As we wait for the waitress to take our order, Lachlan pushes his chair back. “I’m just going to nip to the loo. If she comes, will you get me that chicken thing?”
“Sure,” I say. “Do you want it with the—”
“No, just the one I liked last time. And also a—”
“Yeah, yeah, oat milk. I’m on it.” I wave him away and ignore Josh’s pointed clearing of his throat, his raised eyebrows.
When the food arrives, Lachlan and I slip into a dance that has become as familiar as breathing. I take the pickle off his sandwich, he takes a handful of my fries. I mix ketchup and mayo together on a small plate and slide it between us, he fishes the lemon out of my Diet Coke with his knife and plops it into his water. I spear the tomato on my burger with my fork just as he lifts the top of his sandwich up for me to slide it in. It’s a routine developed over the course of countless shared meals, and I normally wouldn’t think anything of it, but then I catch the look on Josh’s face and that familiar guilt twists again. How must this look to him? It’s the funhouse mirror version of seeing my professional competence through Josh’s eyes this morning, and this time it doesn’t fill me with pride so much as apprehension.
To any outside observer, the rest of the meal passes in harmony, but I’m acutely aware of the tension building between Josh and me. Outside the restaurant, we leave Lachlan and head forthe water, preferring to walk home to help Josh stave off a jet lag crash. We stroll along the riverfront in silence for a while, bundling our coats closer against the biting autumn wind whipping off the Mersey. I know what Josh wants to say, and I don’t know if I’m ready to have this fight. But we’ve been friends too long not to have it.
Josh breaks the silence. “So what’s the deal with you guys?”
I decide my first line of defense will be to play dumb. “What do you mean?”
“Abby, come on. Erica and I don’t have that level of choreography, and we’ve been together since college.”
I shrug, the picture of nonchalance. “We’ve just gotten really close. We get each other on some fundamental level. It’s nothing more than that.”
“Because he’s married.”
I bristle, and not just because of a particularly brutal gust of wind. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Because he’s married. And because I’m just out of a broken engagement—don’t know if you remember that part.”
He ignores this. “Have you talked to him about it? As in, about how intense your relationship is?”
“Why would I do that? I don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”
“Of course.”
“Josh, come on.”
He stops walking and looks at me. “No, Abby,youcome on. This relationship is not normal. You need to say something.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. “Just play it out for a second: I go to Lachlan—practically my only friend in this entire country, by the way—and say I think it’s weird we’re spending so much time together. What happens then?”
“I don’t know, you guys ease back and maybe it’s awkward for a bit but then you end up being normal friends. Like you and me. You don’t feed each other pickles and gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes as you discuss highlights from the weekend’s matches.”
“First of all, I have definitely lovingly fed you a pickle.”
“I’m not going to let you joke your way out of this one. You need to realize this path is dangerous. There be dragons.” Josh waves his hand at the imaginary perils lurking beyond the borders of my life.
“Dragons be damned. I don’t think he thinks it’s weird at all, so what happens when I go and incept him with the idea that itisweird?”
“Please don’t useinceptas a verb,” he says.
“Please don’t be an English teacher when I’m trying to talk you out of talking me into ruining my life.”
“How can I not be an English teacher when you hit me with sentences like that?”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to joke our way out of this?”
He sighs and slips his arm through mine. “You’re right. I’m just trying to look out for you. And I know what you get from him: Clearly you have a blast together and it’s great to have such a good friend in a new city when so much in your life is in flux. And I’m sure it’s nice to have positive attention from a man after Steven. I get it. But flip it around: What doesheget fromyou?”
“The same thing, but with boobs?”
“No, he gets a proxy for his wife. You’re giving him the affection and support and love that she’s supposed to give him, except she can’t be bothered to drag herself out of Mallorca to divorce him, or whatever. I mean, Christ, Abby, you’relivingwith him.”
“Okay, but what’s so wrong with that?” My voice is veering into the high whine of desperation, but I can’t help it. “I’m fine withit, he’s fine with it. We’re friends. It wouldn’t be weird if I lived with you.”
