“Hey, Bill,” I say, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Hey, Bill,” she echoes back. Over the years, Willow got shortened to Wills which morphed into Bill, which is also the last syllable ofmyname. Since at least middle school, maybe earlier, it’s been what we’ve called each other. Our mothers, who both gave us the wispy, feminine names of romance novel heroines,hatedit. One time, when I called the landline at Willow’s house and asked for “Bill,” her mother hung up on me three times until I finally caved and asked for “Willow.” But I think the nickname suits her. Unconventional, but still, in its own way, classic.
“What’s up?” Willow asks through a yawn.
“Did I wake you up?”
“No, no. Don’t worry—Nora’s teething, so I just got up for the fifth time tonight to settle her.” And I feel a warm sensation skate over me, like slipping into a hot bath with a glass of red wine. It’s the way Willow makes everyone feel. And it’s exactly why she was the one I needed to call right now. I try to picture her calm face, framed by soft bangs—effortless, like a brunette Brigitte Bardot—her warm brown eyes and gentle smile. “So what’s up? Talk to me.”
“I just… This trip was supposed to be this refreshing, cleansing vacation, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the past.”
“About Jamie?”
“Well, yeah, but also…” I don’t even know what I’m trying to say, exactly. But I try to let the words pour out of me anyway. “Like, the deep past. The Liam days. And you know, the whole PCOS thing. Aside from irregular periods, I’ve been super lucky so far when it comes to symptoms. And because of that, I haven’t really had to worry about it. I could kind of put the whole thing in the past. Try to pretend it didn’t exist, you know?”
Willow hums encouragingly on the other end of the line. She was one of the first people I told about the diagnosis, and ever since, I’ve always known I could count on her—whether for an emergency tampon or a hook-up to French pharmacy skincare to combat the occasional acne flare-ups, or most importantly, for an ear to listen.
“But I guess what I’m saying is, the miscarriage last year messed me up more than I thought it did.” I feel my throat closing up, and I’m trying not to cry.
Willow lets out a deep sigh. “Oh, honey. Of course it did. And that’s okay. That’s totally normal. When I had mine before Nora, it was scary and devastating, and the worst thing is how life just seems to go on around you, no one having any idea what you’re going through. And what you’ve lost.”
I take a shaky breath. “Exactly.” I hate that this is something Willow and I have both suffered, but I’m grateful that our shared experience makes us both feel less alone. “The thing is, with Jamie, I thought the miscarriage and the breakup were kind of two separate things, you know? It was just bad timingmixed with the inevitable. Jamie had been waiting for the other shoe to drop for probably the entire length of our relationship anyway. Or that’s what I believed. But now…”
“Now?”
“Well, I just wonder if I was the one putting up the walls, afraid of not being…”
“Not being what, Sybil?”
“The wife he wanted.” Now I’m crying despite my best efforts, and thankful for the cloak of darkness, the moon and stars obscured by thick clouds. “Am I really the person he thought he was marrying? How do you even know if you are who people think you are? Am I even making sense?”
“Wow.” Willow’s deadpan voice in my ear brings me back to our phone call. “You go for the big existential questions, huh?”
I huff out a laugh. “Sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay. I get it. I always start questioning my life path around the full moon. That shit brings up all kinds of big feelings.”
“Tell me about it.”
I hear Nora start to cry again through the phone and try to imagine the four of us bouncing from small Mediterranean town to small Mediterranean town, like we did when the Core Four took our first trip abroad. Eating bread and cheese until we pass out somewhere in a patch of sunlight. Nothing different from that first trip except Willow’s baby strapped to her chest.
Of course, it couldn’t really be that simple. There would be nap times to plan around; international phone calls to husbands and fiancés back home. Probably some camera crewtrailing Nikki for aLovedByfeaturette about finding love abroad. People change. Lives change. Maybe that’s okay.
Even if it sometimes still feels like a kind of loss.
After a few minutes of silence on the line, Willow speaks. “Can I ask you something, Sybil?”
“Of course!”
“Why do you think it’s been so hard for you to just say all this to Jamie?”
I blink back the fresh tears that threaten, and swallow through the lump in my throat. “Because he’ll feel so guilty. And—Icouldn’ttell him that weekend. I didn’t want him to marry me out of guilt. I couldn’t do that, Bill. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“But you’re not together anymore. Don’t you think he’d appreciate getting the full story?”
“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“How so?”
