“But, what?” I can tell there’s more she wants to say.
She pushes out a harsh breath. “Do you really want to know? And don’t get smart by saying ‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.’”
I snicker at the accuracy.
“Tell me.”
“Your tendency to keep everything to yourself,” she finally says after a beat. “You keep so much locked up inside of you, Alyssia. You barely share with me.”
“I share everything with you,” I retort, feeling defensive.
“When you’re forced to. If you hadn’t gotten pregnant, would you have told me about what happened between you and Travis in Vegas?”
“I—” I stop myself because I don’t have an answer for her question. Would I have told her?
“And I’m not saying you have to tell me about every single sexcapade you have. We’re all entitled to our privacy. But what I’m getting at is your reluctance to let anyone in. You hold yourself back from letting anyone seeallof you.”
“How can you say that? You’ve been my best friend since freshman year. I let you in.”
“Do you even remember how our friendship started?”
“Of course I do.” Kandace and I lived on the same dorm floor freshman year, but it wasn’t until we were partnered together in our biology lab that we became friends.
“Then you should remember how if it were up to you, we probably would never have been friends.”
I open and close my mouth thinking of those early days as a college student.
“You were so closed off, ignoring anyone who tried to be your friend. If I hadn’t begged our biology professor to partner me with you for lab, I doubt you would’ve even spoken to me.”
“Professor James did what?”
“You heard me. I told him you needed my help but were too embarrassed to ask.”
“Kandace,” I gasp. “I didn’t know that. Why would you?—”
“Because you barely spoke in the dorm, you rarely came out to the parties or social events. It just …” She sighs. “Seeing you all alone and sad when you thought no one was looking reminded me of my sister.”
My heart squeezes, and my hand trembles, nearly leading me to spill my tea. I set it down on the small, metal table in front of me.
Kandace had an older sister who committed suicide while Kandace was in middle school. It’s one of the things, once we got to know one another, that we bonded over. We both know what it’s like to lose people we love.
She told me it’s also why she chose to go into a profession that helps bring new life into the world.
“Kandace—”
“I don’t mean to compare you to Raquel,” she says of her sister. “But by then I had an idea of what depression looked like, and well, I wanted to help if I could.”
As much as I want to tell Kandace she’s wrong, the truth is, she’s not. At eighteen and living on the other side of the country from where I grew up, I was not only overwhelmed with the change, but I was also still deep in grief.
It’d been four years since that accident that injured me and killed my parents, but only a year after my grandmother died, and six months since the boyfriend I’d dated all throughout high school dumped me.
I wasn’t looking for any more people to get close to only to lose them.
“You didn’t make it easy,” she continues. “With all your one-word answers. But I’m persistent,” she says in a cheery tone.
“More than anyone I know.” Kandace is very much an extrovert whereas I’m not.
“That said, are you doing the same thing with Travis?”
