Finally, I’m thinking, that stir of hope something closer to a swirl now, and I wish I was more prepared. For the first couple of months after Sibby had started pulling away—not home as frequently, answering my texts with friendly but bland, noncommittal replies, passing on offers to watch a favorite show or visit a neighborhood bar or restaurant—I’d tried so hard to connect. Lightly, at first, with jokes about how busy she always was, or once a clever, hand-drawn ransom note on her bedroom door:The Bachelorette season finale tonight or your cashmere sweater gets the dryer. Later, more serious efforts to talk it through, efforts that made me feel sweaty and sick with nerves, Sibby always brushing me off with a laughing reply, “I’m just busy, Meg! You worry too much.” A quick hug or promise to find some time soon would always have me feeling both vaguely better and vaguely unsatisfied, a disquieting familiarity in her brush-offs. I knew Sibby too well to think we’d gotten to the root of whatever the problem is, but after so many months I’ve become passive about it, locked in an old, painful fear of what pressing her might lead to.
“What’s up?” I lean back against the counter so I face where she’s sitting on the couch, the whole width of our apartment between us, but I’m sure this is the right move—not too eager, not too pressured.
“You know Elijah, right?”
This is an absurd question. He sleeps here three nights a week and has for the last three months; of course I know him. I know what kind of razor he uses. Frankly, in a thin-walled apartment, I am way too familiar with some of his most not-for-public-consumption noises.
“Sure.” It’s casual, but inside I’m steeling myself. The three-nights-a-week stuff has already been a concession, particularly since when he’s here I always worry I’m interrupting by breathing, and because I know—from one of my few longer-than-five-minute conversations with him—he prefers our place to the studio he’s got in Bed-Stuy, I’m expecting a big ask. Probably his lease is up, probably he wants to crash here for a while—
“He and I are moving in together.”
I almost drop the yogurt.
“We got a place in the Village. Not far from that oyster bar you used to like . . .”
What. The. Fuck.
Sibby keeps talking, something about tiny square footage but an updated kitchen, but I’m stuck on the essentials: she’s moving in with a guy she’s been dating for a few months, she’s moving out ofhere, she’s moving out ofBrooklyn, she’s had the gall to reference an oyster bar I did not in fact like butdidgo to for a date awkward enough to deserve an entireCosmoarticle.
“But don’t worry, I’m here until the end of summer, so you’ve got plenty of notice.”
I can’t seem to do anything but stare.
“I don’t figure you’ll bring in another roommate,” she continues, “but I wanted to give you lead time in case. You can take my room when I go, make yours an office. Run your business out of here, you know?”
Run my business?Sibby barely knows the half of it with my business, knows nothing about how many regulars I’ve picked up since theTimesarticle, and she certainly knows nothing about the massive potential of the contract I’m trying out for, which now I absolutely have to get if I have any real hope of affording this place alone, even temporarily. Sure, I’m doing well with clients, have a couple of regular sponsors for my social media—but I’m a twenty-six-year-old artist living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
What is shethinking?
I can hardly process what we’re talking about here, can hardly process that this conversation is so transactional, that we’re not going to talk about the fact that we’ve lived together in this city since we were nineteen, that every big move we made here—apartments, jobs, changing our regular laundromat—we’ve made them as a unit. That there’ll be a whole body of water separating us now.
My hold on the yogurt container now feels less a drop risk and more a smash risk. I breathe through my nose, try to settle down.
“What about your job?”
Sibby waves a hand. “I’m going to start with a new family in the city after Labor Day. It’s all set.”
“You love the Whalens, though,” I protest weakly. Not Tilda, but those kids—Sibby’s poured her whole heart into those kids for the last four years she’s worked for the Whalens.
Sibby looks down, rubs her thumb against the outer edge of her laptop. “They’ll be okay. Spence’ll be in school full time soon. And anyway, I’ve probably only got a year or two left in me for nannying. Besides, that was never the dream.”
“Will you start auditioning again?”
She purses her lips, shifts her eyes toward the front window. It’s sunny out, a slant of light passing through the thick pane of glass, and I see the crinkles at the corners of Sibby’s eyes. Tiny, cheerful lines from a big, honking laugh I haven’t heard in months.
“No, Eli got a producing gig at NBC, a pretty good one. I may not even have to work forever.”
“Sib,” I say. That nickname, it’s always felt special.Sib, short for Sibby, short for Sibyl. But to me, it always felt—short forsibling. Short for the sister I never had. But this isn’t the sister I know. “I don’t understand this.”
This is such a profound understatement that it’s almost funny. It isn’t that I thought Sibby and I would live together forever; it isn’t even that we haven’t considered separate places before. After all, when she took the job here, it was me who thought of staying behind in Manhattan, where I was getting steady work even without the benefit of a home shop like Cecelia’s, in demand enough to be able to dodge noncompetes for the shops I did work with. But how did we get to this place, a place where we haven’t eventalkedabout this massive change? How is it simply an announcement, and not the culmination of hours of conversation, including at least a few hours devoted to my ambitious, determined friend saying shemay not even have to workanymore? How did thishappen?
She led, and I followed.Reid’s deep voice again, and all I can think is:I wish I had a code for this. I wish I had a sign.
“It’s a big change, I know,” Sibby says lightly, opening her laptop and tapping a few keys. “Here, I’ll pull up the listing for you so you can—”
“No. No, that’s all right.” I’ve only taken two bites of my yogurt, but I hastily put it back in the fridge, spoon and all. Let’s face it, I’m definitely not going to eat that later. It’s going to get that weird yogurt skin that makes you wonder why yogurt exists, period. But right now, I don’t care about anything but getting out of here before Sibby can see I’ve got frustrated tears pricking behind my eyes. “I’m actually filling in at the shop again today, so I’d better get going.”
“Meg, listen, it’ll be fine! I’ll come visit, and you’ll come visit.”
