“That was brave of Shae,” I said. Not like me. Paralyzed by a fear of being rejected for good, I hadn’t even sent Nia a text, let alone showed up at her new place to demand an audience.
“They’re a brave person,” Nia said. She let the sentence steep for a long minute, then pushed a stubborn curl out of her eyes. “You know what they told me, after we finished moving me out?”
“What?” I asked.
“That finding someone to love you romantically is actually kind of easy,” Nia said. “There’s a whole cocktail of brain chemicals at work telling you to obsess over this other person. Plus a rulebook for relationships we’ve all been given since infancy. Friendship doesn’t have any of that, and so finding a person who will hold you down for no reason is rare. Shae has so many coworkers who have a partner but not a single close friend, and they’re all desperately lonely because of it.” On the next blink, Nia’s eyes grew glassy with tears. “They told me that, if I was planning on ditching you, then I better be prepared to never get you back. And I would have to ask myself if whatever you’d done warranted that. And if it didn’t, ask myself why I was willing to potentially torch what we had for no good reason.”
If Shae had been here in person, I would have hugged them.
“I knew I liked them,” I said.
“Shae is wonderful. They . . . really feel like they could be it for me, you know? They love me, and make me feel beautiful every day, and hold me accountable when I act out of pocket. I love them, and I’m loving living with them.” Nia bit her lip. Her smile dimmed, and then fell away altogether. “But . . . I’m scared, too. It’s been you and me for, like, ever. I’m not even sure I know who I am without you. And now, here I am, trying to find out, and almost losing you in the process.”
I scooted closer to Nia, dropped my head onto her shoulder. For every summer vacation, every adventure, every trip, practically every class we could manage, it had been the Nia and Angie Show. Everyone else was supporting cast. Michelle had understood this early on and resented it. Would I be who I was without Nia? Without her kindness that day in our school cafeteria so many years ago?
“Remember when we used to say we’d get old together?” I said. “Buy a ranch? Rent out the space to some hot ranch hands when we started to crave a little romance?”
“Ah yes, cowgirls,” Nia said wistfully.
“Never anything serious, though,” I reminded her. “Flings only. All of our real love would be reserved for the dogs and each other.”
“The dogs!” Nia laughed. “That’s right. Ten dogs, all big, sweet, dumb mutts. All the dogs at the pound that no one wanted.”
“We were going to give them big human names.” I snorted. “Like Fitzgerald and Beatriz and Napoleon.”
“Maybe we can still do that,” Nia surmised. “All we have to do is convince Shae and Ricky to come along.”
I could picture it in my head. An endless field, fat, grazing cows. Fences that needed mending, a bright red barn that we used for storage and, when the time was right, parties. All four of us sitting on rocking chairs on an expansive veranda, watching the sunset over the horizon.
“That,” I said, nestling into the crook of my best friend’s neck, “would be the dream.”
Twenty
“I’m not a diabetic,” my favorite patient, a lively old woman who insisted on being called Miss Bernice, said to me for the third time today. Never mind the fact that she’d been admitted for a diabetic foot infection and had to have her foot guillotined off four days ago.* Never mind the metric fuck ton of insulin we were pumping into her just to keep her blood from turning into simple syrup. Never mind that she’d been injecting herself with substandard doses of that very same insulin at home for the last fifteen years.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you mean by that?”
The first two times she’d made this declaration, I’d tried my best to assure her that she most certainly was a diabetic, only to be brushed off and told that I didn’t “get it.” This time, I’d clearly given a more satisfactory answer, because she gave me a toothy smile.
“I mean, I’m not a diabetic!” she repeated. “Diabetic is a mindset. It’s a label! And I don’t label myself. Labels aren’t good for anything. All they do is limit you.” She peered at me through narrowed eyes. “You look young. You married?”
I stiffened. She’d changed the subject so suddenly that I got whiplash, though the question wasn’t unfamiliar. A number of little old ladies had already tutted over my decision to prioritize my career over a man. If they liked me, they’d offer up their okay-looking grandsons. If they didn’t, they made some comment about how my youth would leave me soon, and what would I do without a family?