thirty-one

  

My heart was pounding as I levered my elbow awkwardly over the doorbell and pressed until I heard it chiming inside. It felt jarring to ring the doorbell like a visitor, and even more disconcerting to be breathless with nerves standing outside a threshold I’d crossed with complete confidence in my welcome hundreds of times before.

Sasha opened the door with dark smudges under her eyes and a sheet crease across one cheek, and I almost felt the urge to smile: It was the first time I’d ever seen her looking as haphazard as the rest of the world when she woke up.

I had carrot cake from Merritt’s Bakery in a plastic container in one hand—her favorite, that she rarely let herself eat—and a cup of hot chai tea in the other. As peace offerings went they were meager, but I hadn’t bought them just to soften my friend toward me. I also wanted something in my hands.

“I didn’t know if this was a good time to talk,” I said uncertainly when she didn’t offer any kind of greeting. “But if it isn’t or if you aren’t alone...” I swallowed hard and made myself go on. “If Stu’s here and you don’t want to talk in front of him, I’ll come back later. Anytime you say.” Her expression remained utterly blank, but she wasn’t closing the door in my face, so I plowed ahead, wanting to get out whatever I could before she stopped me.

“Sasha, I’m sorry. I know I said that before, but I should’ve been standing here last week saying it right after you dropped me off. I should have been here saying it a hundred times since. I should have never let you pull out of my driveway without telling it to your face. I said stupid things that aren’t true because I was... I was ashamed of myself, and angry, and hurt, and I took it out on the one person...the only person who’s never let me down or given me any reason—ever—to doubt you or your intentions. I’ve said a lot of stupid things to you over the years, because it made me feel like I had my life together if I treated you like yours was always falling apart. I am so sorry, and I will do anything I have to do—for however long it takes—to make things right between us again. To earn your trust back, and to...to deserve you.”

She was still standing in the open doorway, just staring at me in a disconcertingly penetrating way that made me squirm. But I was literally at her disposal. I would stand there until she slammed the door, or told me to get the hell out of her life, or slapped me, or whatever she chose to do.

Which ended up being none of the things I’d braced myself for.

“How the hell are we supposed to hug this out with all that crap in your hands, you idiot?” Sasha reached over and plucked the cake and cup from me, set them on the ground, and wrapped her arms around me. I held on to her so tightly I knew it had to be hard for her to breathe, but I couldn’t make myself ease up, and Sasha didn’t ask me to.

  

Sitting on Sasha’s living room floor, sharing the carrot cake with her right from the container, I told her everything about Kendall, from his asking me to move in with him to how I’d been behaving since he broke up with me. I even took off my shirt and lifted the bandage on my tattoo to show it to her.

To Sasha’s credit, she tried hard to keep her expression neutral as she gazed upon the well-endowed donkey, but finally it was too much for her, and she dissolved into helpless laughter that soon had tears running down her face. It was strange—instead of the fresh wave of shame I’d braced for, or hostile defensiveness at her amusement, confessing my awful behavior to Sasha let me start to see the wonderfully silly ridiculousness of it—just a little—and my laughter joined hers. For the first time in weeks, I felt better.

I had a lot more penance I wanted to do for how I’d treated her, but Sasha kept waving off my apologies.

“You’ve punished yourself enough,” she said between a bout of giggles. “Forgiven.”

“No, I need to tell you this, Sash—I treat you like you can’t handle your own relationships without me, like I’m some kind of guru about it.”

“That’s because I can’t handle my own relationships, you moron. I know I act like a crazy person. I fall apart. And I don’t want to get through them without you, Brook, because you help.”

I gaped at her. “How can you still say that? Look at me—I’ve committed every breakup screw-up there is.”

Sasha shrugged, finally swallowing a hunk of cake I’d worried would choke her. “Who cares? You’re through it now. That’s what matters.”

“I didn’t want to go through it. I just wanted to get past it.”

“Honey, I think the only way past it is through it.”

“Sasha, I humiliated myself.”

Her fork lay limp in her hand for a moment while she looked at me, her eyebrows drawn together. “Really? That’s how you see what happened?”

I gave a dry laugh. “Seriously? You see some other spin?”

Sasha put her fork down—I thought at first so she could give me her full attention, but it was only so she could pick up the now empty plastic container and use her finger to swipe up the cream-cheese icing stuck to the side.

“Well—and this is only from my perspective, you understand—but it seems to me like you just finally handled a breakup like a normal person. You loved someone; he rejected you; you wanted that love back. So you got a little emotional about it—big whoop. Looks like you’re just a human, not a perfect machine. Like every other human in the entire world throughout history. Upward, onward, bam, end of story.”

She was still concentrating hard on cleaning out the plastic container, though there was little left but PVC coating. I made a note in the back of my mind to treat Sasha to more dessert—she was clearly deprived.

My best friend—the one I had always regarded as an emotional train wreck where relationships were concerned—had just casually spouted out more Zen wisdom than anything I’d ever achieved in years of therapy with a patient. How had I never seen that her craziness after a breakup was her way of venting her feelings instead of bottling them up till they blew? How had I never understood until this moment that Sasha was the healthy one emotionally, and I was the one repressing and denying any human emotion that didn’t fit within my strict parameters for acceptable behavior? She’d had it all figured out all along. Sasha was freaking Rain Man.

“That’s...that’s just genius,” I said slowly. “Six years of schooling, years of therapy practice, and now an advice column, and I still didn’t know what you’ve just instinctively known all along.”

“Oh, no, no, no, missy.” Sasha finally finished with the plastic and tossed it to the floor before she started chewing it like a rawhide as I’d feared. “This does not get to be yet another reason to beat yourself up. Let’s not forget that my brilliant coping devices include breaking and entering, destruction of property, and the occasional minor felony.” She shrugged. “I’m a mess sometimes, Brook. I know that. I’m just okay with it. I have you—my sane voice of reason when I need one. That’s the only reason I get through stuff. And it’s most of the reason I have anything constructive to tell you right now.” She laughed. “And you know when everyone gives great breakup advice? When they’re not in the middle of one—which I, for once, am not.”

And then there we were, staring right in the face of my best friend and my brother and their new relationship I had no idea how to handle.

But thinking I’d lost Sasha had made me look at our relationship a lot closer, and see where I’d tried to jam her into the mold I’d created: where I wanted her to act the way I wanted her to, the way I decided was best. Instead of letting her be who she was, and loving her for exactly that. The way she always—always—loved me.

I took a deep, fortifying breath, looked my best friend right in her beautiful aqua eyes, and said, “Tell me about you and Stu. I’d love to hear.”