39. 4 Letter Words
thirty-nine
“ W oah. Look at that stubble you’re growing there. I don’t think I’ve seen you with a beard since—”
“Don’t say it. There’s been enough mention of her lately.”
I drop my empty beer bottle on the coffee table and reach for another out of the pack beside me. Helen slams her keys on the bar and grabs something from my fridge.
“Kourt. You and I have always dealt in reality. I don’t think two days before Christmas Eve is the time to stop. The reality is—nothing has changed. Nothing happened to change anything .”
“No. Helen. The reality is, if Erika had gotten a fair crack at that pitch in the first place, she’d be living out her dream career job in Chicago, and I’d be coaching basketball and FaceTiming with my best friend, none the wiser.”
“Oh, horse shit, Kourt. Erika did fail that pitch, or it failed her, and Josie had plans for her to be here. I know you find parts of my job silly, with the little estate details and people’s quirky requests, but rest assured, Erika was going to make it to Blitzen by Josie’s hand if I had to go get her myself.
So be it the fickle finger of fate or of one Josephine Amherst—it was going to happen. ”
I chug my beer and pray Choi stops talking. I’m not even sure how she got in.
“I can’t believe we’re doing what ifs . We never do what ifs. What if Angie didn’t take off that night, and you were still stuck in what ended up becoming a horrible marriage? And what if she eventually got so bored she did take Ellis up on his offer?”
“Helen!” I grit her name through my teeth, so I don’t yell at my best friend.
“I’m sorry. I went too far.”
“No. You don’t get it, Helen. I went too far.
I said things to Erika I can’t come back from.
Angie chose to get in that car and speed down the mountain, and I’ll always blame myself, but I hope and pray a small part of me knows it wasn’t my fault.
I chose to let Erika down last night. That’s on me.
I just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to me. ”
“What do you mean you lost? You two are so nuclear. Since she got here it’s not a Christmas present, it’s got to be a full-blown town Christmas fucking festival.
It’s not just a firetruck for the volunteer fire department, it’s about property taxes that could destroy all of Blitzen.
It’s not an inconvenience to pick her up, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened, that you can’t be without, and this isn’t even a fight that happened, but somehow it’s the be-all end-all? ”
“You don’t understand. I love her. I love her so much, that I don’t ever want to shut her out, and I fucking promised I would never do that.”
“It’s so new, Kourt. How would you have time to promise something like that?”
“That’s just exactly what you don’t understand. This isn’t the moment where you’re coming here telling me how good she is for me and ‘get off the couch and shave.’”
My voice keeps getting louder. “She’s too good for me! I let the anger and fear and fucked-up circumstances over that damn mixtape—over a couple of Christmas fucking songs— destroy what matters most to me in the world.”
“Oh, my God, Kourt.”
Helen plops down beside me with tears in her eyes.
“Okay, now don’t you get all dramatic on me. I told you this already. What did you think I meant when I said that to you after the night we spent together?”
“I’m sorry, Kourt. Not all of us have had the phenomenon of that experience. Some of us just move home to help a best friend through a hard time, and neglect to notice they might be missing something big themselves.”
Helen stiffens beside me.
“Goddamn it, Helen. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’m the shittiest friend alive. I’m sorry I haven’t given back what you sacrificed for me, and that I never had this conversation with you in the first place. It should’ve also been about you when Angie died.”
“It doesn’t matter now. We’re here. We made it this far.”
“It does matter Helen, as much as anything else. I mean every word of it. And that’s just the thing—I don’t think I would have recognized how uneven our friendship is, if it hadn’t been for her.
She makes me see things differently. There’s an entire world of possibility when you stop being complacent.
She’s that world. You’ve been trying to tell me that.
To help me heal for three years, and I hid from all the good you tried to give.
I’m sorry, Helen. I won’t ever take advantage of your friendship again. ”
“Kourt. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll let me do better, or I’ve lost the rest of what matters to me most in this world.” I force her to make eye contact with me so she knows I mean it.
Helen flies off the couch and begins pacing in true Helen fashion. She came here thinking she’d get a sad stubborn sack, but I doubled, if not tripled down, and every bit of it is how I feel.
“Okay. Again, with the dramatics. But—Thank you, Kourt. It really means a lot what you just said. You… don’t owe me an apology. You were that kind of friend to me when we were kids. You know you were. I was just returning the favor.”
Helen spins on her toes and continues to pace.
“As to your current love dilemma—since we’re all saying that word out loud now.
Jesus. Is this just because it’s Christmas?
Sorry. Don’t answer that. You’re serious for the first time in your life over something that matters to you, and that comment was pure jealousy.
Moving forward, can you help me understand what was said better? ”
I pull out another beer and hand one to Helen. She takes it. She’s so desperate for alcohol at this point that even she’ll consider carbonation.
“It wasn’t just the tape. I think she has an opportunity back at the ad firm, and I know she needs to take it. It’s not my business, so I couldn’t really fish for too much. I just heard her buddy mention it on the Zoom.”
“Archer?”
“Yeah. He seems to think she’s got to come back for this.
That they want her back. When she attributed our relationship to the tape, the fate and destiny and all the signs behind us meeting, I guess it scared me.
Not in a crazy, eccentric fru-fru, Josephine Amherst way, but in a way that made me think she was relying on that to stay in Blitzen—or would rely on that to stay with me.
And that song. My favorite. She was so emotional, she didn’t even know what it meant to me. ”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head and take a deep breath.
“I guess that scared me even more, because all that junk did feel real. Everything she was saying about the way we came together and experienced this. Fuck. I can’t Helen.
” Our gazes catch and hold. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
I just don’t want her missing the opportunity of a lifetime over track fucking four. ”