But there was no time to wallow, not when I had three hundred practice questions to get wrong. Eye on the prize, Angie, I reminded myself. There would be time to worry about best friends and boys after this shelf. In the meantime, I had to worry about myself.
About eighty-three questions in, I heard the front door open. My pulse quickened with nerves; Nia was home.
“Hey,” I said, watching her tug off her shoes at the door. Nia glanced up at me, giving me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked cute in a striped romper that I didn’t remember seeing in her closet.
“Hey,” she said. I trailed her with my eyes as she hung up her keys and made a beeline for her bedroom. My stomach sank; there was no way she wasn’t angry with me. Mentally, I card-flipped again through any possible transgressions: Had I talked about the kiss too much? Left the dishes out again? Had she noticed that I’d stolen some of her expensive face wash? Her expression wasn’t giving anything away. There was no helping it. I needed to take Markus’s advice and “just talk to her.”
“Nia, wait,” I said, standing up.
To her credit, Nia paused at the threshold of her door. When she looked up at me, it was with a placid expression, almost like she was looking through me.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said, walking toward her. She watched me cross the room skeptically, like a cat scoping out an unwelcome guest. “Girl . . . what’s wrong?”
Nia’s eyebrows twisted.
“Nothing,” she lied. “What, do you think something is wrong?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, disbelieving. “And I’ve been trying to think about what it could be, and I keep coming up empty. And . . . I don’t know, I figured I should just find out from you.” I dropped my gaze to our feet. Nia’s socks were cute today, pastel pink and patterned with smiling bananas. “Just . . . Whatever it is I did, I want to make it better. And make sure I don’t do it again.” I looked back up at her, biting the edge of my tongue. “But you have to tell me what it is first.”
For a moment, I thought that Nia would blow me off again. Her gaze was hard. I had seen her direct that look at others, people she didn’t care about, those she wanted to give her space, but in the decade since we’d declared ourselves besties, never at me. My throat tightened.
Nia sighed.
“Angie,” she said. “It’s really . . .” Her lips tightened into a line, and suddenly her mask fell away and she squeezed her eyes shut. I watched the transition happen in shock, feeling my stomach sink into an abyss. “The friends I went out with today. What are their names?”
I recoiled, not expecting the question.
“Your friends? You mean, the Lesbrigade?” I asked, flustered.
“They have names. I’ve told you what they are a hundred times,” Nia insisted. “What are they?”
I stared at Nia blankly, trying to remember the people in her new friend circle. I’d seen them onstage at the improv show, and in the photos Shae shared on social media, and yes, Nia had been bringing them up more often these days, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names.
“I . . . think the blonde’s name is Beth?” I tried.
“Beck,” Nia corrected. She crossed her arms in disgust. “That’s all you got? Really? Because I know that you’re working with a resident named Gwen, that she’s originally from the Bay Area, wants to do MFM, and sometimes comes to work smelling like patchouli. What do you know about Beck? Clearly not her name.”
Flustered, I threw my hands up.
“Okay. So yes, I’m bad at names, and you want me to know more about your new bosom buddies. I can do that—”
Nia let out a huff of laughter, wagging her head with frustration.
“No,” she said. “I want you to actually give a fuck about what’s going on in my life.”
That left me speechless. I had to pull the reins on my defensiveness, shocked that Nia could make such an accusation. To me? Her best friend? As if I didn’t ask her about her day every day? As if she hadn’t been responding with a halfhearted “fine” for the last week?
“What do you mean?” I said instead, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Sensing a challenge, Nia tossed her head.
“I mean, do you actually know what’s going on with me? Do you care? Because it feels like you don’t. I try to talk to you, but it all goes in one ear and out the other.” She bit her lip. “It’s like, these days, no one’s problems are as big as yours. Like what I do isn’t important.”