Chapter 23
23
By Monday, it’s the longest Elsie and Ginny have gone without talking to each other since they first got cell phones when they turned thirteen. Elsie’s fury has faded into frustration, and maybe even a little sadness. The stages of grief, right?
Elsie’s grateful for the distraction of the store. Her parents even let her work the floor, so she only has to interact with customers who need help, rather than put on a smiling face for every person who walks in. Her mom is on the register this morning after driving Elsie to work. That will happen a lot now, since Elsie started the process of moving back in with her parents yesterday.
After a week of doing everything she wanted, reality is a slap in the face.
The store is exactly the same. It’s always exactly the same. Everyday life somehow feels stagnant. Even with everything that happened last week, Elsie is still in the same place she was before she left. She’s somehow in a worse place, fighting with Ginny.
After helping a customer find an epoxy kit to fix a crack in their sink, Elsie sighs at the checkout line. She doesn’t wait to be asked, just opens the second register to help move things along. It’s routine. Mundane. Monotonous.
“Thanks for your help, honey,” her mom says once the lines have dissipated. “You’re such a good worker.”
Elsie doesn’t reply. She’d be an even better worker if they listened to any of her ideas.
Her mom huffs; apparently her compliment was dependent on Elsie being gracious. “Honestly, who goes on a weeklong Caribbean vacation and comes back grumpy? You were morose yesterday, and now you can’t even take a compliment.”
“Sorry I wasn’t happy enough for you while moving half my belongings back into my childhood bedroom after my engagement ended.”
“There’s no need to be sassy, Elsbeth.”
It’s midmorning by now. Ginny hasn’t texted about lunch. They don’t always—sometimes they just come by to pick Elsie up. Elsie knows that’s not going to happen, but she hopes anyway.
She works the register when there are customers, sweeps the entrance when there aren’t. Adjusts the displays near the door. Anything to be toward the front of the store, to see Ginny as soon as they arrive.
Except they don’t.
By two, hangry and regular angry both, Elsie goes to lunch by herself.
On Tuesday, she brings leftover kugel her mom made the night before and eats it alone in the back at noon on the dot.
“I’m not trying to start a fight,” her mom says from the door to the break room. Elsie stares at her almost-empty Tupperware. “But you have been down lately, honey. I’m here if you wanna talk about it.”
The thought sounds nice—to be able to tell her mom about things with Ginny. To have someone to talk to about it. Elsie could use an outside perspective.
“It’s okay if you regret calling off the wedding.”
What?
“You’re sad, whether you want to admit it or not. Don’t let your pride prevent you from being happy. You know Derrick is so nice, and he loves you so much, he’ll take you back in a heartbeat.”
In Santa Lupita, Ginny asked who Elsie was separate from her family, but Elsie hadn’t wanted to be separate from her family. They’re her family. But if this is what her mom thinks, she doesn’t know her at all.
Maybe Elsie does need to swallow her pride, though.
If she thinks too hard about it, she’s still furious at Ginny. It’s not even about Ginny lying to her so much as it is about Ginny making her believe she could have everything she wanted, only to ruin it all. To break Elsie’s trust. To make Elsie doubt everything.
There’s nothing Ginny can do to make that better. Even apologizing—it wouldn’t change the loss of trust. Ginny can’t make Elsie believe in the future she believed in last week. Which is fine. Elsie doesn’t expect them to do that. But she does miss her best friend. She wants to ignore last week. Pretend the trip, and everything that came with it, didn’t happen.
Elsie doesn’t want last week; she wants the week before. She wants her best friend back, the way they’ve been for years. The trip, everything that came with it? Doesn’t matter. Didn’t happen. Ginny has nothing to apologize for. As long as the two of them can go back to how they were.
They don’t need to talk about the trip. How could Elsie talk about this without laying herself bare to Ginny, showing all her delicate, vulnerable insides? She’s not willing to be vulnerable like that with Ginny anymore. She doesn’t trust them enough.
The only way to solve this situation is to ignore it. Elsie can’t talk about it. But she can’t hold on to her anger, either. It punishes them both to be fighting. She’s willing to be the bigger person and get them through it.
Elsie borrows her mom’s car to drive to Ginny’s after work. Another change—they used to live close enough that Elsie could walk if she had some time, bike if she had less, and if all else failed, take the bus. Her parents live too far away.
Ginny must’ve gotten another foster already. The living room curtains are shut, but the barks from inside are loud and deep.
Elsie pauses at the door. She hasn’t knocked since Ginny moved somewhere without roommates, and she didn’t always knock then, either. But everything feels different. Elsie wants to think she’ll always be welcome, but she doesn’t know anymore.
Before she can decide what to do, the door opens, Ginny on the other side with one hand on the collar of a gangly teenage-looking German shepherd mix wagging their tail so hard the foyer table shakes every time it thumps against it.
“Hey,” Ginny says. There’s a half beat of silence before they continue. “Come in. I’ll put Rufus up. Don’t step in the pee.”
They drag the dog away, leaving Elsie alone on the threshold. If it were any other day, this would be normal. As it is, Elsie feels bereft in her solitude. They didn’t even make eye contact.
“You don’t have to put them up,” she says, going inside before she can let too much cold in.
“Unless you want him to excited-pee on you instead of the floor, I definitely do.”
“Okay, fair.”
By the time Elsie is out of her boots and outerwear, Ginny has the dog in a crate and the dribbles of pee cleaned up. Elsie stands at the edge of the kitchen while Ginny washes their hands. Hands that drove Elsie crazy. Calloused fingers at odds with the gentleness of Ginny’s touch.
“You didn’t come to lunch.” Elsie tries to keep her tone even. Neither accusatory nor as whiny as she feels. Just a statement of fact.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have a job anymore,” Ginny says. “I’ve gotta cut back on expenses.”
“Right,” Elsie says. “Yeah, of course.”
Rufus whines from the crate.
“Ignore him,” Ginny says, drying their hands on the towel hanging over their oven door handle. It was a gift from Elsie: a set of dishtowels covered in dogs of different breeds.
“I totally get cutting back on expenses,” Elsie says. “But could I pay for your lunch a couple days a week, just so we could still hang out?”
She doesn’t say I miss you.
They can ignore their fight. They don’t have to talk about anything that happened; they can just go back to what it used to be. Be friends again. That’s all Elsie wants.
Ginny walks past Elsie to the living room without even looking at her. “Last I heard, you didn’t want to talk to me.”
Okay, fine, they can talk about it.
“Obviously I didn’t mean forever,” Elsie says. She sits next to Ginny on the couch. “And I get it now, why you lied about quitting your job.”
“I didn’t lie—”
Elsie holds up her hand. “Why you kept it from me. Whatever. I get it. I know you were trying not to make it about you. But Gin, I’m your friend. When you have something happening, I want to know about it—even if I’ve got stuff going on, too.”
If she pretends like nothing has changed between them then nothing has to. Ginny sighs. Fine. Elsie can pretend enough for the both of them.
“How’s Bonnie doing?” She always misses the dogs that get adopted.
Ginny takes a moment, but eventually they dig their phone out of their pocket. “Her new owners sent pics. There’s like ten of them, plus a video.”
They hand over the phone. Elsie pretends not to notice how delicately they do it, like they’re making sure their fingers don’t touch. She pretends it doesn’t hurt that Ginny hasn’t already forwarded these to her.
In every indoor picture Bonnie is on the furniture. In the video, she runs a wide circle around the edge of a fenced-in backyard that’s even bigger than Ginny’s. Elsie blinks, and her eyes are wet. Jesus, that’s embarrassing.
“She looks so happy.”
“Yeah.” Ginny takes their phone back.
“Look, I’m sorry I was shitty to you,” Elsie says, swiping at her eyes like there’s something irritating them. Hopefully Ginny won’t notice the tears.
She is sorry she was so rude to Ginny. She was overwhelmed with emotions, but that’s no excuse to have been mean to her best friend. She can apologize for that, at least.
“I lashed out because I was scared.”
She didn’t realize that was true until it came out of her mouth. She’d acted like a jerk because she was terrified. Scared of how much she wanted to be with Ginny. Scared Ginny didn’t really want to be with her. She’s still scared of all of that. Too scared to be honest.
“We said nothing was going to ruin our friendship, and I don’t want it to,” Elsie says instead of I love you. Please be mine. “Can we stop being stupid and go back to being friends? I miss you, and it’s only been like three days.”
Ginny doesn’t answer right away, and when they do, Elsie’s heart stops in her chest.
“No,” Ginny says. “You were right.”
“What?”
“I need to figure out who I am on my own, too.”
Elsie imagines breathing into a paper bag. “ On your own, meaning…”
“I think we could both use some space, Els.”
They’ve had space. The past few days have been stupid. So much has happened that Elsie wants to tell Ginny about. She wants to commiserate over moving back in with her parents. She wants to jokingly complain that Ginny wasn’t there to carry the heavy stuff.
“Please,” Elsie says, her eyes welling again. Begging might be embarrassing, but it’s better than letting Ginny say no. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it, and you didn’t deserve it. Of course you’ve got your own life—which I want to hear about, by the way. Are you looking for new jobs? Are you gonna focus on woodworking? Maybe I could bring you lunch here sometime, while you work in the garage?”
“Els.” There’s so much sadness in Ginny’s voice. “You weren’t wrong that I’ve followed in your footsteps for our whole friendship. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Elsie turns her head toward the floor and the tears run. This feels so much worse than her engagement ending.
“What does that mean?”
“Just that you made some good points,” Ginny says. “I think it’d be good for us to take some time apart. Figure out who we are on our own.”
Elsie doesn’t want to. She likes who she is with Ginny.
“I’m not saying we can’t be friends,” Ginny says. “I just want us both to have space to focus on ourselves.”
Every time a foster dog of Ginny’s gets adopted, Elsie is sad. She could never be a foster parent; she falls in love with each dog and never wants them to leave. Ginny has lectured her about it—well, lectured or comforted, a little bit of both—more times than Elsie can count. When a dog gets adopted, that’s good. It means they found a perfect fit, perfect owner, perfect forever family. Ginny always talks about being grateful to have had the dogs in their life, while also being happy that they’re happy wherever they end up.
It feels like that’s what’s happening with Ginny, too.
They’re removing themself from Elsie’s life. There’s nothing for Elsie to do about it but be glad she got to be their friend for as long as she did.
Because even if Ginny says they can still be friends, it’s not going to go like that. Elsie doesn’t know how to hold on less tightly.
“Okay,” Elsie says, voice thick with tears. “I should go.”
She doesn’t make an excuse, and Ginny doesn’t press for one. Elsie needs to get out of here before she has a breakdown. She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t pet Rufus—was that even the dog’s name? She doesn’t tie her boots or zip her coat or put on her hat or gloves.
And she doesn’t hug Ginny goodbye.