‘And now we’re back to my being good at school,’ Alice said. ‘See, I’ve never been cool.’
Briar paused, her mug poised against her lips. She didn’t know how to say that she’d always found Alice cool, that her favorite thing in the world until she was eighteen had been listening to Alice talk.
‘Are you ready to order?’ Their waitress had returned and Briar glanced at the menu, realizing she’d forgotten to even look.
‘Can I have a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with scrambled eggs, bacon, and a side of hashbrowns?’ Alice jumped in. ‘And some orange juice, please.’
The waitress scribbled the order. She turned to Briar, who stared at Alice in wonder.
‘I’ll have the same.’
The waitress took their menus, and Alice shot her a look. ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t believe you remembered our order,’ Briar said.
Alice shrugged. ‘When I was really homesick, those first few months, this is what I thought about.’ She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. ‘The smell is exactly the same.’ Her eyes snapped open. ‘I even got the curtains right.’ She thumbed the blue gingham, and added, ‘I’d think about this place a lot.’
Briar swallowed. ‘Me too.’ It was a small concession, but it felt monumental.
‘What about life in DC?’ Alice asked.
She didn’t know where to start, how to catch Alice up on the last decade.
Sticking to the easy stuff, Briar regaled Alice with stories of her different jobs over the years. She told her about the shows she’d seen ushering at a local music venue, the horrendous customers she’d had as a barista, and the funniest pickup lines tried on her at the bar.
Alice laughed so hard at one story that she nearly choked on her orange juice. In turn, she told Briar all about her research, the dissertation process, and how she was only one of three women in her program. Briar couldn’t help but admire the light in Alice’s eyes when she talked about her work.
‘Seems like you’re really busy,’ she said when Alice stopped to breathe. They’d finished their food, but Briar hadn’t even noticed the time passing. ‘Doesn’t leave a lot of time for dating.’
It had been a stupid thing to say. They’d recovered spectacularly from the awkwardness of the morning and now she was veering towards dangerous territory again.
Alice pursed her lips. ‘It doesn’t.’ She swirled her spoon in the puddle of syrup on her plate, not looking up at Briar. ‘What about you?’
‘Well, being a bartender might get you hit on a lot, but it doesn’t lend itself to starting relationships.’
‘But youhavedated…’ Alice trailed off.
Briar shrugged. ‘Yeah. There was Riley in college. First girlfriend, first of mostly everything…’ She cleared her throat. ‘We broke up when my mom got sick. We were in different places in our lives.’ She didn’t mention that Riley had tried to convince her to stay in school. In the end, Riley hadn’t been able to understand the lengths Briar would go to for her family.
Alice hummed. ‘That sounds hard. I can’t imagine.’
She reached out and grasped Briar’s hand. Briar knew that Alice wasn’t talking about the breakup, but about Susan’s cancer, about Briar having to drop out of school – and she couldn’t talk about that yet, not with Alice. If they only had the summer to be friends again, she didn’t want to spend it stewing over how different her life would have been if Alice had been around for the hard parts. She looked away from their overlapping fingers.
‘And then there was Miles,’ Briar said, moving into easier territory. ‘He was nice.’
It was a terrible summary of her last relationship. She and Miles had dated for just over a year, and he had been there for a very low point in her life. Her mother had been in remission, but Briar had been stuck, unable to make any decisions without having a panic attack at the thought that her mother would die without her there.
‘Just nice?’ Alice asked, sipping her tea.
‘He was safe,’ Briar said, not loving that descriptor either. Miles had supported her through her mom’s move closer to camp, Briar finding and losing several jobs, and her preoccupation with the twins’ college admissions process and RJ’s job search. He had been a stable presence and had made Briar feel saner, but then he’d gotten a promotion to Chicago, and she hadn’t gone with him. She hadn’t been able to leave her mother.
He’d accused her of never completely letting him in, which was eerily similar to what Riley had said during their breakup. And Briar couldn’t deny that. She hadn’t let anyone fully in since she’d lost the person who had meant the most to her. Neither of them had known about Alice, but both had seemed to sense that hole in her life.
Alice nodded, seeming to accept that answer, and Briar jumped at the chance to take the focus off of her.
‘And you and Tess?’ she asked, managing to make the question sound light-hearted.
Finding out about Tess had been one of the worst moments of Briar’s life. Seeing Alice’s post on Instagram with her face pressed against another woman’s, smiling for the camera, had broken Briar’s heart all over again. Briar had been desperately trying to convince herself that the problem between them had been Alice’s inability to accept her sexuality. But the post made it clear that coming out hadn’t been the issue, she just hadn’t wanted Briar as anything more than an experiment.
