Woke Up Like This

by Amy Lea

“I much prefer obsessing over everything that could go horribly wrong. Besides, catching grammatical errors in PowerPoints is an underrated thrill.”

I’m the tertiary character. The overachieving mom-friend who takes care of everyone in the background but does zero to advance the plot.

Sometimes it feels like our group is like a jawbreaker. There’s the core—Kassie, Ollie, and Renner. Then there are the outer layers. The people who are progressively less and less integral to the greater group, like Andie and Pete, then Nori and me.

When I close my eyes, I’m tormented by the memory of Clay Diaz’s face when he saw my tampon. He was disgusted (and somehow still incredibly handsome). Disgusted is probably too generous—more generous than the portions at IHOP.

“Exactly. Georgia was my best friend. All through school. We were attached at the hip, like you and Kassie. Grandma used to say she was her second daughter because she basically lived at my house.” “How come I’ve never heard of her?” Mom has a small circle of girlfriends she gets wine-drunk with at monthly book club, and none of them are named Georgia. “Because we’re not friends anymore,” she says simply. “What happened?” I frown, running down the list of grisly potential best friend betrayals. She drums her fingers over my legs, eyes misty. “We grew apart. After college, she went backpacking around the world. I moved to Maplewood, married your dad, had you. We talked on the phone every single day for a while. Then it was once a week, once a month, and then we started dodging each other’s calls . . . only calling back because we felt obligated to, you know?” “Obligated? But wasn’t she your best friend?” “She was. There was no bad blood. No fight. No real reason why we stopped talking. I guess we just ended up living two completely different lives that no longer intersected.”

Drifted apart. The words grate, refusing to settle in my gut. There must be a reason. Some sort of falling-out. Bad blood. A fight or disagreement that knocked us off course. Drifting apart is neutral, almost cold. Did we really just apathetically decide not to put any more effort in? That our friendship was no longer worth it? Somehow apathy hurts more than any theoretical fight we could ever have. Because here’s the thing. You fight with people you love. You ignore people you don’t care about.

And today, I bought vegetables at the grocery store just to impress people.” “Who?” “I don’t know . . . random shoppers. The cashier. I have no idea how to even prepare vegetables.” His modesty threatens to melt me into a puddle on the spot.

“Oh god. It feels good to lie down.” Renner groans, reaching into his bag for a gummy worm. “Is this thirty? Being too tired to get through the day?”

This is a mind-altering, time-bending, unicorn-glitter-magic-level kiss that threatens to change my entire worldview from here on out.

Maybe not all friends are meant to be in your life for the long haul. Not being friends anymore doesn’t have to involve a catastrophic fight. No one means to hurt the other person. People just move on with life.