Chapter Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
She looks just like the sophisticated woman in Will’s photos. No more round cheeks, no more Kool-Aid streak in her hair. I’ve preserved Zoe Grant in my mind as a seventeen-year-old girl, but she’s an adult now. With fully developed frontal lobes, just like the rest of us.
Zoe’s always been a few inches shorter than me, but the way she stands is full of a confident presence. Her face is clean, her hair still damp from a shower. She’s dressed in sandals and a simple white sundress with small yellow flowers.
“Hi,” she says, her voice sending me all the way back to that study hall when I asked if I could read her short story and she said, Oh my gosh, you’re secretly weird, too!
I gulp. “H-hi,” I manage.
In the next breath, we’re hugging.
Instantly, I feel like an emotionally charged teenager again, clutching my first best friend close as tears prick at my eyes, dance across my cheeks, and land on her shoulders. She sob-laughs against my collarbone and I choke out a laugh of my own. When I pull back to look at her, she beams a thousand-watt smile at me.
“I missed you,” we say at the exact same moment, and then laugh awkwardly.
Her expression is open and clear. She evaluates me warmly as I evaluate her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Will’s car peel out of my driveway and take a left. I love him, I love him. I love the way he knows I can want him all the time, but I need to see Zoe in this instant more than anyone else.
I hurry out of the entryway and beckon her inside, blushing furiously at the state of myself. I’m in bike shorts and an oversized T-shirt, my feet bare, my messy hair in a bun on top of my head. I don’t think I’ve showered in a while, honestly.
Zoe’s eyes roam over the bolts of fabric, the mannequin, the muffins still on the kitchen counter next to a few of my dirty coffee mugs.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says, offering me a tight-lipped smile while she blushes. “Do you have wine? I think we might need it.”
My laugh is giddy and euphoric and nervous now that the reality of this meeting has settled in. I make my way to the fridge and grab the bottle of white from the door. “Or do you prefer red?”
“I like white,” she says, giving me another half smile.
It’s painfully quiet as I grab two dusty glasses out of the cabinet, give them a rinse, and then struggle to uncork the bottle. Zoe walks close to the mannequin, examining my half-built dress.
“What are you making?” she asks.
“It’s a formal dress,” I say, uncorking the wine bottle with a soft pop. “If it looks okay, I might wear it to my best friend’s rehearsal dinner next weekend.”
“Camila?”
I lift the wine bottle, pouring the first glass. “Yeah. Camila.”
She keeps studying the gown. “Looks like something the Princess of Elthior might wear.”
When I glance over, Zoe throws me a wink. It softens some of the discomfort.
“Do you still write fiction?”
She shakes her head. “I only write about writers these days.”
“ The New York Times Book Review is very impressive,” I say.
She walks over to the kitchen island, scooping up one of the glasses. “I guess we’re both just very impressive.”
We head out to the back patio, settling into chairs with soft cushions I pull out of a storage bin. The early-fall night is still that Texas brand of warm. The crisp wine sliding down my throat feels like a boost I desperately need.
My heartbeat thumps. Fast. Every one of my biorhythms is in jeopardy. There are so many ways this conversation can go, and I’m terrified of all of them.
Zoe sets her glass down on the table between us, looking equally shy. “I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to see you.”
I shake my head. “Me, too. I mean, Will mentioned you wanted to talk, but you wanted it to be in person, and I totally understood. I could have come up to New York. I should have.”
Zoe sighs, breaking into a smile. “I think we were both nervous.”
“Yeah.”
“I owe you an apology,” she says.
“Me first,” I say.
“No,” Zoe says, though she’s still smiling. She grabs her wineglass and takes a deep gulp, then looks out at my yard. “I know I don’t have to explain to you what your friendship meant to me that year.”
I shake my head. “You don’t. Because it was the exact same level of importance for me.”
“You know how people joke about an ex teaching you something valuable about yourself you carry forward into your next relationship?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say, thinking of Clay, and even of my high school boyfriend. I learned lessons from them both that have made me a better girlfriend for Will.
“I think it applies to girlhood friendships, too,” Zoe says thoughtfully. “Every friendship that came after you, I found it easier to navigate the tough spots. I learned how to talk it out. How to reason through the actions of another person. It’s helped me in romantic love, too, but it started with you. A best friend.”
She looks back at me, her expression faraway. “What I’m getting at, Josie, is I think we had to make a big mistake so we could learn from each other. And even though that’s kind of tragic, it’s poetic, too.”
I swipe a tear from my eye, struck by the beauty of her phrasing.
Lessons learned.
The pact I made with Camila comes to mind: If you ever hurt my feelings, I’ll tell you, and we’ll have a conversation about it. Same goes for you if I hurt yours. And we do our best not to hurt each other in the first place. Deal?
I was a better friend to Camila because I hadn’t been as good at it with Zoe. It is tragic, and it is poetic, too.
“I spent my entire freshman year of college wishing I could talk to you,” Zoe goes on. “I felt so horribly guilty for shutting you out, for never responding to that letter you wrote me. On paper or in person. I read it and panicked. My body locked up and I didn’t know what to do. And then Will told me about our dad, and—my priorities were skewing every hour. I knew you were hurting, that I’d driven this metaphorical knife into you even deeper. I knew all of this, and instead of fixing it, I just wallowed in it, until I convinced myself that too much time had passed, that you were better off not hearing from me at all.”
She turns to me, her eyes wet. “I’m sorry, Josie. I’m sorry I didn’t have more faith in you. I’m sorry I didn’t say more to you about your oma’s passing. I have regretted it every year of my life since, and when Will told me he’d run back into you, that he’d offered to be your consultant, I felt this… relief. Like a weight off my chest, like it was fate.”
“Zoe,” I say, my voice pained. “Even back then, when I didn’t know what was going on with your parents, I still didn’t think you owed me anything. I’m sorry. I should have known you’d be hurt when Will and I kissed. And I also shouldn’t have let you push me away. Your family was hurting, too. We could have been there for each other. I’m sorry about a lot, but I’m mostly sorry you needed a friend during a hard time and didn’t have one.”
Zoe reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. I squeeze back while a very old hole in my heart patches itself. “I forgive you. And anyway, we were teenagers,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It was basically a simulation.”
I laugh easily and gulp more of my wine.
“This was meant to happen.” Zoe dips her chin, a tiny but confident nod. “You and Will were meant to find each other again, to fall in love. I’m a big believer in fate.”
“I remember,” I murmur. “That four-letter word is still both of our phone passcodes.”
She laughs. “No way.”
“Way.”
We talk about everything, all night long. Jobs and cities and fashion and books and vacations and Where Are They Now: Woodmont High Edition. We drain the bottle, drain another. I consult with Zoe on what type of skirt to sew for the dress. We take blurry selfies to send to our mothers. Zoe doubles down on the greatness of New York City, throws out five different weekends she’d love for me and Will to visit. I don’t even bother checking my work schedule before promising to pick one before she leaves town.
Later that night, she squeezes me and slips down the driveway, back into Will’s car. He watches me through the windshield and I mouth Thank you.
He dips his chin, mouth quirked.
And the Grant twins drive away.