The Friendship Pact. Tara Taylor Quinn

feeling so lonely during the past months—since she’d broken up with Jake. But Kora’s words also tied Bailey’s stomach in knots.

      “What you need is for me to be half of a couple, too, so that we can do things together like we used to....”

      Back when Kora and Danny could pair Bailey up with Jake. Or anyone else who was available for a night out. Back when another male body was all it took to complete the foursome.

      Kora pulled back. “You think I’m saying all of this because I’m looking out for myself?” The shock in her voice reverberated throughout the car. And hurt like hell.

      “Not purposely or knowingly, no.” Bailey had to stick to her plan. But she couldn’t lie to Kora.

      “But you think it?” Koralynn leaned back against the door of the car.

      “Can you tell me, from your heart of hearts, that there’s no possibility that I’m right?”

      A glib answer, a safe or easy answer, couldn’t come from Kora’s heart of hearts. Bailey held her breath.

      “No, I guess I can’t.” Kora’s shoulders slumped as her face fell.

      And Bailey felt a new sense of hope.

      * * *

      I had plans to spend the summer relaxing enough so my body could do its job. Getting pregnant in other words. I wanted a baby so desperately.

      I’d printed out calendars, brightly colored and decorated with little baby pictures, to log my daily temperatures.

      I’d been looking at nursery decorating folders on Pinterest. I wasn’t sharing any of that process with Bailey. I was afraid to. What if my passion to have a baby pushed her further into her life of isolation?

      But I missed her like crazy. She’d been right about that. I needed her. The same way she needed me.

      I needed her no matter how she lived her life. I just wanted for her what I’d always known she yearned for—a family of her own. A home of her own. One that was as filled with love and acceptance and assistance as mine had been.

      Bailey’s whole life had been lived one step removed. She always held a bit of herself back; that way, if there was failure or pain, it wouldn’t destroy all of her. Other than with me, I don’t think she’d ever been completely committed to another person. I’d felt her pain since the time we were in grade school. I’d spent my entire life intent on helping her get what she’d always wanted. What she’d needed and deserved. And now, when she was finally at the point where she could get it for herself, she was letting fear stop her.

      “Think about it this way,” I told her on the phone late one night in June. Jake had been over for dinner and was still pining for Bailey. But he’d met someone. Bailey could be letting her last chance with him slip by. “A child is only a temporary fixture in your home. What about the rest of your life?”

      “I’ve been living alone for a long time, Kor. I’m really okay with it.”

      “Being okay with it and being happy are two different things.”

      “I’m happy.”

      “You’re settling.”

      “I’m not you, Kor.”

      “Of course not. And I don’t want what I want to get in the way. But I know you, Bail. And I know you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face here.” Again, I thought without saying it. “I’ve seen this so many times.”

      “I don’t think so.”

      The impasse between us was making me physically ill. So did I back down? Just give up?

      People had been giving up on Bailey all her life. What if this was the critical time? The moment she needed me most? Did I have what it took to scale her walls and haul her over them? Was I even supposed to try?

      Danny was in bed asleep, which was right where I should’ve been, except that I couldn’t stop thinking about Bailey. So I’d kissed my husband and left our bed to call my friend.

      “I can’t stand this anymore, Bail. I feel that you need me to stay strong and help you see what I can see from the outside, looking in. But you could be right. Maybe I’m too focused on what I think you should do because I don’t understand you anymore.”

      It hurt to say the words. But it didn’t change how I felt about her. “We’re no longer kids,” I said. “Life isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

      And maybe, in spite of everything, we had grown apart.

      “I need to have this baby, Kor, and I can’t do it without you. Without your support.”

      She could. Technically. If something happened to me, Bailey’s life would go on. But I knew what she meant. I couldn’t fathom my own life without her, either. Did that make me selfish? Was I giving up on her because I wasn’t strong enough to fight her demons when she wasn’t capable of fighting them herself? Or maybe even capable of seeing them?

      Sitting curled up in a wingback chair in my living room, I laid my head against the fabric and shivered, wishing I’d pulled my robe on over my nightgown. The night had been so warm earlier, Danny had thrown off the sheets.

      I was tired. And headachy. And having my period again. All things Bailey would have known in the past. Things I’d have told her.

      “Okay. Tell me I should trust you to know what’s best for you,” I said. Let me off the hook here, Bailey, was what my words felt like to me.

      But I was willing to live with them if that was what it took to have my friend back. To be the friend she needed. Maybe all friendships faced this. A growing up. I swallowed back tears. Like I’d said, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a wife. Soon to be an expectant mother.

      And I had more than most.

      “I want you to be honest with me, Kor.”

      “I’m always honest with you.”

      “No, I mean, I want you to do exactly what you’re doing.”

      “Giving up?”

      “No.” I straightened as silence fell between us.

      “You want me to continue showing you the way I see you...” I said tentatively.

      “Yes.”

      Oh, my God. So I wasn’t losing it. My mind. Or our deep connection.

      “You don’t agree with me,” I said.

      “I know.”

      “You believe I’m thinking of myself and what I want.”

      “Yeah.”

      “So where does that leave us?”

      “Right where we’ve always been, I guess,” she said, sounding tired, too, but better somehow. “We keep yakking until one or the other of us sees the light.”

      “So you’ll wait to do anything until we’ve...reached a consensus?”

      “Yeah. As long as we keep trying to figure out which of us is screwed up on this one.”

      I swallowed again, so relieved to have my friend back.

      “I love you, Bail.”

      “Love you, too.”

      I went to bed. And slept.