This Summer Will Be Different(8)
“We’ll be departing for Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in a few minutes,” the captain says over the speaker, and I twist my fingers in my lap. I wasn’t sure whether I’d hear those words again.
As the plane lifts off, I take a long breath. In and out. And then another. I shouldn’t be nervous. I’m going because Bridget is in crisis. It has nothing to do with him. I probably won’t see him. He’s probably in a car with his parents, making his way to Toronto. I didn’t have the courage to ask Bridget, but it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. Bridget is my only concern.
She was so shaken when we spoke and wouldn’t say anything about why she’d gone home. All I know is that she arrived on the island yesterday and that she wants me by her side.
“Bridget is your life’s true fairy tale,” my aunt Stacy once said, and I agreed.
I thought I’d make all these amazing connections when I moved from St. Catharines to Toronto for school. They say university is where you meet your people, but I drifted through four years of my professional communications degree never finding someone who fit.
After we became close, Bridget told me she was sometimes loneliest in a roomful of people, and I thought, Yes, that’s it exactly. I dated around and had a loose group of friends, but other than my aunt, there was no one who truly understood me. And then I met Bridget.
Our once upon a time began on a Saturday night. I was twenty-two, and an exec at the PR firm where I worked was throwing a party at her house in the Annex. It was an old brick mansion with a turret and a grand staircase. There was a white tent in the backyard and paper lanterns and an infinity pool. I wore a ruffled dress and a crown made with flowers from my aunt’s garden. The night felt enchanted.
In reality, it wasn’t so different from the kegger I’d gone to two streets over during freshman year. A staggering amount of alcohol was consumed. Nobody had a bathing suit, but one of the guys from finance jumped into the pool, fully clothed. Others followed. When a senior associate ogled my chest, I took a giant step back, twisting my ankle. I ended up on the ground with a broken shoe. It was my cue to leave.
I was walking down Brunswick with one bare foot when I heard a bicycle bell, and then, “Hey, Cinderella.”
I turned around, and there was Bridget, astride a red one-speed, wearing cutoff denim overalls, a white helmet, and not a lick of makeup. She was stunning.
We’d never had a proper conversation, but I knew her from work. She was an assistant, like me, but in meetings, she spoke with the authority of someone with twice the experience. “It’s Bridget, right?”
“Yup. And you’re Lucy Ashby, the girl who draws daisies in meetings.”
I smiled. “I do tulips, too.”
“So that party was a shit show.”
“Yeah. I thought it would be a little less of a . . .”
“Giant fucking disaster?” Bridget supplied.
I nodded.
She pointed to the shoe in my hand. “What happened there?”
“I got it caught between the pavers and fell in a puddle of pool water.” I twisted to show her the wet spot on my backside. “At least I hope it was pool water. My heel snapped off.”
“Where do you live?”
“Jarvis and Wellesley.”
“That’s not far from me. I’m in Cabbagetown. Hop on.”
Which was how I found myself sailing down Bloor Street on Bridget’s handlebars, listening to her stories about growing up on Prince Edward Island. At one point, I laughed so hard, I almost fell off. When we got to my building, we sat on the front steps and talked for over an hour.
“I’ll save you a seat in the quarterly on Tuesday,” she told me as she buckled her helmet. “You’re always late.”
“All right.” I was surprised she’d noticed. “Thanks.”
She got on her bike and pushed off, calling over her shoulder, “See ya, Ashby.” It’s something Bridget’s dad does, I’d learn—call people by their last names.
By the end of the week, we were sharing snack runs and lunch breaks and rumors, and she’d shortened Ashby to Bee. She said it suited me, the way I never stop buzzing around. I didn’t mind it, though. Not one bit. Because for the next five years, until the day she moved out of our apartment, I never felt lonely.
We’re not roommates anymore. We’re twenty-nine, and she’s getting married. We’ve both thrown ourselves into our careers. Bridget’s job interview at Sunnybrook was the reason she missed her flight to PEI five years ago. She blew the hiring committee away, of course, and ended up staying for hours, touring the campus, meeting her future coworkers and her boss’s boss. The days when we swapped office gossip on our coffee breaks feel like another life, and it’s become harder to get away together.
I doze off somewhere over Quebec, but the nap doesn’t last nearly long enough. I dream of a wedding, all the flowers dying minutes before the ceremony. We hit a patch of turbulence above Maine, and I’m wide awake, heart thundering, palms damp.
In all the years Bridget and I have been friends, I’ve never heard her sound as lost as she did on the phone yesterday. It’s always Bridget taking care of me. She’s picked me up after I’ve fallen more times than I can count. Bridget rarely stumbles.
The practical side of my brain knows I shouldn’t be on this plane right now. When I called Lillian at Cena yesterday evening to tell her that I had to reschedule, her disappointment was clear. I couldn’t tell her exactly when I’d be back. I sounded like a flake. Bridget insisted on buying my ticket, but she didn’t book a return. I can’t imagine staying longer than the weekend. I have too much going on, including the flowers for Bridget’s wedding, but how can I deny her anything when she’s given me so much?