Page 58 of This Changes Everything

HANNAH: Look for the only person wearing a black hat.

KARA: Oh my god.

I picked up my phone and started reading the texts, which were flying at me so fast, I almost got whiplash. I was very aware that I was sitting in a dank and dark bathroom. I was on the toilet, with my panties around my ankles, wild-eyed and frozen in place. A random EDM remix of “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper was thumping through the speakers and burning into my frazzled brain.

KARA: He saw me.

KARA: He. Saw. Me!

*Maddy has been added to the Group Chat*

MADDY: We all know that we’re standing next to each other, right?

The bathroom walls were closing in on me. My breath left my lungs and pushed through the top of my head. I was “off the deep end,” as the truly relevant song would say. My friends hadn’t said it outright, but I knew they were talking about Rory.

I had seen him only once since my twenty-first birthday. However, I had been following his career, watching him dominate the world’s biggest golf tournaments and championships. He had won the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the Masters. From a distance, I watched Rory become the person I’d always known he would be. I stumbled through the years toward a life I had decided upon as a kid without a fully developed frontal cortex.

I ran, and by the time I realized I didn’t like what I was running toward, I had already run away from anything and everyone I ever loved. I ran away from Rory. I ran away from Ben. And when reality washed over me, turning back around wasn’t an option. I had already passed the point of no return. Whereas Rory had achieved everything he had dreamed of, everything he had dedicated his life to, over the last four years of my life in Los Angeles, I had come to very successfully hate myself.

“Ellie?” My sister called out my name in the busy bathroom.

“Here.” I kicked my foot against the back of my stall door.

“Are you coming out?”

“Nope.”

“Ellie, you need to deal with this.”

“That would be ideal, but I actually can’t move right now . . . so that’s a thing.” My laughter started to bubble up from within. I worried it would come out sounding exactly how I felt, which was unhinged.

“Ugh.” I heard my sister grunt, then slap against the floor. Her hands landed in front of my stall. Her ring was blinding. I saw her head and face twist between the bottom of my stall door and the dirty floor. She was directly in line with my dangling, slightly ripped underwear. “Get up.”

“Um, that’s disgusting,” a random girl called out.

“Mind your business, Lindsay!” Hannah snapped her head back at the faceless voice.

“Lindsay?”

Hannah shrugged. “I took a guess. It felt right.”

“I can’t see Rory, Hannah.” I shook my head, feeling my stomach hollow out.

“Yes. You can. Put it all behind you and talk to him.” She pulled herself into my stall and crouched down, using her therapist voice. I was in a very strange position as a twenty-nine-year-old woman sitting on a public toilet and holding hands with my sister, but it wasn’t our strangest position as sisters.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

“Get a room!” another faceless voice called out in the crowded bathroom.

“Go away, Lindsay!” Hannah screamed back.

Whoever it was banged on the stall door again. This time, it surprised both of us. Hannah crashed forward. To steady herself, she gripped the rim of the toilet between my legs. We both started gagging, then shouted at each other to stop because we were going to make each other sick.

Hannah and I left the stall but stayed huddled in the bathroom as she furiously texted. I wasn’t getting any notifications, so it wasn’t with our Lover Ladies group chat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She held up her finger, silencing me, continued texting, then cleared her throat. Finally, a notification came through on our group chat.