The aura of casual wealth around Era’s home always made Camila feel unkempt. Era lived in a manicured suburb in the South Hills, about ten minutes but worlds away from her Dormont duplex.
She was sure the neighbors thought she was a delivery driver, with her bags of carry-out Italian food and her worn athleisure clothes. She picked a pill off her T-shirt and tucked a frizzy curl that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. Camila knew that even though Era had grown up well-off financially, she’d constantly dealt with people thinking she didn’t belong somewhere. She wasn’t sure anyone could get used to that.
Camila approached the mahogany door, which was framed by two immaculate topiaries that towered over her. Before she could ring the doorbell, a deep, male Australian voice greeted her.
“Hello, Camila. Era will be here shortly. Please, come in and make yourself comfy.”
The smart lock clicked open, and the door’s hidden hydraulics pulled it open.
“I still think you’re a total creep, Hemsworth,” she told the virtual assistant prototype Era had programmed into her arsenal of smart appliances.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, mate. I’ll be sure to share your feedback with Era. Can I be of further assistance?”
“Will you also tell your creator how fucking immoral and exploitable facial recognition is?”
“Certainly. I’ve taken the liberty of sharing a scholarly article on the ethics of facial recognition. Check your phone for a link.”
“I hate you,” Camila muttered.
“I’ve sent you a link to a loving kindness meditation download. It’s highly rated.”
“Era! Turn this thing off or I’m leaving!”
Era strolled in, sipping an energy drink. “Hemsworth, go take a nap!”
“Copy that, Era. Shout if you need me. And hey — stay sexy.”
Era winked at Camila and took the food from her. “Sorry about him. He’s been extra weird since I’ve been feeding him productivity articles. I need to tinker with him.”
“It’s an abomination and I can’t support it,” Camila said, emphasizing the “it.”
Ignoring her, Era grabbed plates from her sleek gray cabinets and opened the containers. In them were pesto tortellini, breadsticks, minestrone, and two servings of tiramisu. “This smells like heaven,” Era said.
She was in her lounge clothes, pajama bottoms with tiny blue TARDISes, a pink tie dye tee, and fuzzy socks. Her braids were pineappled atop her head, purple interwoven with black.
She brought Camila a cold bottle of her favorite rose lemonade soda — the kind Camila only sometimes splurged on, and that Era thought tasted like allergy-relief nasal spray — and they plopped down on the plush, suede sectional.
“What should we watch?” Era asked, with her mouth full of pasta.
“I don’t know. Let’s watch the trailers.”
They watched all the featured Netflix trailers. Nothing intrigued them enough, so they chose a predictable standby, Dogma. The film had blown Camila’s mind when she was younger, with its subversive yet earnest spiritual message and at the time shocking vulgarity. Now it was a quaint comfort.
“How’s work?” Era asked. She popped the tab of another energy drink.
Camila shrugged. “I still hate working downtown. The pay is still too low. I don’t think I want to stick it out there long-term but I don’t know that I have the means to go private yet.”
“Do you like the other therapists still?”
“Some of the ones in my consult group are cool,” Camila said, referring to the therapist gatherings where they discussed challenges and strategies for helping their clients, sort of like a professional support group. “Some are so jaded it upsets me. I don’t ever want to be like that.”
Era put another breadstick on each plate. “I hear you. You know it was so hard for me to find a community in tech that felt like a good fit. I had to create my own.”
“And now look at you.” Camila grinned at her oldest friend, for a moment seeing her as the gangly girl in the drumline.
“I’ll cheers to that,” Era said, tapping her can of caffeine against Camila’s bottle.
They got quiet, working their way through the food during the movie’s first few minutes.
Something was up. She should have realized it as soon as Alan Rickman, God rest his soul, showed up on screen. Sure, he was a handsome dude. But was he always so sexy and she hadn’t noticed?
She shifted on the sectional. Why was the soda room temperature all of a sudden? She should go get some ice.
Except ... what if she missed an important detail she had forgotten from the 523 times she’d watched it?
Knowing what — whom — this was really about didn’t make it better.
Zach was a decadent five-layer cake behind a glass when she’d just had a root canal. She knew she wouldn’t stop after one slice, and knew the toll of overindulgence.
Not that she really could overindulge? It didn’t sound like he was going to stick around the city. Camila had well-documented abandonment issues. It was too exhausting to parse what level of attachment she could handle and for how long with someone she actually liked when she knew it was doomed from the start.
But damn, she didn’t just like him. She was mesmerized by him. His presence, his unyielding, earnest gaze behind his glasses, even the tiny, near-imperceptible space between his front teeth felt designed to fluster her. He was a lot. Sexy and funny and hotter than he had any right to be.
He was also this wounded, sensitive thing. That much was clear. He thought he hid it well, but she could smell it on him like a predator smells fear. She loved a wounded man, and wounded men loved her — her sparkle, the way she listened intently and didn’t make demands. They opened up to her, said they’d never met anyone like her, never felt so seen. They’d sigh as she kissed all their sad, wounded bits. They’d tell her how they couldn’t stop thinking about her, and they’d pin all their fantasies on her until they realized she was a person, too. That would disappoint them, and they would react poorly, and she would exploit all the vulnerabilities they’d exposed as payback.
A man like Zach? She’d decimate him, and they would both be the worse for it. She was done decimating people.
She was working herself into a dark mood. Cranky and horny were never a good mix. Plus she was being a shitty friend, not being present during the precious time Era wasn’t buried in work or wedding planning. Era, who had tolerated her during her worst, long before any lover had, whose compassion never ceased even when she needed to call Camila out.
One of the DBT modules was distress tolerance. Among those skills was distraction. She needed something active, something that would use more of her brain than a movie she had memorized.
“Hey, do you want to play a game?” Camila asked.
Era quirked an eyebrow. “A video game? You usually don’t want to.”
That was because Camila’s thumbs couldn’t make sense of them. Her players always ended up stuck on a roof and she’d quit in a huff.
“We could go analog. How about Jenga?”
“Oh, I think my set is missing a few pieces after Seth’s nephew visited,” Era said, examining her pinky cuticle.
That was for sure a lie. Camila was undefeated in Jenga (against Era, at least). She was a sore winner, and Era was a sore loser. There wasn’t much Era was used to failing at.
“You know that doesn’t really make a difference like at all, right?” Camila said.
Era moved on to her thumbnail.
“OK,” Camila said slowly. “Oh! How about that dancing game?”
“That’s suitable,” Era said. Camila followed her to her gaming room. There, Era had two giant monitors paired with two swivel chairs in black and magenta leather with built-in speakers. On the opposite wall, there was the biggest flat-screen Camila had ever seen, hooked up to several consoles and facing another cushy couch. Era had recently dabbled in Twitch streaming her company’s games, and had covered the walls with sound-absorbing foam tiles.
“You ready to get your ass kicked, Jim?” she asked.
“You’re way too competitive,” Camila said, her spine popping satisfyingly while she twisted and stretched. “Maybe you should talk to someone about that.”
They started with the big pop hits, mirroring the animated dancers’ moves. Era got dinged a few points for missing an elbow, then for getting frustrated and reversing the footwork.
“What’s up, Jones? Can’t keep up? All that money making you soft?”
“Keep it cute, little girl. You’re in my house, and you didn’t bring your little fighting stick.”
Just then Camila missed a combination, and Era let out a high, gloating laugh.
“Shut up, you’re distracting me!”
Era won the round by a hair. They picked a house song next, and Camila redeemed herself. They were giggling and breathless by the end of it.
“Not bad,” Era said. She redid her bun, which had loosened. “But I’m ready for that tiramisu.”
“The tiramisu! How did I almost forget about that?”
Minutes later they sat around the kitchen island, eating the rich dessert.
Between bites, Camila asked, “So, how are you doing with everything?”
Era sighed. “I think I’m just overwhelmed. My company is doing so well, and of course I should be happy about that, but it’s exhausting. All the scrutiny, all the vultures who want me to fail so they can try to buy me out. And then this wedding ...” She trailed off. “I love Seth. I hate all the pageantry. If I could, I’d just wrap all this up at a courthouse tomorrow. Or make a tropical elopement out of it.”
“I’ve heard you say some version of that so many times. Why don’t you, then?”
“You already know it’s what our families want. A big to-do to show off their successful children.” She rolled her eyes. “Remember when I told them I didn’t want to be a doctor, that I wanted to make games for a living? They lost it. Now they’re sooo proud.”
Camila nodded. She knew on some level that Era’s parents had just wanted the same thing her mom wanted, the same thing parents of color always wanted, for their children to succeed wildly in spite of everything stacked against them.
“We don’t even have time to take a honeymoon right now,” Era continued. “We don’t even get that cheese at the end of the maze.” She got a thoughtful look and asked Hemsworth to jot down “cyberpunk mice maze game” in her idea vault.
“I mean yeah, a honeymoon is nice and you absolutely need to plan one at some point, but you’re still getting the cheese. I mean, Seth is pretty cheesy.”
Era snorted. “That joke was cheesy.”
“Look, you don’t have to burn yourself out just to please your folks. It’s one day.”
Era took her empty dessert cup and responded with her back to Camila. “I guess maybe it’s not just them. There’s a part of me that wants to show off, too. Get that validation from the world, or something. Do the whole flashy, romantic, princess thing. Is that pathetic?”
Camila shook her head, hard. “No. It’s not pathetic at all. And you are a mother effing princess. In a ballgown, at a courthouse, wherever, however,” Camila said. “Even in your little Doctor Who PJs.”
Era wrapped her in a hug. “Yeah. You’re right.” She took a step back. Not for the first time, she looked at her friend with concern and asked, “How about you? Are you OK with all of this?”
“All of this” meant all this wedding stuff, this love, this happy couple beginning a venture at which she’d failed. Era had always mothered her, even when they were kids. She kept tabs on Camila in ways only she thought were subtle, with gentle questions about her moods, her meds, if she was getting enough sleep. Camila could almost see Era’s heart beating faster if she picked up on her sadness, if Camila zoned out during a conversation. Era was scared she would miss Camila stumbling off the edge again.
Her love for her, her terror, made Camila feel bitterly unworthy. She hated that she’d given Era reason to worry. It was one of many sins she could never fully atone for.
Camila squeezed her friend’s hand. “Of course,” she said. “I’m always OK.”
“You know,” Era said, “you haven’t told me one thing about your date with that Zach guy.”
Camila shrugged. “It was chill.”
When she didn’t volunteer more, Era prodded. “That’s all? It was chill?”
“I mean, we had an awesome time,” she said. “But I’m not trying to push things along.”
“That’s fine,” Era said. “How come?”
Because she knew Era was coming from a good place, and because she knew her annoyance was her own issue, Camila tried to think of an honest response. “I don’t think I have it in me to get attached to someone right now. And he’s mentioned he doesn’t know if he’s sticking around after his sister leaves for college, so it seems like a pointless pursuit.”
“But why do you have to get attached?” Era asked. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, have fun with him?”
It sounded so simple. No pressure, no expectations. No obsession. She didn’t know if she was capable of that. Her feelings were always bigger than she wanted them to be.
“Maybe,” she said. “How about another round? I’m feeling limber.”