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I toss my phone down on my bed with a frustrated grunt that might have come out louder than I intended for it to.
“You okay?”
My head whips to my best friend’s voice in my doorway, and I sigh. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just tired of fighting with Colin.”
Kelly sits on my bed next to me. “What was it about this time?”
“Can I just say I love that you come in here, sit down, and get ready to listen when it’s the same old thing time and again?” I ask. She has the patience of a saint as a kindergarten teacher. I do not.
She laughs. “Well, if you’d prefer me to get to the bottom line, then break up with him.”
“You think I should?”
“Babe, we’re not getting any younger. You have a boyfriend halfway across the country who’s been married to his job for three years when he should be planning his wedding to you.” She shrugs a little at the end as if it’ll soften the blow of her words. It doesn’t.
“Don’t forget I also have a job I love in my favorite city in the world and the best friend-slash-roommate a girl could ask for. Oh, and that closetful of Radiance Skincare products nobody wants.”
She giggles as we both think about the company we somehow were lured into by one of Kelly’s old high school friends. It’s really not all that funny that we both blew a boatload of cash on the product line, in particular because it set me back a few years on my actual dream of saving enough to open my own bakery, but if we can’t laugh about it, we’ll just cry.
“Want to watch Food Network and eat Doritos?” she suggests. It’s our favorite pastime when we’re down in the dumps.
I nod. “Yes please. But add some vodka or something to that.”
“You got it. But first, what was tonight’s fight about, really?”
“He was supposed to fly out next weekend, and I just had a feeling this was going to be the time.” I say the word this meaningfully since we both know what I’m waiting for. You don’t date the same guy for five years without thinking a proposal is coming at some point.
But that feeling seems to keep slipping further and further away, especially since it’s been an entire three months since I’ve even been in the same state as him. “But he has some work thing he has to go to, so he canceled.”
I don’t say it, but it’s starting to feel like there’s something inherently leave-able about me. First my dad, though it wasn’t his fault he passed away, then two of my brothers, who scattered to different states for college, and now Colin.
“Do you love him?” she asks me point-blank.
My jaw slackens a little.
“Does he give you butterflies?” she amends. “Does he rev your engine? Make you want to lay back on your bed and kick your feet in the air while you giggle with delight?”
I twist my lips as I bite the inside of my cheek.
I’m not sure I should voice the immediate answer that springs to mind.
“Well?” she asks.
I sigh. “Butterflies, revving, feet kicking…those things are for crushes, not long-term relationships.” I think back to the childhood crushes I had on my brothers’ friends. With three older brothers, I had plenty of nice material to choose from.
There was one in particular who I always crushed the hardest on, but he was seven years older than me and didn’t give me the time of day. I haven’t seen him since my oldest brother, who was like a father to me, graduated from college. He came by the house to attend the party. I stared at him with hearts in my eyes, and then later I saw him kissing Mindy Ward behind the old shed. I didn’t stand a chance. Mindy Ward had big boobs, long hair, and, you know, seven or so years on me.
“What if you could have it for both?” she asks.
“Have you ever had that?”
She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “That’s a negative, my friend. But if I ever did, then that’s how I’d know. Meet me on the couch. I’ll get the vodka, you get the Doritos.”
I grin. “Deal.”
When I meet her on the couch, she turns on the television, and we settle into a battle of the bakers on a Food Network show.
“That’s so not how you make ganache,” I say.
