I showered and brushed my hair and looked at my face in the mirror, which prompted the ordering of a new ointment, some French thing that the internet said would either burn my skin off or make it perfect. In a small show of restraint, I did not even click on the suggested accompanying purchase, an expensive mucus from Japan that I wanted incredibly badly. I tidied my room and made plans to get some things framed, thinking, women in their thirties own things that are framed.
I went to the grocery store and picked up ingredients for the dinner party we were having. Amy had wanted to roast a chicken （“It’s the most casually grown-up dinner there is!”）， but I was trying to be a proper vegetarian, so we were having spaghetti and garlic bread and a big Caesar salad, like a family in an after-school special.
Having lost the battle over the menu, Amy had insisted on being allowed to do a “tablescape,” covering the rickety wooden table she’d inherited from her parents with an old sheet, then covering that with an array of items from other parts of the apartment: old candlesticks, crystals, some dried flowers, etc. I’d been skeptical while she was doing it, but when she stood back, made a few final adjustments to some leaves and the twinkle lights she’d nested around them, there was no denying it was gorgeous.
“Guess where I got the idea,” said Amy. “Reese Witherspoon.”
Living with Amy was surprisingly great. She was tidy and considerate and had her dad’s Netflix password. Our only real argument had been over a gigantic poster she bought without consulting me, a black-and-white print of a female surfer silhouetted against a crashing wave, with the words i need the sea because it teaches me written in the sky above her. （“Do you surf?” I’d asked. “No,” she’d said, “but I feel like I do.”） I lost the argument, and now it was in the kitchen, on a big patch of wall next to the fridge. Lauren made a privately sarcastic face at me about it when she walked in. Emotional Lauren told Amy she thought it was “important to think about the ocean sometimes.” Amy agreed.
The apartment’s air-conditioning system comprised two boxes perilously installed in our respective bedroom windows, so by the time Amirah and Clive arrived, the kitchen was incredibly warm. Amy looked dewy and gorgeous, moving breezily between the pasta on the stove, the bread in the oven, and the light, zippy salad she’d put in an enormous bowl I’d never seen before, magicked out of a back cupboard.
I was not faring so well. Having blow-dried my hair for the occasion, I’d already been forced to gather it in a high, crumpled bun to stop the strands sticking to my neck.
“Someone’s pink,” said Amirah when she arrived, passing me a gift and a bottle of wine. “Happy birthday.” She kissed the side of my sweaty face and pretended to be disgusted, then kissed the other side.
As he entered, Clive clocked the banner Amy had made, raised his eyebrows, and said nothing. Amy hugged him like an old friend. “Nobody better have any dietary restrictions they haven’t told me about,” she said with a maternal hand on her hip. “I asked in the side chat, and no one said anything, so if you and gluten have an issue, that is your business.”
“Where do you even buy an apron in 2019?” Lauren asked.
“Muji,” Amy tutted. “Or, like, anywhere. Go sit down.”
The food was perfect, flavorful and rich. I slopped a second helping onto my plate as Clive told us about his latest Grindr disaster and Lauren upped the ante with a story from Tinder: “The first date was amazing, like, top five dates of my life,” she said. “He was funny and hot and smelled like firewood. We texted nonstop the next week, but when we met up on Friday, he had shaved his beard into a goatee.”
Amy screamed. “Did he say anything about it?”
“Not a word.”
“And he didn’t warn you beforehand, when you were texting?”
“Nothing.”
Amy said this was bad manners. “You cannot spring a goatee on someone.”
“I don’t see what the problem is?” said Emotional Lauren hopefully.
“He looked like a gamer,” said Lauren. “He looked like a gamer who owns a bird.”
Emotional Lauren came round, and dinner carried on. We drank red wine and laughed loudly and told each other we looked hot. We ate too much and gossiped remorselessly and complained about our jobs and our families and our completely satisfactory lives, soundtracked by a playlist an algorithm had compiled called “Adult-Ass Dinner.”
Lauren asked when the divorce would be final, and I told her honestly: I didn’t know.
“It’s out of my hands,” I said. “All I know is I’m paid up.”
Lauren asked quickly, “So did Jon call today . . . ?”
Amirah shushed her as I shook my head no. “Helen says I should get comfortable with the idea that we may never speak again.” I didn’t mention the bus.
“What about Simon?”
“Lauren, please!” said Amirah, taking things into her own hands. “How’s it going at the cat place?”
I told them my manager had let me write some punchier bios of the cats up for adoption. She’d liked them, and her friend, the proprietor of an online-only skincare business, had asked me to do the same for her, writing descriptions of serums and oils and essences. The cat gig had been unpaid, but the skincare lady had given me two hundred bucks. I was hoping to parlay that into further work, and maybe take a night class in communications or copywriting or something, in case I wanted to leave academia and make an actual living one day.
“Ironic,” said Lauren, “since that was Jon’s j—OW.”
Amirah released her grip on Lauren’s leg and said copywriting sounded like a good door to keep open. Sometime after we ran out of garlic bread, Amy clinked her fork against her wineglass like a maid of honor.
“Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” She smiled and straightened her already extremely straight posture, too prepared for something. “So, in my family, on birthdays, we go around the table and everyone says one thing they love about the birthday perso—”
“No.”
Amy didn’t even look at me, just kept talking. “Everyone says something they love about the birthday person, and it’s very cute, and we all like it. Okay? I’ll start. When I met Maggie, she was a mess—”
“Amy, please.” I stared at the napkin resting on my lap as Amirah, Lauren, et al. suppressed their laughter with varying degrees of success. This was my worst nightmare, and theirs. It could not stand.
“She was a total mess,” Amy continued, undaunted. “So heartbroken and cranky, and she still had those bangs. I was like, who is this girl? But I gave her my number anyway, and I’m glad that I did, because she’s actually super sweet and has, like, a heart of gold, and she slays a back-to-back Super Saturday at X-Cycle better than anyone I know, except Laura, or my friend Sidra from work, she’s got these quads that are just . . . anyway. I also think—I mean, I know, from experience—that it’s hard to go through what she went through this year, and it’s very brave to, like, keep going and try to figure out what life looks like on your own, when you thought you’d already figured it out with someone else. I know she’s worked hard to do that, and I feel lucky that we get to figure that out together.”