Chapter 15
W hen you broke up with a romantic partner, people expected crying. They expected sadness and heartbreak and they expected to give you that weird sympathetic expression everyone gave the recently dumped.
When it was a platonic friend hurting you, though, what were the rules? Neve wasn’t sure. Even the potential breakup of the friendship was less clear. Roxanne had hurt Neve, but it had been clear. She was calling things off. They were done. It was painful but it was a break, an end.
Neve found she couldn’t say the same thing with Charlie.
The things Charlie had said, the way she clearly thought about Neve, all of it was too much to sustain a relationship through. But, they’d been friends for so long. Or Neve thought they had. Did it really count as friendship if, at the first opportunity, someone attacked you in the way they knew would hurt most? Did it count if they thought of you that way? Did it count if their friendship was contingent upon you acting the way they demanded?
Neve wasn’t certain it did, but the realization hurt so much more than realizing Roxanne was breaking up with her in a Best Buy.
Walking away from her family had felt easy when it finally came time. It had been impossible in the run-up. Years of Neve absorbing their behavior, accepting it, internalizing it. And then, one day, she finally made it to the other side of the bridge. It was time to go. It had been her choice. She’d felt empowered and right. Sure, it hurt, and sometimes it still did to think of all the things she’d lost out on, but she’d been losing out on them her whole life. She didn’t look at other people’s families showing up and loving them and feel pain over the fact that she was missing her actual family. She looked at them and felt pain over the fact that she’d never had that, never once known what it felt like to be loved by your family without expectations.
Maybe that was why Charlie and Alice had become so important to her. She’d left her biological family and been in desperate need of a family she could build for herself. She’d thought she’d found it, thought she was safe, and had friends who loved her. But maybe it was just history repeating itself again.
She’d had better moments with Charlie and Alice, though. She’d thought they’d cared. She wasn’t ready to walk away.
In truth, she wanted to cling on for dear life, erase every bad thing, and wipe away all of the pain she was feeling. Although, of course, there was no real wiping away what happened. There was accepting it and trying to move forward, or there was pushing it away, pretending it was okay, and letting it destroy her from the inside. What would that say about what she was willing to accept?
It hurt. Betrayal, sadness, confusion. Her head was banging with the pain and the questions—ones she’d likely never get answers to. Everything hurt.
It was easier, somewhat, sitting up above the city with Alba, her cold hand clasped tightly in Alba’s warm one. At least she didn’t feel alone. Alba had insisted she cared. Neve wasn’t sure she was supposed to believe that—everyone always said they cared—but Alba had sounded so sincere. And Neve wanted to believe her, wanted to believe there was something good in her life.
Her chest clenched at the fact that she wasn’t just losing her friends, she was effectively losing her home, too. Sure, they couldn’t kick her out, but staying there together was going to be untenable. She had no interest in running into them and reenacting the argument over and over again. But nor did she have any interest in constantly running into them and pretending everything was okay.
Was she supposed to actually just forgive and move on? Were they all supposed to be fine after everything? Was Charlie going to apologize? Was Neve supposed to let her and just move on?
Most of the other friendships in her life had simply fizzled out. They’d seen each other less and less, time between texts became longer and longer, and, eventually, they just weren’t friends anymore. Nothing explosive, just life. It was both nicer and heartbreaking in its own way. It wasn’t clear either. When did you stop saying you were friends? When did you stop thinking you were friends? When did you delete their number, stop liking all their posts online? When did you stop knowing each other? And how long did you both keep pretending?
When did it all stop hurting?
None of it had been like this. Yet, Neve found she wasn’t equipped to handle this any better either.
Part of her couldn’t even believe that Alba didn’t see her as an incompetent child. Logically, she understood that being made to feel like you were for years would make you believe that about yourself. Just like having a friend—someone you’d trusted with the fragile, vulnerable parts of yourself—turn around and basically state they saw you that way would too. But understanding the logic of the situation didn’t really help. If anything, it just seemed all the more compelling to Neve’s brain that everyone had to see her that way. If all of those closest to her did, if that was the way she always felt, why would anyone else not see her that way?
She stared at the city. Her head hurt, her face felt swollen from the tears, her throat hurt. Every muscle in her body ached and felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Do you think you can come back from something like this?” she asked, breaking the quiet between them again.
Alba looked at her. Nothing in the look was patronizing, or even pitying, which Neve would have understood. Perhaps Neve didn’t yet know her well enough to accurately judge, but she looked at Neve the same as always, like nothing had changed. Even through the heavy cloud that filled her soul and her mind, Neve could appreciate that.
“Do I think you can, or do I think a friendship can?” Alba asked, shuffling slightly closer to her again.
Neve was glad her face was already likely red and blotchy in its tightness because she felt herself flush at the question. Maybe it was constantly asking questions like that that made people baby her. “Both, I guess.”
Alba regarded her softly. “Then, yes, I think you can come back from this. I know it’s going to hurt, and probably take a chunk out of your confidence, but I believe you’re going to be just fine in the end.”
“And the friendship?”
Alba’s jaw twitched. “I don’t know. I can’t tell you that it will. No matter how much I wish I could, I can’t tell you that Charlie’s going to show up with the world’s best apology and a rationale for her actions. I can’t even imagine what that would look like. And I can’t tell you whether or not to forgive her if she does. It’s hard letting go of a friend.”
“It doesn’t even feel like she really was my friend. I think that’s part of what makes it so hard.”
“I get that. The whole thing was always going to be difficult, but… yeah, she really took it to another place.” She looked down, shaking her head, and Neve could see the way she was trying not to influence Neve’s opinions or experience. It was nice.
“What would you do?”
Alba looked back up, breathing a laugh. “Truthfully?”
“Yes.” Neve had been putting up with feeling inferior or incomplete in her friendship with Charlie for a long time. She understood that Alba didn’t want to control her reactions, but she also understood that she needed an outside opinion. It was hard to think clearly when you were in the middle of the storm.
Alba studied her face for a long time. “Okay. Well, honestly, I’d be done with her, done with the whole friendship. I don’t really know where to put Alice in this whole thing, but she wasn’t exactly helping, so I think I’d let them both go.”
It was a relief to have Alba’s usual energy back. She was trying to help Neve, but there was something so soothing about her just being unapologetically herself.
Neve nodded. “I guess that’s fair.”
“That’s not me saying you should. It’s not my friendship on the line here.”
“I know. I appreciate your honesty. Truly.”
Alba nodded. “I just can’t imagine how you come back from saying all of that. I’d spend the rest of my life knowing that she felt the exact way I’d been worrying she did. It would make me worry everyone else felt the same way, and that’s just too… unstable a foundation on which to live.”
Neve’s head whipped up and she stared at Alba.
Alba looked back, her eyes widening in confusion. “What did I do?”
“Oh. No. Nothing. I just… I’d just been thinking before this whole thing that our friendship felt like it was built on unstable ground that could fall apart at any second.”
“Ah.” She looked back out over the city, considering. “Yeah, I don’t think I could live with that. Especially now. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t. There are a million reasons someone might need to live in a situation like that for a while, and there’s no shame in that. Sometimes, it’s all you know. Sometimes it’s all you have to get away from something worse.”
“But it isn’t really tenable long-term.”
Alba shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think it eats you alive eventually.”
“Yeah…” Neve’s chest ached so badly. She couldn’t remember it ever hurting so much. It probably had, but she couldn’t recall it. Or, maybe it hadn’t, and this was simply what happened when you grew up and the painful, heartbreaking situations simply started stacking themselves on one another. When it had only been her family, that was bad, but it was just one thing. This was Charlie, and Roxanne, and her previous breakups, and her family, and, and, and…
Maybe she’d made it to adulthood after all. Maybe adulthood was simply this. A laundry list of all the times she’d been hurt.
She looked at her hand still in Alba’s, up at Alba’s face, and, finally, out over the city again.
No. She didn’t believe that. Adulthood wasn’t merely all the things that hurt us. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t yet sure how to make it something else, but she did know that, despite how bad today had been, this place, this moment with Alba, was good. And if you could have good moments on your worst days, then adulthood had to be more than that.
Alba reached across her body with her free arm, moving Neve’s hair out of her face. “You know you deserve better than the hand you’ve been dealt. You deserved better than your shitty ex who thought breaking up in a Best Buy was the right thing to do. And you deserved better than Charlie.”
“It’s not all their fault—”
“Yes. It is.”
Neve looked at her incredulously. “I really don’t think that’s true.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but I do. And I believe it more than enough for both of us. So, until you can believe it for yourself, let me believe in you.”
Neve thought she’d already cried herself out of tears but her eyes filled with them again. Different this time. Warmth felt as though it was flowing from Alba and into all of the cracks in Neve’s chest, not quite healing all of the damage, but filling it with something better than pain and self-hatred.
She pursed her lips, trying not to cry. She had never realized how badly she just needed to hear someone tell her they believed in her and really, truly mean it. She’d been waiting a long time.
She nodded and received a gentle smile in response.
Barely cognizant enough to consider her actions, she shuffled closer to Alba, closing the final space between them, and rested her head on Alba’s shoulder, their hands still clutched together on her knee. She’d never been one for simply falling asleep in public spaces but, after everything, she felt like she absolutely would fall asleep right there if they stayed for long enough.
She probably should have insisted that they leave, mentioned that she was barely hanging on, but she didn’t want to. All of the horrible things were easier to exist with when it was just her, Alba, and the view. So, instead, she stayed there, breathing in Alba’s comforting scent as her view of the city became fuzzier and fuzzier and the only real thing was Alba.