“That was either very brave or very stupid,” she said.
“I’m hoping for brave.”
“We’ll see.” She waved me out. “Close the door on your way.”
I closed the door.
Then I stood in the hallway outside her office, shaking with adrenaline and something that felt like triumph, and thought,I did that. I did that for me. Not for Jack, not for some romantic gesture, but because I believed in something and I stood up for it.
Maybe that was what the voice had meant. Maybe the choice wasn’t really about staying or going, about Jack or no Jack, about love or safety.
Maybe the choice was about becoming someone worth staying for.
Lunch was sandwiches with Diane at the little place near her office. Tuna melts and too much coffee and the comfortable rhythm of best friends who’ve known each other long enough to sit in silence without it being awkward.
“You look different,” Diane said, studying me over her sandwich.
“You said that this morning.”
“You lookmoredifferent now.” She tilted her head. “Did something happen?”
I thought about Patricia’s office. The manuscript. The way I’d stood my ground instead of backing down. It felt like a secret, not because I was hiding it, but because I wasn’t sure yet what it meant.
“I stood up for something today,” I said. “At work. Something I believed in.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.” I took a bite of my sandwich. “It felt good, though. Scary, but good.”
“Scary-good is usually a sign you’re doing the right thing.” Diane stole one of my chips. “Speaking of scary-good, how’s Jack?”
“In New York. His interview’s today.”
“And you’re not climbing the walls with anxiety?”
“I’m absolutely climbing the walls with anxiety.” I smiled. “But I’m trying to let him have his thing without making it about me.”
“Look at you, growing as a person.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
She laughed, and something about the sound of it—warm, easy, completely unselfconscious—hit me with a grief I hadn’t been expecting. In my first life, I’d had this. This friendship, this effortless intimacy, this woman who could read my face like a book and loved me anyway. And I’d let it slip away.
Not dramatically, not with any single betrayal or falling-out, but gradually, the way all neglected things die—unanswered phone calls becoming unreturned messages becoming holiday cards becoming nothing at all. By the time I was forty, Diane had been reduced to a name I’d mention at cocktail parties.Oh yes, my old roommate. We’ve lost touch.Said with a shrug, as if losing your best friend were the same as misplacing your keys.
I’d been so careful about protecting myself from the people who might leave that I’d driven away the person who never would have.
“Hey.” I set down my sandwich. “Can I say something weird?”
“Always.”
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. And I don’t tell you that enough. Or ever, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever said it.”
Diane blinked. For a moment, her composure slipped, the mask of breezy confidence she wore like armor, and I saw the real her underneath. The woman who showed up every time without being asked, who canceled her own plans to take me to movies when I was sad, who never once made me feel guilty for needing her.
“Where is this coming from?” she asked.
“I just… realized something. About the door-closing thing.” I took a breath.
