“Boooo!” Eliza says, reaching out with one long leg to kick his shin. “No sad shit!”
Jake catches her ankle easily, pulling her leg up and, in a surprisingly graceful move given how much he’s had to drink, leans down to press a kiss against the top of her foot, their eyes meeting in a way that makes my cheeks suddenly flush hot.
“My beloved is right,” he says, letting her foot fall back to the sand. “No sad shit. Only jubilation for new friends, and a hell of a first night together.”
We all cheers to that.
All of us, except for Amma.
BEFORE
Rome is better.
Maybe it’s the heat, or the bustle of the busy streets. The fact that they’re walking so much every day that they’re exhausted when they fall into their beds at night. Or it could be that this time, they were smarter, and picked a hostel right in the middle of things, not far from the Spanish Steps, and the nights are never too quiet.
Or it could just be that the food is so, so good.
After the accident, during those first few black months （in the before）， Brittany hadn’t wanted to eat anything. Had barely been able to, and what she did eat had no taste, and sat heavy on her tongue until she invariably spit it out or threw it up. Her weight dropped, her eyes sank deeper into her face, and the shape of her skull emerged beneath her thinning hair. She’d taken a perverse comfort in watching herself almost disappear, fading into the background. It felt easier than going forward and trying to live in this new world.
Now when she looks in the mirror, she’s still too thin, but it’s not as scary anymore, and yesterday, when she took her first bite of basil gelato in the Piazza Navona, it had exploded on her tongue, creamy and rich, bright and fresh, and she’d felt like maybe she was getting better. Maybe life wouldn’t always feel so hard, so pointless.
She feels that way now, sitting at a café with Amma, the sunshine hot on her bare shoulders as they sip cappuccinos and Amma scrolls through the pictures on her phone.
“This one is good,” she says, holding it up for Brittany to see.
It’s of the two of them in front of the Colosseum, and it is good. They’re smiling, arms around each other, and Brittany thinks that if you saw that picture in a dorm room or on a fridge, you’d think, Those girls are so lucky.
No pity, no concern. Two pretty, happy friends, making the most of their youth and traveling the world together.
Every day of this trip, she feels a little closer to actually being that girl, the one she’s pretending to be.
“Send that one to me,” she says to Amma, and as soon as the text comes through, she sets it as her phone background.
Four weeks ago, before they left for Europe, the background was a picture of her family. All four of them, her mom and dad, and her younger brother, Brian. Smiling with the setting sun behind them, their faces a little sunburned because they had been on their annual beach trip to Florida.
The last vacation they’d taken.
Brittany used to look at that picture on her phone and wonder if it would’ve been better if she’d known it would be the last time. She had fought with Brian, who’d brought his PlayStation with him and spent hours screaming into his headset, those piercing whoops and battle cries that drove her insane. There had been too many slamming doors on that trip, and on the last night, Brittany sat on her bed, playing on her phone, and told her mom just to bring something back from dinner, because she didn’t feel like going out.
Her mom had been disappointed, but had agreed.
That was the thing that still killed Brittany to remember, the way the corners of her mother’s mouth had turned down, the soft sigh as she’d closed Brittany’s door, her dark hair swinging just above her shoulders as she’d turned away.
After the accident, Brittany replayed that sigh over and over in her mind, just like she catalogued every missed and never returned phone call, every time she hadn’t replied to a like or a comment on a Facebook post.
Sometimes she hates that past version of herself so much she wants to crawl out of her own skin.
But doing this, replacing the background on her phone, helps a little. It makes her feel like she’s starting to build that new, future self that Dr. Amin keeps telling her about.
She looks at those smiling girls, and she almost believes she’s one of them.
* * *
BUT THE CRYING STARTS AGAIN on their fifth night in Rome.
It shocks her at first, the sobs that seem to well up in her chest out of nowhere, the sudden ache in her throat. That panicky feeling, her face too hot, her eyes stinging, her whole body shaking as she tries so hard to push the tears away.