“You wrote a listicle about why nobody wants to leave their house.”
“It was nuanced.”
“It was four hundred words and a quiz.” A car door slams on her end. “I’m parking. We’re going out. Wear something that isn’t technically pajamas.”
“Ashley—”
“I’m in the building, Elara, I’m not negotiating with a woman who’s horizontal.”
She hangs up. She does that. Ashley doesn’t end calls, she just decides they’re over.
I have known Ashley since we were nine and she told a substitute teacher that I was mute so I wouldn’t have to do an oral presentation. She has never once asked me a question she didn’t already know the answer to. There is no version of the next two hours where I win, and some traitor part of me is already getting up.
She lets herself in, because she has a key, because I did that. To myself. And now she’s halfway across my living room before the door’s even shut.
“It smells like a candle in here. Good. You’re trying.” She drops her bag on the couch and does a slow lap of the apartment, like I’m hiding something from her. She taps Gerald’s pot on the way past. “Hi, Gerald. You’re looking well-watered, which is more than I can say for your mother.” She notices the row of skincare visible through the openbathroom door. “Oh, weinvested.Look at us. Isn’t one of these basically water?”
“The essence.”
“The essence is water.”
“The essence iswater-adjacent.”
She moves on, into the kitchen, where the pizza box from Wednesday is still on the counter being a monument to my week. She lifts the lid, considers what’s in there, and lowers it without comment. That’s worse than a comment. We’ve been friends twenty years; she has a whole vocabulary of things she doesn’t say.
And then she stops at my desk, where the note is.
I should not have left it there.
It’s the one from Wednesday, the one out of the serum box, and at some point this week it migrated out of my sweatshirt pocket and onto the desk, propped itself against the lamp where I’d see it. A lot. Which I did not decide to do and can’t explain. The best I can come up with? It moved on its own.
Ashley picks it up. “What’s this?”
“Junk. Recycling. Don’t—”
She unfolds it before I finish. “Your light reaches farther than you know.” I already know every word. She reads it again, slower and I watch the grin drop from her face. “Okay. That’s a little intense for junk.”
“It’s a skincare thing.” I used it once, might as well use it again. “They do affirmation-type things now. Hand-written. Came in my serum box. It tests well, apparently, with—”
Do you even hear yourself right now? I do…
I take the note out of her hand and set it back down, face-up, like that settles it. It does not settle it. My face is warm and I don’t love that.
“A skincare company wrote you this.”
“It’s a marketing thing, they all do it now—”
“And you kept it.” She’s not grinning anymore. “On your desk…”
“It just happened to be putthere.It’s been there. Moving it is effort. You know how I feel about effort.”
“You moisturize in a four-step routine, Elara, you have effort when you want it.” Not going to think about that right now. “You kept the marketing.”
“Yes. I kept the marketing. Is that so weird?”
She holds my eyes, and to everyone’s surprise, she lets it go.
“Right, fine. Go pick a dress,” she says. “I’m getting my bag from the car. Do not lie back down.”
