JO
CHARLOTTE
"You're not late."
"I thought we could order dinner first."
"Right. Yeah. Dinner. Good idea."
Tension sat in Jo's shoulders. She was standing slightly too far away, arms crossed, fingers gripping her own elbows. In a decade of friendship, Charlotte had learned every one of Jo's ordinary tells. This careful distance was new. This was wrong.
"Are you okay?" Charlotte asked.
"Fine. Why?"
"You're being weird."
Jo laughed, but it came out strangled. "I'm always weird."
"Not like this."
For a moment, Jo's expression cracked open. Pain crossed her face, there and gone, smoothed over by a smile that stopped short of her eyes.
"Long week," Jo said. "Server migration finally finished, so now they've got me doing the database consolidation. Margot's laptop is possessed. Someone in accounting downloaded malware onto their work computer because they were playing free online poker."
"That does sound stressful."
"It is." Jo finally moved into the apartment, dropping onto the couch with forced casualness. "So. How was your week? How's, um. Bianca?"
The name came out clipped. Jo had never said it like that before.
"We broke up," Charlotte said.
Jo went very still. "What?"
"After the barbecue. We had a talk. It wasn't going to work."
"But you—you seemed so—you said she was great."
"She is great. We just weren't right for each other."
"Oh." Jo was staring at her, eyes wide. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?"
Charlotte finally moved from where she'd been standing near the kitchen doorway and sat down on the couch, the worn velvet cool against her palms. She left space between them.
Usually she'd sit closer. Usually their knees would touch, their shoulders brush.
Tonight, the space felt necessary. The apartment hummed around them, the fridge cycling, traffic murmuring through the cracked window.
"I'm fine," Charlotte said. "It was mutual. Very civilized."
"That's good. I guess." Jo was twisting her hands in her lap. "I didn't realize... you didn't mention..."
"I didn't want to make a big thing of it."
"Right. No, of course." Jo's laugh was hollow. "So. Single again. Back to, um. The apps?"
"I don't know. Maybe not."
"No?"
Charlotte looked at her. At Jo, who was acting so strange, who couldn't meet her eyes, who was vibrating with some unnamed energy.
The certainty sat cold in Charlotte's stomach. She's pulling away from me and I don't know why.
"Jo," Charlotte said carefully. "Did something happen?"
"What? No. Why would you think that?"
"You're acting different."
"I'm not—" Jo stopped. Took a breath. "Okay. Maybe I'm a little... I've been thinking about some stuff. It's nothing."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Just... stuff. Work stuff. Family stuff. Stuff." Jo grabbed the remote like it was a lifeline. "Should we watch the show?"
"Jo."
"I really just want to watch the show, okay? Can we just..." Her voice cracked. "Can we please just be normal tonight?"
Charlotte's throat tightened. In all the years she'd loved Jo, she'd never seen her this brittle: smile too bright, hands opening and closing in her lap like she couldn't decide what to hold on to.
"Okay," Charlotte said softly. "We can be normal."
She turned on the show. Jo pulled her legs up under her, curling into the corner of the couch. Usually she'd stretch out, feet in Charlotte's lap, complaining about plot holes. Tonight she was compressed, contained.
Charlotte watched the screen without seeing it.
Everything changed. And I don't know how to fix it.
The friendship had been wrong all week. Tiny things first: a missed touch, a clipped answer, Jo choosing the far end of the couch. Charlotte didn't know what had changed. She only knew she could feel the distance growing.
Bianca's words echoed in her head. Tell her. Even if it blows up. Not knowing is worse.
Maybe knowing was worse too.
On screen, the protagonist was pining over someone who couldn't love her back. Charlotte had never related to a character more.
"This is really sad," Jo said quietly.
"Yes."
"She should just tell her. Even if it doesn't work out. At least she'd know."
Charlotte went cold. "What?"
"The—the character. On the show." Jo gestured at the screen. "She's been in love with her friend for years. She should just tell her."
"It's not that simple."
"Isn't it?"
Charlotte looked at her. Jo was staring at the TV, jaw tight.
"Sometimes," Charlotte said slowly, "the risk is too high. Sometimes what you have is too important to gamble."
"So you just... never say anything? You just live with it forever?"
"If that's what it takes. To keep the friendship. To keep what matters."
Jo finally looked at her. In the blue glow from the screen, her expression was impossible to read.
"What if the friendship is already changing?" Charlotte asked, the words out before she could stop them. "What if keeping quiet is just as damaging as speaking up?"
Jo went very still.
"Charlotte," she said. "What are you—"
"Nothing. It's the show. I'm talking about the show." Jo stood abruptly. "I need a drink. You want something?"
"Jo—"
"Wine? Beer? I think I saw those sparkling waters you like in your fridge."
She was already walking toward the kitchen. Charlotte sat frozen on the couch, heart pounding.
What if the friendship is already changing?
She didn't know why she'd let the words slip, or whether Jo had understood she wasn't talking about the show at all, but about them. All she knew was that the ground beneath her feet was moving, and she didn't know how to stop it.
Jo came back with two beers. The bottle was cold and damp against Charlotte's fingers when she took it. Jo sat back down, closer this time, though not as close as usual. The smell of her shampoo drifted over, coconut and cedar underneath, and Charlotte's ribs ached.
"Sorry," Jo said. "I'm being weird."
"You said that."
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't..." She took a long drink. "Can we pretend I'm normal tonight? Please?"
"You can be however you need to be."
"I need to be normal." Jo's voice was small. "I need things to be normal."
Charlotte understood that. She had spent years treating normal like a set of rules: sit close but not too close, say love you but never explain it, take whatever Jo offered and never reach for more.
"Okay," Charlotte said. "Normal."
They watched the show. Charlotte didn't absorb any of it. She was too aware of Jo beside her, the rhythm of her breathing, how she kept almost reaching for Charlotte's hand and pulling back.
When the episode ended, Jo stood, retrieving her bag from where she'd dropped it by the door hours earlier.
"I should go."
"It's early."
"I'm tired. The server thing. I just... I need sleep."
Charlotte walked her to the door. The hallway felt too narrow, the space between them too charged.
"Jo," Charlotte said. "Whatever's going on. You know you can tell me."
Jo's smile was painful. "I know."
"I mean it. Whatever it is. We've been friends for ten years. Nothing's going to change that."
Jo's eyes went bright, and Charlotte saw pain there, and fear, and underneath both, a tenderness that made Charlotte's throat close.
"Right," Jo said. "Nothing changes."
She hugged Charlotte, brief and too tight, and then she was gone.
Charlotte stood in her doorway and watched Jo disappear down the stairs. Her apartment felt too quiet without her. Too empty.
We're breaking, Charlotte thought. And I don't even know why.
Years of careful, quiet devotion, and the friendship was changing anyway. Charlotte had never hated being careful more.
She closed the door, leaned against it, and slid down until she was sitting on the cold hardwood. Her breath came in jagged pulls, and the tears burned before they fell.
Monday morning, Charlotte sat at her drafting table in the Whitfield renovation office, staring at a section drawing she'd made three times already. The proportions were wrong. The cornice detail was off by a quarter inch. She erased it, started again, and her pencil snapped against the paper.
The office smelled like old plaster dust and the cold coffee sitting on her desk since seven a.m. Rain streaked the windows, blurring the brownstones across the street into watercolor shapes. Her phone sat face-up beside her elbow, silent.
Jo hadn't texted since Saturday morning.
Two words: all good!
Charlotte had stared at those words for ten minutes, trying to decode them. All good. Not love you, Lottie. Not what are we watching Friday? Just the cheerful, hollow shorthand of someone creating distance.
She picked up a fresh pencil. Tried the cornice detail again. Her hand shook.
What if the friendship is already changing?
Jo's voice kept playing in her head. The crack in it. The way she'd gripped the remote like she was drowning.
By Wednesday, Charlotte texted: Dinner tomorrow? My treat.
The message went from delivered to read. Waited. Checked twice, three times, four. The response came two hours later.
Jo: can't tomorrow. work thing.
Charlotte: Tuesday?
Jo: maybe. let me check.
Let me check. In ten years, Jo had never once needed to check before making plans with Charlotte. Jo didn't check. Jo said yes and then rearranged the rest of her life around it.
Charlotte set the phone face-down on the drafting table. The wood grain blurred. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until she saw white spots.
Thursday, she stayed at the office until nine. The security guard had to knock on the drafting room door. She drove home through empty streets, the windshield wipers squeaking against glass, and sat in her parked car for fifteen minutes before going inside.
Her apartment was too quiet. Jo's half-drunk sparkling water from Friday was still in the fridge. Charlotte poured it down the sink, then stood with her hands braced on the counter, breathing through the tightness in her chest.
She picked up her phone and typed: I miss you.
Deleted it.
Typed: Are you okay? Really okay?
Deleted that too.
Typed: Whatever I did, I'm sorry.
Stared at it. Deleted it.
She hadn't done anything. That was the worst part. She'd been so careful for years, and the friendship was dying anyway. One clipped text at a time.
Her phone buzzed.
Jo: hey, busy week, might need to skip friday. rain check?
Charlotte read it standing at the kitchen counter, the overhead light humming, the faucet dripping where she hadn't turned it off all the way.
Rain check. On the one thing they'd never missed. The thing that was theirs.
Charlotte: Of course. Everything okay?
Jo: fine! just work stuff. talk soon.
Talk soon. Not see you Friday. Not love you, Lottie. Talk soon, like they were acquaintances. Like ten years could shrink to nothing in a week.
Charlotte put down her phone. Pressed her hands to her face. The apartment ticked around her, the old radiator clicking, the fridge cycling on with a low groan.
At least if you tell her, you'd know, Bianca had said.
Maybe it was time to know.