“That isn’t true,” I said beseechingly. I took a deep breath; I would have time to parse through her words for truth later. For now, all I wanted to do was to fix us. “Nia, I’m sorry if I’ve been up my own ass lately. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t care about your life. I do, promise.
“But I’m not going to lie. You haven’t been around much. You go off with Shae and Beck and . . . the others, and it’s clear that I’m not welcome to come too, even if I could.” I shrugged. “I just assumed that you wanted to keep us separate.”
And I understood that, I really did. Despite her vibrant demeanor, Nia was an introvert. With me always within spitting distance, she’d never really been motivated to find a group of queer friends, even while she craved a place in her community. And now, thanks to Shae and an improv class, she had a new crew of people who shared her experience. I missed her, but I could never begrudge her that, had actually encouraged it for a while. But I’d always felt confident that I would remain her number one. Hubris, I thought mournfully.
“You think I’m not around?” Nia said. “You’re not around. And I get that, I know that medical school is tough. But when was the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t about your school, and your problems? You just tack me on as an afterthought.”
“I . . . ,” I said. The cup noodles I’d had for dinner threatened to come back up. “I didn’t mean—”
I watched Nia’s eyes well with tears, and reflexively, mine followed suit. Her fingers twitched on her doorframe. Then she swallowed and steeled herself.
“I’m moving out.”
Whatever I had expected to come of this conversation . . . that had not been in it. I felt like someone had dunked my head underwater. I remembered us driving up to Chicago a month before graduating from college, scoping out apartments, tittering with excitement about finally having our own place in the Big City. The drama with our first landlord, who had downplayed the severity of his property’s mouse infestation. Breaking our lease right before my physiology exam. Moving out in the dead of the Chicago winter to our new home . . . All of it had just felt like another chapter in Nia and Angela’s Big Adventure. We had run through the empty rooms of our new apartment, pointing out where we would put paintings and dressers and TVs, rolling down the warped, sloped hardwood floors in our secondhand office chairs. The giddy excitement of knowing that I would be continuing my journey toward doctordom with my favorite person by my side had saturated that memory.
And now it felt like all that had been a charade.
“Moving . . . out?” I said, not understanding. “Wait. What? Why?”
“I just . . . ,” Nia said, her voice cracking. “I feel like this is something I have to do. Don’t worry about my rent—I’ll keep paying it until I find someone else to take over my lease.”
I could barely process the concept. Someone else, a stranger, living in Nia’s room? Sitting in Nia’s spot on the couch? Leaving behind hair in the shower that wasn’t coiled and brown?
“Nia,” I tried. But it was to no avail. Nia gave me one last mournful look, then stepped into her room and slammed her door shut.
Shutting me out. Leaving me behind. For so long, Nia and I had been a reliable source of love for each other. A fountain of validation. Proof that someone out there thought that we were the best exactly as we were. Others could come and go from our lives, but Nia and I were supposed to be forever. I hadn’t even thought to imagine a future where we weren’t.
And now, as I stood outside her room, trying to figure out how my world had gone to pieces, I realized that I would have to.
Sixteen
My exam scores for ob-gyn came back glowing: Honors, 95th percentile, the best I’d done on an exam since starting medical school. I glanced at my score, then clicked out of the screen. Apparently, all I had to do to improve my scores was get my heart smashed to pieces.
The silence in my apartment was deafening now. Every creak or groan of the old building left me frozen in place like a startled animal. Lucky for me, I was in the hospital during the majority of Nia’s move. Every time I came back to the apartment, there would be more of her gone: her baking tins, her favorite plush blanket, the extra clothing rack she kept in the living room. I’d go to work dreading the operating room and then return dreading running into her on her way out. She seemed to know this; every time I returned, I could sense that her absence was fresh, still smell the light musk of her perfume lingering in the air.