Vanilla. Megan Hart

those blanket invitations. I can’t be there, unfortunately. I thought about it,” Alicia said. “My mom would love it if I came home. Can’t get the time off. Bummer.”

      “Well, shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

      “I know, I miss youuuuu,” she cooed. “When are you coming to Texas?”

      “It’s hot in Texas,” I told her.

      “The men are hot in Texas,” Alicia said. “You totally need to move out here with me. We can be roomies!”

      I’d lived with her already for a few months just after college. That our friendship had survived it was more a testimony to how nice and patient and forgiving Alicia is than anything else. Some people are not meant to live full-time with other human beings, and I’m one of them.

      “You know I can’t do that,” I said. “Where would I find a job as good as the one I have?”

      She sighed. “True. Lucky bitch. But you could come visit me, Elise. It would be fun. And I miss the hell out of your face. You get vacation time, don’t you?”

      “Sure. Oodles of it. Alex is a big fan of vacation.”

      We chatted a bit longer about when would be the best time for me to come out—not in the summer, I told her. Not until after William’s Bar Mitzvah, anyway, and in the fall, the days in Texas wouldn’t be so brutal. “I’m a wilting flower, you know.”

      “Oh, you,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not so bad. You stay inside, that’s all. Yay! I can’t wait! And neither can Jimmy.”

      I paused. “Who’s Jimmy?”

      “Guy I want you to meet.” I pictured her blinking innocently. “You’ll like him.”

      Alicia knew what I liked, so it was a good bet she was right. Still, the thought of it, of meeting some random dude she was trying to set me up with...hot cowboy or not, I wasn’t into it. “Alicia...”

      “It’s been ages,” she said immediately. That was the good and bad thing about besties. They always know what you’re trying to say even when you don’t say it. “Forget about him.”

      “I can’t.” I owned it at once. No sense in pretending otherwise, not with her. This girl had held my hair after too many shots of tequila. She’d given me her last tampon. She’d been there all through that delirious agony that had been my last real relationship, and she’d been there after, too.

      “Then get over him,” she said without hesitating. “He’s not worth it, Elise.”

      “I know he’s not.”

      “And you can’t help it anyway.” She sighed, sounding disgusted, but not with me. “Yeah, I know.”

      “I know you know.”

      Alicia’d had her own doomed love affair. She referred to him as Mr. Darcy the way I called mine George. Not their real names. Literary references, a code of sorts we’d invented in college to refer to boyfriends. Hers to Pride and Prejudice. Mine to Of Mice and Men.

      “Have you heard from Darcy?” I asked.

      Alicia snorted. “Yes. Of course. Every few months, like a herpes outbreak.”

      “Oh, gross.”

      She laughed. “We had a real go-around the last time, a couple weeks ago. He had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to Facetime with him—”

      “No,” I interrupted. “Seriously? What the fuck?”

      “Right? He said he was, and I quote, ‘curious,’ about my life.” Alicia was silent for a second then sounded both angry and sad. “I told him I had no desire to have any kind of conversation with him anymore. I said it hurt too much to talk to him like we were casual acquaintances who’d barely meant anything to each other. He told me he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it wasn’t fair of me to get angry with him for making, and I quote again, a ‘good faith effort at reaching out.’”

      I groaned. “Clueless.”

      “Moron,” she agreed, sounding more sad than angry this time. “I told him that I was sure he didn’t mean to hurt me, but neither does a door when it slams my fingers. And I don’t put my fingers in a door on purpose.”

      “No kidding.”

      “Then I deleted and blocked him,” Alicia said.

      “You didn’t! Oh, girl.” I was impressed. Mr. Darcy had been in and out of Alicia’s life for a long damn time.

      She sighed. “I had to. I was just...done, you know? Finally done. I wish you could get there with George, Elise.”

      I did, too, but I suspected it wasn’t going to happen. I’d let him slam that door on my fingers over and over again, if only he’d talk to me one more time. If only.

      We changed the subject after that. We talked about her job, not so new anymore, but still worth the move. We caught up on some gossip about people we’d gone to school with. I filled her in on the increasing family drama surrounding William’s Bar Mitzvah.

      “Oh, your mom.” Alicia sighed. She’d known me since the third grade. That was all she had to say.

      I laughed and groaned at the same time. “Yeah. I know. I’m just waiting for the shit to hit the fan. So far it’s been okay, other than the hissy fit she threw about the date.”

      “Oh, God, what was that?”

      I told Alicia how Evan and Susan had tried to set the date for William’s Bar Mitzvah a week later than it was now going to be for some reason I didn’t know and didn’t care about—a Bar Mitzvah could be held anytime after the kid’s thirteenth birthday, so if they wanted to give him an extra week to study or so it didn’t compete with something else, it was nothing to me. But apparently, my sister, Jill, had a schedule conflict, my mother threw a hissy and the date had been moved to accommodate it.

      “You’d think that would be enough, right, one huge fucking showdown at the start.” I shook my head. “But there’s more coming, you’d better believe it.”

      “Come to Texas,” Alicia teased. “Avoid it all.”

      “I can’t do that to the kid. Or my brother. Someone here has to be sort of sane,” I told her. “But after it’s all over, I promise I’ll visit. Not setting me up on any dates, though, you have to promise me that.”

      Alicia sighed. “You’re no fun.”

      “How fun would it be for me to visit you and go out on some lame blind date?” I demanded.

      She paused. “It could be a double date.”

      “Oh.” That was a game changer. “You’re seeing someone?”

      “Yeah.” She paused then said nothing though I waited.

      “I would’ve thought you’d have told me that right away.” I wasn’t hurt, exactly, but I did wonder about the hesitation. It was true we didn’t talk as often as we had in the past, but every time we did it was like no time had passed. Now her finally kicking Darcy to the curb made total sense.

      “If you ever bothered to log in to Connex,” she said lightly, “you’d have seen it.”

      “Wow. Wow,” I repeated. “He’s Connex relationship worthy?”

      Alicia laughed. “Yeah. He is. His name’s Jay.”

      We talked for the next forty minutes about Jay, until she had to go. She made me promise again to visit, and I agreed. I meant it, too.

      “You could’ve just told me, you know,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

      “It felt weird, that’s all. We were both kind of united in our despair for a while, you know? Shit. I’m sorry, that sounded terrible.”