whoop!”
The only color I saw was red. My education and relocation to San Francisco represented so much more to me than simply going to college. It was my way of doing right by Tilly and showing all the naysayers back in Pelville that they’d been wrong about me—that itwaspossible for a lowly trailer park girl to make something of her life beyond marrying the first druggie lowlife who knocked her up, which is what they’d expected. Like mother, like daughter, right?
And maybe Liz had been on to something when she’d said I was jealous of her good fortune, her gorgeous boyfriend and great job that she loved. And maybe I had been feeling like a miserable failure lately. And maybe she was just drunk.
But how dare she dismiss something so important to Tilly and me, something I’d workedyearsto achieve, as “big whoop.”
