Her voice is soft as she says, “I’m sorry for everything.”
I look at her. The kitchen is quiet. I can hear the busyness downstairs through the floor. Nothing about the apartment has changed, but literally everything has.
I don’t say anything for a long few minutes. I drink my tea. She drinks hers. The silence is thick with everything else we’re not saying. I’m not sure I can handle it any longer.
“Gianna.” I set the mug down. I keep my hands wrapped around it for the warmth. “Why did you tell me that I’m like Madeline?”
She blinks.
I add, “I’m not — I’m not asking to fight. I want to know.”
She’s quiet for a moment as she looks at her tea. She turns the mug a quarter turn on the counter and then back. When she finally looks up at me she looks tired in a different way than she did when I walked in.
“Because I knew it would hurt you.”
My heart sinks. Knew it. I nod.
“I knew it was unfair the second I started. I knew you weren’t her. You are not — Lucy, you are not anything like her. I know that, and I went there anyway because I wanted you to feel as bad as I felt.” She wipes the back of her hand against her cheek without crying yet. “I have spent every night you were gone on the phone with my mom. Like, literally every night. She asked me what I said to you that night, so I told her, and she went quiet on the phone for a long time. And then she told me Madeline wasfifteen, and I was fifteen, and Benson was seventeen. She told me it was time I let it go.” She pauses, staring at the mug. “And she was right.”
I nod again.
“Mom said — Mom said I do this with him. Like with my friends about Benson. She said she has watched me do it since we were kids. She said I’m pretty controlling, and I’m — I’m working on it, Lucy. I don’t know exactly how yet, but my mom said I need to relax a little and not get so worked up about how I think things should be. You know? I guess I have a hard time with that, and I’m working on it.”
I let that sit in the air and take another sip of my tea. I look at her over the mug.
“I hear you,” I mutter. “I’m not — Gianna, I am not ready to say everything is okay because it isn’t. You kicked me out.” I feel my throat starting to close on me. I say softly, “It felt like you just threw me out.”
Her eyes widen, her lips tighten, but she doesn’t say anything.
“And I want you to know that this week was the worst week I’ve had in a long time. Worse than the field trip thing with my mom. Worse than when I had to drop calc III freshman spring. Worse than cleaning up seven day old cereal bowls at my mom’s house. That night, I drove to my mom’s at eight o’clock at night with three bags and Bear opened the door and I almost couldn’t tell him why I was there because I didn’t have a word for what you had just done to me. And then I sat at my mom’s house for two days and watched her be a mom for one night and then go right back to being her old self, and I had to figure out — by myself, on a couch under an old dusty blanket — what I was going to do because of what you did to me. I know he’s your brother, but that was on you, G. That was on you.”
She’s crying now, but I’m not because I’ve already cried enough over this.
“I know, Lucy.”
I add, keeping my eyes on the counter, “I’m not saying it to be mean.”
She nods.
“I’m saying it because I need you to know that it killed me. I thought you were my best friend.”
“I know. I — I know.” She wipes her tears. “I fucked up, Lucy. I’m sorry.”
I drink my tea and let her have the moment. A few more tears are shed, and then she sucks it up, wipes her face and drinks her tea. “God, I’m sorry.” She dries her face. “I’m sorry, Lucy.”
I nod, letting the silence fill again. I take a sip of my tea. She zones out on her mug for a moment.
“I was staying at my mom’s, and then Benson asked me to sleep over last night.” I look up to watch her face.
“He — what?” she asks in shock. Her tears are gone. “Wait. Really?”
I nod, blushing.
She puts her mug down in a rush and blurts, “No girls are allowed to stay at the Hawthorne House. It’s one of their rules.”
I blink, not knowing what to say to that. “Really?” I ask, and then I recall that is. I’ve read it on the whiteboard downstairs.
She nods her head in disbelief. “The guys were okay with it?”
