“He never took you to a game?” she asks.
“Nope. No avocado toast and no baseball games,” I say. “Pathetic, I know.”
“Why not? If you don’t mind my asking.”
I take in a breath. This is marching into forbidden territory of my own. And yet, I feel like I can talk to her about it, which is odd. I never feel like I can talk about it. I don’t even like thinking about it.
“When I was seven, my mom died. It was…sudden. Awful. And after that, everything changed. While I just wanted to sit in my room and cry, my dad turned hard. He said we just had to move on. It’s like thinking about her hurt too much, so he just pretended like she never existed.”
“That’s terrible,” she says so softly I almost don’t hear it.
“Yeah. Well, as you can imagine, I didn’t grow up going to a lot of baseball games or celebrating birthdays or pretty much anything kids do.”
“I understand,” she says, and I look at her.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she answers. “My parents died when I was a junior in high school. Car accident.”
“Jesus,” I say, shocked.
“Kind of just knocked my world off its axis, you know?” she says with a sad smile.
“Is that why you didn’t go to school?” I ask.
“Berkeley,” she says, picking a piece of cheese off her toast, and I stop.
“You wanted to go to Berkeley?” I ask.
“I was accepted to Berkeley. For dance. I was on my way to graduate high school early, but everything changed after the accident,” she answers.
“What happened?” I ask brokenly.
“I had a dance recital. In Santa Ana. I was already at the theater, and they were going to drive there after work. When they were on their way to the theater, someone ran a red light, and that was it.”
“My God,” I say. I don’t know what else to say.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out. It’s like she’s told this story a hundred times and she’s just gotten used to it. “After that, my life went from a smooth path to a bumpy dirt road, you know? I had to deal with all their legal stuff. Finances and things like that. And as it turned out, they were in a lot of debt. They were upside down on the house and by the end, everything just kind of broke even.”
“And left you with nothing,” I say.
“Yep. I don’t blame them for any of it though. I’m sure they were forking money left and right into my college fund. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t enough, and I couldn’t bring myself to go.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, but Mila just smiles. I’m starting to notice how many times she chooses to smile instead of cry.
“I guess that’s why last night was kind of nice,” she says. “It reminded me of my life before all of that.”
“I get that,” I say, setting our plates on the coffee table and settling back into the couch. Mila tucks her legs under herself and pulls a throw blanket over us, leaning close to me. “But Brynn?”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“The two of you just seem very different, that’s all,” I tell her, and Mila turns towards me. Either the avocado toast has givenher a second wind, or she’s on her way to a speedy recovery from whatever was ailing her less than twelve hours ago.
“Actually, those are the kinds of girls I used to hang out with in high school,” she says.
“The mean girls?” I ask.
“We weren’t always mean. Not to everyone. Not really,” she says. I snort, shaking my head. Mila swats me playfully. “Why are you laughing?”
