Chapter 12 What We’ve Become
WHAT WE’VE BECOME
“Remind me why I thought this was a good career choice?” Callie flopped down on the couch. “I have a twelve-year-old biter. A biter. I suggested the parents get him a muzzle.”
I looked up from the file I was reading. Counseling teens and young adults had not been either Callie’s or my first career choice. But we had student loans and bills to pay. “Because after six years of college, a job was the next step. That, and rent is expensive.”
“Oh god, don’t get me started. We got a notice our rent is going up another five hundred dollars.” Callie rested her head on the back of the couch. “I’m thinking of dying my hair purple. I need a change.”
“You need a change, or you’re going to be thirty in a couple days?” Callie was the second in our friend group to turn thirty. Zoey had been first in July, and I would be last in November. We were officially leaving our careless twenties behind for adulthood and all that went with it.
Callie sat up and looked at her hair. “No. I’m ready to enter this next era of my life. This is going to be the era of sexual freedom.”
“Wasn’t that your twenties?” I raised a brow. I met both Callie and Zoey in college. Callie had been my roommate, and we had met Zoey in an art history class.
“Nope, that was my exploring era. You’re coming tomorrow, right? And don’t give me that I’m-too-old-for-the-bar-scene shit.”
“I’m not going to miss your birthday party.
But we are too old for the bar scene. How about a nice quiet brunch when you turn thirty-one?
” I opened the file of my next client. After college Callie and I both took counselor positions with the PineWood Center.
Neither of us wanted to work with families, but here we could bide our time and rack up hours towards certification.
“Beside Zo and me, who else is coming?” I turned my attention to the file. A fourteen-year-old with a budding eating disorder.
“Ugh.” Callie groaned dramatically and flopped back on the couch. “You remember Stephanie?”
“The one who slept with the guy you wanted to ask to prom in high school?”
“Yes. She’s going to be there. My mother ran into her and happened to mention I was celebrating the big three-oh. So now she’s coming.”
“I thought she lived in Fargo?” I made a couple notes in the file.
My idea of what friends were had changed after I met Callie and Zoey.
They were nothing like Anna, who I rarely spoke to now.
With Callie and Zoey, I didn’t have to work so hard to be their friend.
I could just be me. Those first few months away from Parkfield had been tough.
“She does, but her cult is having their annual meeting at the convention center, so she’s here, and my mother invited her. Besides Stephanie, a couple girls from yoga and my two roommates.”
“You can uninvite her. You’re not ten. And Mary Kay is not a cult.”
“Yes, it is. She drives a pink car. And if I tell her not to come, she still will, and that will make everything more awkward.” Callie checked her hair for split ends. “Anyways, you want to grab a pre-birthday drink with me and check out the venue?”
“Venue?” I shook my head. “You mean the bar? And I can’t.
I’m supposed to have dinner with Ian and his friends.
” Ian, my current boyfriend, was a very safe CPA.
I would be thirty next month, so I was trying to have healthier adult relationships.
And having dinner with my boyfriend’s friends was the first step.
“Ooh, comingling friends. That’s a pretty big step there with Mr. CPA. Does that mean Zoey and I have to have dinner with you two?”
“I think this was an accident. We were having dinner the other night and ran into these friends, and they invited Ian. And since I was sitting there… I told Ian I could cancel last minute, but he said it was fine. And no, you don’t have to have dinner with him.
” I paused. “Wait, you don’t want to have dinner with him? Why?”
Callie brushed something from her jeans. “He’s not your type, Ev.”
“Not my type? You mean stable?” He was different from the boys I dated in college. In college I went for anything the complete opposite of dark-haired, broken boys. And no one with green eyes or anyone who reminded me of Tristan Anderson.
“No, I mean the type that wants to get married and have one point two kids.” Callie checked her watch and stood. “I don’t picture you with him. He’s a CPA, for fuck’s sake. People don’t date CPAs; they marry them. In their thirties. What happened to Luke? He was nice.”
“Lyric? He cheated on me with the waitress.” He had been the closest I ever got to dating someone like Tristan. Dark hair and a nose ring.
Callie shrugged. “Yeah, but you said the sex was amazing. And it’s been, like, a few months, and you still haven’t slept with Ian.”
“Yes, I have.” We did a couple weeks into our relationship. It was nice. Just like Ian. Nice.
“That bad, huh?” Callie scrunched up her nose.
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. If it was good, you would’ve told me. Plus, you know my theory. Tattoos are the new shoe size. Lot of tats equals really good in bed.”
“It could also mean infidelity. Lyric had five.” Lyric was after Sam, who came after Wes. A sad list of mama’s boys and serial daters. Which was all I had needed in my life back then. But now I needed the next step: a stable, nice boyfriend. Someone with a future.
“But the sex was still good, right? I wonder if he’s single.”
“Don’t you have a biter to deal with?” I checked the clock.
I had one more client and I was free for the weekend.
And Callie was wrong; Ian was my type. He had a great job, a headboard, matching plates, two plants he’d kept alive longer than a month.
Ian had his life together. His future planned out.
I wasn’t sure I was his type. I was still trying to get my life together, and I didn’t have a headboard.
“Well, message me if you need an emergency,” Callie said as she left.
As my last client left, it reminded me why I never wanted children.
They were too easy to mess up. I wonder how my life would have turned out if my father hadn’t been so hands-on.
He had been the buffer between my mother and me.
I hadn’t realized that until he was gone.
He would’ve been proud that I graduated from the U of M.
That I had a job I liked for the most part.
I’d left Parkfield. He might’ve liked Ian.
Not as much as he liked Tristan. But Tristan broke my heart.
The summer I left Parkfield, I pushed Tristan as far out of my mind as I could. I made Callie and Zoey promise to never let me look him up on social media or do a Google search of his name. It was more out of fear that I would find just an obituary. Or worse, he was married and was living our life.
And as if she could hear my thoughts about Tristan, my mother called.
I let it go to voicemail. I didn’t have the energy to deal with her and whatever her newest crisis was.
She and Harold never moved to Florida. My mother went down there for one summer and hated everything about it.
So for the first few years of their marriage, Harold commuted from Florida back to Parkfield.
When he officially retired, he moved in with my mother.
No one’s life panned out like we thought it would all these years ago.
Anna never left Parkfield. I did but not with Tristan.
Which was okay, I thought. I shoved my laptop into my bag.
I had most of the life I had dreamed of.
I lived with my other best friend, Zoey.
It was a good life for a twenty-nine-year-old with student debt and no real direction in life.