337 Days #3
Tiny made an almost imperceptible face. The air grew thin and chilly. Rhea blushed.
“Do you still want us to ask about it?” Ada inquired gently.
“Yeah, totally—it’s okay, I’m just—my love life is currently nonexistent.”
This awkwardness had been going on for years, ever since Rhea’s thirty-second birthday, when she got too inebriated on mezcal margaritas and cried to her best friends about her singleness.
Ada had just gotten married the week before, and this felt like a personal attack; how could Ada get married when Rhea was turning thirty-two while single?
“You never ask about my love life!” Rhea wailed. “You all treat me like being single is a disease and you’re afraid to catch it!”
Zoe, Ada, and Tiny locked eyes, and that glance betrayed all the evenings they had spent discussing Rhea, worried for Rhea, unsure of how to take care of Rhea. Rhea saw that glance and ran to the toilet to throw up.
Her friends surrounded her and held her hair behind her ears. They rubbed her back and assured her they’d only stopped asking about her love life because when they would ask if she was seeing anyone, she would sigh and say she didn’t want to talk about it.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to talk about it!” Rhea said as mezcal fire-hosed out of her esophagus.
Rhea flushed the toilet and wiped her mouth, which resulted in a vomit-covered hand, and because she was so drunk, it made complete sense to her to dip that hand in the toilet water and swirl it around until it was clean.
The next morning, Rhea took them all out for a very apologetic brunch and told them that was the alcohol talking and to forget everything she said; they were, unfortunately, not able to do that.
Rhea tried not to think about this traumatic memory while she cut out a photo of twenty-two-year-old Zoe in a graduation cap and gown.
“Are you still…on Bumble?” Tiny gingerly asked.
Rhea took in her usually brazen friend’s timid demeanor, and guilt gripped her stomach. Rhea’s friends were officially afraid of her. Not only was she single, childless, and almost a senior citizen, but she also terrified adult women.
“Yep, still swipin’,” Rhea said with what she hoped was a kind smile.
“Glad to hear it. Your person is out there,” Ada said, and squeezed Rhea’s hand in a way that was intended to be supportive but was received as pity.
“God, the whole thing is so fucked,” Tiny said.
“It’s, like, a proven fact that getting married and having kids is terrible for women.
I read a legit article that said all the stress and hard work takes years off our lives, and yet…
we’re still doing it.” Tiny looked down at her swollen uterus like it was a loaded gun pointed at her forehead.
“Really? Huh, that’s so…crazy,” Rhea said, wishing there was a loaded gun pointed at her forehead. She would gladly shave off a few years for a family rather than spend those years in the retirement home dealing with Carol’s shit.
Ada made a noise of discomfort, possibly from pregnancy pain, but more likely from a desire to change the subject. Rhea and Tiny looked concerned.
“I’m fine; baby just kicked. Baby’s been kicking harder lately,” Ada explained.
Ada had two other children, a girl and a boy, but she always referred to her children in the womb as “baby” and did not want to know the sex before the birth.
Ada took Rhea’s hand and placed it under her belly button.
Rhea felt the tiny pulses against her hand, and her heart filled with love for this nameless infant.
Since this was Ada’s third child, Rhea was finding love much easier to access this time around.
Ada’s first baby made Rhea so jealous that it took a few months to warm up to her.
Rhea was not merely jealous that Ada had a husband and a daughter; she was mostly jealous because Ada was suddenly giving all her love and attention to someone new.
Ada is my mom, Rhea wanted to tell the helpless newborn. She was my mom first, go away. She never said this out loud, of course, on the off chance someone might walk in on a full-grown woman accusing a newborn of stealing her mommy.
Rhea closed her eyes and tried to imagine the itty-bitty body elbowing the walls of their enclosure.
She never got over the miraculous energy of childbirth, the idea that a human being was growing behind that hard layer of skin.
A whole life was beginning, and Rhea hoped it would be a beautiful one; she knew, with Ada as their mother, her wish would come true.
Rhea opened her eyes and briefly held Ada’s gaze.
Every time they did this, the unspoken, petty moments of jealousy or frustration throughout their twenty-three-year friendship seemed to melt away, and all that remained was the deep love that had occurred between them the moment they met and would somehow continue on long after they were dead.
“Dammit, I gotta piss again. He keeps drop-kicking me in the bladder. Why didn’t you tell me being pregnant sucks balls?” Tiny said, ruining the moment as Tiny often did.