“Right? So I’m thinking, this is it, I’ve finally found someone who appreciates my wit and charm. And then.” She paused for dramatic effect. “He asks what I do for fun.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. And I, like an idiot, told him the truth. That I have a podcast addiction, specifically true crime podcasts, and that I may or may not have a spreadsheet ranking serial killer documentaries by cinematography, narrative structure, and overall creep factor.”
I burst out laughing. It felt foreign and wonderful. “Pauline, you do realize that sounds?—”
“Completely unhinged? Yes, I’m aware of that now. But in my defense, I’m a journalist—it’s a sickness. I thought honesty was supposed to be attractive. Turns out there’s a line between‘quirky hobby’ and ‘future murder plans,’ and apparently I pole-vaulted right over it.”
“What did he say?”
“He got very quiet. Then he said he had an early morning and basically sprinted out of the restaurant. I haven’t heard from him since. Three days, Claudette. I’m officially ghosted.”
“Maybe he’s just busy?”
“Nobody’s that busy. He saw my dark passenger and ran for the hills.” She sighed, but I could hear the smile in it. “Which is fine, honestly. If he can’t handle my extensive knowledge of forensic psychology, he doesn’t deserve this excellence.”
I smiled. “You’re so different from College Pauline, and I’m loving it.”
“College Pauline spent three years pining after a guy who told his friends she wasn’t his type.” I could imagine her cringing as she always did when we talked about this topic. “How do one recover from that humiliation?”
“He was an asshole.”
“I learned my brutal lesson with rich hot guys who think the world revolves around them.”
We both laughed, and god, it felt good. Normal. Like I was just a person talking to my best friend instead of a dying girl counting down days.
“So what about you?” Pauline asked. “How was the appointment?”
“It was bad.”
“How bad?”
“Dr. Rivera said there’s nothing else to try. No surgery, no experimental treatments. Nothing. We’re just waiting now.”
“Shit. Claudette, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I picked at a loose thread on my bedspread. “Eight months of appointments getting progressively worse, and today was the final nail in the coffin. Pun intended.”
Her voice got softer. “How are you doing? Really?”
“Honestly? I feel like I’m suffocating. Mom won’t stop hovering. Dad keeps asking if I need anything every five minutes. They’re trying to take care of me but I can barely breathe.”
“They’re scared.”
“I know. But I’m scared too, and I’m the one dying. I should get to decide how I spend whatever time I have left, you know? “I don’t want to spend it trapped in my childhood bedroom while my mom keeps trying to force-feed me soup.”
Pauline was quiet for a second. “Remember that bucket list we made?”
I looked at my nightstand where that old journal was buried under pill bottles. “When we were sixteen and thought we knew everything?”
“We did know everything. Sixteen-year-old us were brilliant.”
“Sixteen-year-old us thought thirty was ancient.”
“Okay, fair. But we wrote down a hundred things we wanted to do, Claudie. And how many have we actually done?”
“I don’t know. Twenty? Maybe?”
