“You said you worried that our friendship only exists when we’re together—that I don’t share this stuff with you because I’ve forgotten about you.”
“Okay.”
“I guess I also worry that you’ve outgrown me. That you don’t need me anymore.”
“I need you,” I say immediately.
But if Nate and I had gotten married, George and I wouldn’t have had this chance to reconnect. We wouldn’t be here, lying on a hammock in a remote nook of the Clayoquot Sound. And that idea—that we might have kept slipping further and further apart until we were unrecognizable to each other—is a far greater loss than the breakup. Getting dumped was a knockdown punch, but I’ve picked myself back up. Losing George would have been a slow erosion—harder to see how we’d been chipped away at, and harder still to recover from.
“Promise for a promise?” George asks, his eyes darting between mine.
“Go on.”
“You said this morning that you want to beusagain,” George continues. “But I don’t think it’s possible to have the same relationship we did as kids or when we lived together. We’re thirty now. I wonder if we haven’t figured out how to be George and Frankie as adults yet.”
When we were next-door neighbors, the mailbox and our letters served as intermediaries. As roommates, we made sure we spent at least two nights a week together, but we also left each other notes on scraps of paper and Post-its. Sometimes I’d find a yellow square stuck to the bathroom mirror or to my wallet. Once, I woke to find one on my forehead. In our twenties, we kept in touch through emails and texts and calls, and we’d see each other over the holidays and when George was in Toronto. But it wasn’t the same.
“You’re probably right,” I say. I haven’t worked out how to be myself as an adult yet, let alone how to preserve our friendship as we evolve.
“I think we need to get comfortable being honest and open with each other again,” George says.
I raise my eyebrows. Opening up isn’t his strong suit. “If you can do it, I can, too.”
“The title of your memoir?”
“Exactly. So tell me about the big stuff,” I say. “Not that protein shakes aren’t newsworthy.”
He takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. “This is actually harder than I thought,” he says.
My stomach sinks. “What’s wrong?”
He runs his finger over the hammock netting, dropping his gaze. “I started seeing a therapist.”
“You have atherapist?”
His eyes flick to mine.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so surprised,” I say. George is the last person I’d imagine in therapy. He’s extremely private and sotogether. When he moved out of his dad’s place and backin with Mimi just before we turned fourteen, he had just one appointment with the school guidance counselor and refused to go a second time. I try again. “How long have you been seeing them?”
“It’s new. We’ve been doing virtual sessions for a couple of months.”
I nod, encouraging him to keep talking.
“My doctor suggested therapy after the wildfires, but I was reluctant.”
“Because spilling your guts to a stranger is almost as painful as waiting in line?”
“That’s what I assumed. But it’s actually been sort of liberating. I went in hoping to work on one issue, but…” He laughs softly. “With my family history, it turns out there’s a lot to dig into. My therapist is having a field day.”
He’s making light of it, but his face has darkened.
“Is it helping?”
“I think so. I’ve always been dealing with this stuff. It was usually a hum in the background, but sometimes it gets loud. It’s worse when I’m stressed or tired.”
“When you say it’s loud…what isit?”
“Basically me, shit-talking myself.”
