3
“HEY, BOSS. I thought you might need this.” Lydia hustled into my office clutching a stack of cardboard containers in her arms, tucked under her chin for balance. The savory scent of French fries washed over me like a siren song, and my stomach immediately responded with a greedy growl.
“Here.” She passed me one that was overflowing with crisp, matchstick fries, and a greasy, paper-wrapped burger. “Extra pickles.”
“Hell yes, thank you.” I reached forward eagerly, barely getting the words out before inhaling a handful of fries, so hot they singed the roof of my mouth.
“I hope it’s okay that I yelled out about your New Hampshire trip. I swear I was just trying to help,” she said, offering me an apologetic look as she flopped down on the modern, steel-gray love seat next to my desk. “You looked shook, like you were about to freak out.”
“Oh, I’m not about to freak out,” I said, tearing open a packet of ketchup with my teeth.
“Well, that’s good—”
“I’m already there. I’m in def-con five, the world’s about to explode, and mankind as we know it will be extinct freakout.”
“Oh.” Lydia’s face fell, bright pink lips pursed with worry.
“It’s not your fault, Lyd,” I said through bites. “You didn’t know Amaya was going to make me the poster child for burnout in front of the entire office.”
“Yeah, that was wild.” She wrinkled her nose, giving me a sympathetic look.
“And you know how much stuff we still have left to do!” I smacked at my notepad with the back of my hand to make my point. “We’re so far in the hole on this thing. How am I supposed to fix it if I’m not here? I know for a fact that Amaya secretly checks her email when she’s on that ridiculous silent yoga retreat. She’s so full of shit.”
Lydia rolled her eyes in solidarity. “She has serious main character energy. It’s terrifying. But…”
I raised brows at her, impatient. “But what?”
“But, it’s not the worst idea she’s ever had. I don’t think you’ve taken a full week off since I’ve been here, and I’m going on three years.” She very purposefully avoided my stare and propped her laptop on the edge of my desk, flipping it open to the PowerPoint we’d been working on all week. This morning I’d spent an hour obsessing over a slide featuring an animated pint glass only to delete the entire presentation in a fit of frustrated rage.
“Excuse you.” I reached over and lowered the screen so she couldn’t ignore me. “I went to South Carolina in March.”
“For, like, your great-aunt’s funeral,” she scoffed.
“Yeah, but I totally saw the beach while I was there,” I mumbled, taking another bite of my burger. “And I had dinner with my dad. That counts.”
“Look, I don’t mean to comment on your tendency to, like, be an extreme millennial, but your work–life boundaries could use some help.” Lydia’s brown eyes shifted as she studied me, in therapist mode. “Remember when you slept here?”
“It was one time! I fell asleep on the couch. It wasn’t, like, planned.”
It had actually been three times, but that was neither here nor there.
“Whatever you say,” she replied, though her tone said otherwise.
“Let me see the picture of Charles first.” I flipped my palm open, demanding her phone. “This night’s already a shitshow. I might as well just completely go balls to the wall.”
“Seriously?” she asked with a raised brow, and when I didn’t reply, she simply shook her head and handed it over.
A few clicks later and there they were, beaming in front of those giant, polished swans. She was cute. Muddy brown, straight hair, not much different from mine. A smattering of freckles across pasty white skin. Nice smile. She fit easily into the crook of Charles’s arm, whereas I, at five foot ten, was always a smidge taller than him.
Charles looked completely different: His reddish hair was now shaggy and—I squinted just to be sure—he had a short, clipped beard. But it wasn’t just the fact that he’d gone and given himself a makeover; it was something even bigger, more jarring: he looked relaxed. Happy. This was not the tightly wound Charles I knew, who constantly worried about things like hurricane preparedness and forgetting to take out his Invisalign before a meal.
I scrolled down to the next photo in his feed, the two of them red-faced, sweaty, and beaming, rackets in hand.
“Good lord, they play pickleball?” I dug around my brain for any mention, any inkling of interest, that Charles might have expressed in pickleball. I came up blank.
“I thought everyone over thirty played pickleball,” Lydia said.
“I don’t play pickleball,” I replied.
“Maybe you should,” she countered. “Isn’t having a hobby, like, a major part of self-care?”
“Right now, my hobby is Charles’s Instagram.” I swiped the screen gently so as not to accidentally hit the like button on any of his photos. “He’s turned into a completely different person in, like, twelve months. Oh my god.”
I paused and shot her a shocked look. “There’s a photo of him camping, in jean shorts. Jorts.”
Lydia—whose wardrobe was almost entirely made up of vintage scores from the By the Pound floor of the Garment District—turned her mouth down in horror. “Well. That’s just poor sartorial judgment.”
“I know, but”—I spun around in my chair to face her—“he’s morphed into this entirely different person, and all I have to show for myself since we broke up is that I’m doing a shit job at work and am so burned out I have to be forced to take time off.”
“Don’t let Amaya get in your head,” Lydia said, grabbing the phone out of my hand.
“Oh, it’s way too late for that,” I grumbled.
“They went to Tulum!” she cooed, tapping her bejeweled nails on the screen. “God, this looks amazing. Now I want fish tacos.”
“You should have told Amaya I wanted to go to Mexico instead of New Hampshire.”
The words came out more bitter than intended. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend time with my friends at Pine Lake, a place that conjured up memories like an old song on the car radio. But heading back there meant revisiting cherished relationships I’d neglected, all for a job I apparently sucked at.
“Clara.” Lydia crossed her arms in front of her chest, assuming her favorite no-nonsense position. “You’re a fucking rock star. Just because you need a little break doesn’t mean you’re not good at what you do. This place isn’t going to collapse without you. Go try to get some sleep.”
“What’s sleep?” I joked, just as my phone buzzed on my desk.
“Do you even hear yourself?” Lydia snapped back as I wiped my hands with a scrunched-up pile of napkins.
I did hear myself. I sounded defensive, panicked, even. This wasn’t me, I reasoned. But when I paused to think about what was me, especially lately, I came up blank, empty—just like the PowerPoint on my screen.