The words felt like thieves. “I’m not walking away.”
“What about your grand plan to close the deal on marriage before thirty?”
“What about it?” Rae retorted. “It was a dumb idea. You said so yourself.”
“I said it was a little rigid to map your life out like that with all those numbers,” Ellen admitted. “But the concept of getting married and starting a family isn’t dumb. It’s what you want.”
Rae did still want those things, but they felt very far away, very secondary, compared to more pressing matters at hand. The only timeline in her head right now was the timeline for getting Dustin better. Until that was accomplished, she knew she wouldn’t be able to focus on much else, and she didn’t want to.
“I’m trying this new thing where I don’t overthink things,” Rae said, as she silently overthought everything she’d just thought. “I’m just going where I feel like I’m supposed to go.”
She knew Ellen wouldn’t have much of a rebuttal, as this was very much her own philosophy—that emotions should be allowed to flow out without judgment or censorship—being used against her.
“All right,” Ellen finally said, her tone indicating the disagreement was past, if not patched.
Rae’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry,” she mumbled, and stood up.
“Didn’t you eat dinner at work?”
“No. I bought you those instead.” She nodded toward the desserts.
“Oh,” Ellen said. “Thanks.” She tossed a peanut butter cup Rae’s way.
Rae walked into the kitchenette, Ellen trailing. “You wouldn’t have liked Aaron’s friend anyway,” Ellen said. “He was more of a Wickham than a Darcy.”
ThePride and Prejudicereference was as good a peace offering as Rae could think of, next to the chocolate. “Want to split a scramblette?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Ellen said. “But the thyme is dead.”
Rae glanced at the windowsill. The herb had shriveled into a crunchy brown skeleton. Given that Ellen traveled so often, the brunt of the plant-parenting duties fell on Rae. She hardly had the energy to wet her own toothbrush after she got home from work, let alone remember to tend to another living organism. She couldn’t fathom caring for something like a goldfish or a cat, forget about a human baby. Once again, she felt a defeated sort of shock that people her age were already having kids.
“We’ll get succulents next time,” Ellen said, unceremoniously dumping the thyme into the garbage under the sink. “Even we can’t kill a cactus.”
“Wanna bet?” Rae said, and they laughed a muted Elle-Rae laugh.
“See,” Rae said, as she cracked the eggs and jabbed them with a spatula, “our best-friend bond is too high yielding to let men push us towards default.”
“You know I don’t like finance puns,” Ellen said, but her lips quivered, and they ate the thymeless scramblette from the same plate, with separate forks.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FRIENDSHIP SYNERGIES
“That flattened cardboard box in the middle of the street,” Dustin said, staring out the café window, onto Lorimer Street. “How it’s flapping in the wind, like it’s trying to fly but keeps getting run over by greasy tires.”
“Disheartening,” Rae said, sipping an iced matcha latte at the counter seat beside him. “But poignant.”
“Your turn,” Dustin said. “Find a poem.”
Rae’s eyes unpacked the scene rather than just scanning over it like she’d grown accustomed to doing. The late-afternoon light slanted onto the street, where crusty snowbanks were blackened by car exhaust. The bagel shop across the street had a line out the door as people queued up for lox-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. It was nearly dinner time by most standards, but Williamsburg hadn’t quite wrapped up with Saturday brunch.
“That woman’s scarf,” Rae said, gesturing to a passerby. “How it’s trailing on the sidewalk, trying to break free so it can walk on its own, not realizing it doesn’t have legs.”
“Lots of literary symbolism,” Dustin agreed.
They were playing Poem Spotting, a game they’d coinvented during one of their platonic hangouts in the three weeks since Dustin had opened up about his depression.
They took turns picking out ordinary things that might contain some deeper meaning if woven into verse. Rae was learning, or perhaps remembering, that poetry was less an act of writing and more a way of seeing the world and reflecting on neglected details and textures.
