Friends from Home

by Lauryn Chamberlain

  “No, no,” Michelle protested. “You start.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I wanted the visit to fix everything, but I still felt a little uneasy as I watched Michelle pull away in her Uber the next morning. Of course, it would take a while, I told myself. We would need more than one night to recover from the last year. What it felt like, maybe, was stepping onto a boat and pushing back from the dock. We were setting off on a new journey, one I felt sure I wanted to take, but I just didn’t have my sea legs yet.

  I didn’t know what my life would look like in a year, and so I couldn’t know what Michelle’s would, either. Would she have a baby? Would her blog become popular like she hoped it might, letting her launch her own boutique? Would I be there for the ribbon cutting, or would I miss it because I was finally traveling through Europe, like I had always wanted to? Would these next months, years, take hold of our tenuous strings of peace and knit us back together? Or would we grow apart completely after all—just in a kinder fashion this time? I suspected that in moments of quiet I might be angry with her again, and that my anger might take me by surprise—in the same way it shocked me that I still felt some kind of love toward her at her wedding when I was supposed to be furious. My feelings would ebb and flow, and I couldn’t predict them. I had no divine wisdom, but at least for one moment I could maybe convince myself not to pretend I did.

  * * *

  • • •

  Not long after that, I watched, from far away, as Alabama furthered an attempt to pass legislation that would criminalize abortion for all women in all contexts.

  “The ACLU will sue,” Dana kept promising me. “It’s going to be okay. Women who don’t want abortions don’t have to get them; women who do, will.”

  I tried to believe her. I tried to think about women like Darcy, holding their babies in their arms, and then women like me, free to choose to hold the full breadth of other possibilities instead. I thought about all the women who didn’t have the choices—the finances, the freedom—the two of us did. I was lucky, actually. Luckier than I had ever realized. I wondered if Michelle knew how lucky she was, what power and privilege she truly held, and how she would wield it.

  Then I waited for something to happen next, something definitive, but it seemed like nothing did.

  * * *

  • • •

  The unadulterated excitement of having my own place only lasted until the end of the second weekend. Specifically, it lasted until I tried to cook a full meal for myself.

  As I cleaned up from dinner for one, I realized something: The tiny sink in my studio apartment “kitchen”—an unfair description, since kitchen seemed to imply a separate room—was too small to wash my frying pan in. Like, I couldn’t fit the whole pan in my stupid single-person sink. It was official: This was still not the happily ever after that I had been looking forward to for my whole life. Real life springs up like a weed among even the best of fantasies.

  Then my phone buzzed with a text. It was Dana, and she had just closed on her purchase of a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. I congratulated her happily because I knew how much she had wanted it, but it was still a little bit hard. Don’t compare your life to anyone else’s, I reminded myself. It never comes out in your favor. I promised to take her out for a glass of champagne that weekend.

  Somehow, though, life is often at its best and worst at the same time. I sprawled out on my bed that night, boxes still piled haphazardly around me, and I started smiling for no reason. My chest felt so warm and full it almost hummed. Finally, I recognized the feeling—which was similar to happiness, but somehow both quieter and more unexpected—as bliss. I had heard that word thousands of times but never innately understood it until that moment. I stopped moving in fear of scaring it off. I stayed there for what might have been an hour, and I didn’t even have the urge to look at my phone or watch TV—just the desire to stay still and laugh, tingling with the knowledge that hundreds of terrible and wonderful things hadn’t even happened to me yet.

  * * *

  • • •

  I dedicated all of the next day to finishing the unpacking process. I sat on the bare wood floor in a small patch of sunshine in the morning, wearing nothing but a bra and underwear, contentment settling over me slowly. I was examining a collection of old T-shirts I had forgotten about in a box my mom had sent (I had really been obsessed with Sum 41 in seventh grade) when the phone rang.

  “What would actually be worse: Dying young or living forever?” Michelle asked by way of hello.

  “Living forever, obviously.”

  “No way,” she countered. “Dying. I’d love to live forever.”

  “You so would think that.”

  “Same to you,” she mocked, and her voice sounded heavy with affection.

  We settled into the familiar routine of conversation, though the intermittent pauses showed me that things were still a bit formal between us. I talked about the apartment decorating process as animatedly as I could, and she told me about her and Jake’s struggles with reupholstering a sofa, but I found my mind miles—and years—away. With her question, I remembered a night I had forgotten for almost a decade.

  * * *

  • • •

  When we were eighteen, right before we left for college, Michelle and I used to drive out to this hill that overlooked the interstate. The street hit a dead end there, and there weren’t any houses, so kids used to use it to hook up or drink or do whatever they couldn’t do at home. Sometimes Michelle and I would go out there with friends and take a water bottle full of vodka, but this one time we went there just to talk. We sat on the hood of her car, the darkness closing in around us, and all we could see were occasional headlights flashing by on the highway below and then disappearing. Our shoulders were touching, but if I had turned my head to look at her it would’ve been too dark to see her face.

  I was upset about something that I can’t recall. Maybe a guy; more likely my mom. We were playing the random question game to try to take my mind off it.

  “What are you the most afraid of?” I asked her a few rounds in. It had been lighthearted until that moment.

  She was quiet, breathing in and out slowly. Then: “Maybe losing things. Well, not things. You, my parents, my brother.” She paused. “And having people judge me, I guess. I don’t know; I always want to seem like I know what I’m doing, like I have it together. I know you probably think that’s silly.”

  She was being honest with me. I could feel it. She was defenseless, a rarity for her.

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  The wind blew in her hair, and it flew up against my cheek. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it looked perfect. Wind gave her a mysterious, ethereal quality where it gave me only pink cheeks and cowlicks.

  Then she surprised me.

  “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she asked. “Not like cheating on a spelling test or telling a white lie. The absolute worst.”

  The question terrified me. I flipped through my mental backlogs of shame: I could finally tell her about the anger I sometimes felt toward my mom, so visceral at moments that it kept me up at night—and the time it had led me to blame her out loud for my dad leaving and never looking back. Or I could tell her about the bracelets I had shoplifted from a mall kiosk. I could even tell her about the times I had been jealous of her and the way that jealousy sometimes inspired me to change myself in order to fit in like she did, twisting and bending my real identity in ways I was starting to realize I hated.

  I didn’t yet know I would live to see a day when these things felt small. Right then, they bubbled and twisted up inside me, roiling so strongly that I thought I would be sick with it. How could I tell anyone about any of it?

  Then all of a sudden, that fell away. I can’t explain what accounted for the change, but when I took a deep breath and laced my fingers with hers, it was like sh
edding my skin. I had never trusted anyone before, not really. Maybe it was finally time.

  I squeezed her hand, and in her familiar grip I felt something new growing. I could start to own those parts of myself, I realized. The parts I was afraid of. Looking back, that might have been the true birth of my conviction, which would grow and grow and ultimately take me far away from the place we sat that night. But at the time, it just felt like something good; holding her hand, I knew I was safe. Safe, and yet wholly alive, and close to the beating heart of everything real.

  “Seriously,” she whispered. “You can tell me.”

  And then I did.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To become an author is to finally understand why acknowledgments list the publishing team first. I’m beyond thankful for my brilliant editor, Cassidy Sachs, who believed in Jules’s story—and in me—all along. Cassidy, you made this book sharper and better in every possible way. Special thanks to Rebecca Odell and Katie Taylor, as well as to the entire team at Dutton and Penguin Random House at large. Working with you is an author’s dream, and I couldn’t be in better hands.

  A huge thank-you to Allison Hunter, my fabulous agent and all-around life inspiration, without whom quite literally none of this would ever have happened. Allison, your passion and energy know no bounds. You are the keeper of my sanity (and the keeper of the good rosé), and I would be lost without you. Thanks to everyone at Janklow & Nesbit.

  It is truly no exaggeration to say that this novel wouldn’t exist without Arvin Ahmadi, who supported me when I started writing it, forced me to continue, and stopped me from trashing the draft no fewer than three times. Arvin, you are my absolute champion, my first reader, and my 14/12 best friend. Thank you—I owe you more than I can ever express (and also probably like twenty dollars’ worth of ninety-nine-cent pizza slices).

  The same can be said of Ashley Balcerzak, a first reader of just about anything I’ve ever written and an invaluable support throughout the six (!) years I’ve worked on some version of this book. Thank you. This is a story about a best friendship, and I couldn’t have written it without your years of advice, our inside jokes, daily e-mails, and more. Thanks, too, to Alberto Pettinato, who is the exact husband you’d want your best friend to have (and a true friend of mine in his own right).

  I have the greatest friends in the world. I wish I had the space to write each of you a paragraph but, in any case, massive thanks to: Meredith McGowan, Anna Steward, Holly Baron, Emma Stein, Bruno Mendes, Stanley Kay, Rebecca Nelson, Danny Parisi, Kelsey Sutton, Alex Hampl, Sallie Lotz, Isabelle Fisher, Ben Fisher, Joey Yagoda, Nicole Bleuel, Alex White, Julie Jiganti, Phil Ross, Dylan Glendenning, Christine Lobo, and Jennifer Hung—and even more of you than I have the space to name. It truly takes a village, and my gratitude knows no bounds. Special thanks as well to Jess Reimers (another very early reader and supporter), Olivia Banks, Brandt Rosentreter, and Amanda Grimm, who are my friends from home, and for life. I wouldn’t be me without you.

  Thank you to my writer family, including but not limited to Patrice Caldwell, Adam Silvera, Cristina Arreola, Laura Sebastian, Sarah Gerton, Jeremy West, and Jeffrey West. You’ve taught me so much about the writing world, and just as much about life.

  Thank you to my colleagues at Yext (past and present), and especially to my content dream team. You supported me while I wrote, sold, and edited this book, and I’m so thrilled that many of you who started as “just colleagues” have turned into lifelong friends.

  David Kaplan and Catherine Weaver deserve their own section. Thank you for believing in my writing and my voice even before I did. Thank you for the many literary discussions accompanied by even more oysters. David, I’d call you the greatest colleague I’ve ever worked with, but you know that doesn’t cover it—rather, you are (both!) simply the greatest friends, and I could not count myself luckier to know you.

  A million thanks to my family, and especially to my mom, who inspired and nurtured my love for reading and writing in the first place. All of my parents (Todd, Deb, and Bert), to whom this book is dedicated, deserve endless appreciation for their steadfast love and unwavering support of my writing from the moment I claimed to be “working on the great American novel” at age six. In every sense, I would not be here without them.

  Thank you to my grandma, Marge, who has been such a force in my life since the day I was born. (She also let me read her a twenty-five-page short story over the phone when I was nine, and then she told me that I should be an author. Thanks, Grams!)

  Thank you to the entire Chamberlain family—especially Hanna Wetters, a trusted early reader—and to all of the Sterioffs. All of you have shown me such love, support, and enthusiasm, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Thanks, too, to my new families, Otis and Greene. It’s a delight to have you in my life (and to have a sister at last—hi, Caroline!).

  And, finally, to James Otis: What can I even say? If I had a muse, it would be you. Thank you doesn’t even begin to cover it. Everything I know about love is because of you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lauryn Chamberlain was born and raised in Michigan. She studied journalism and French at Northwestern University and then moved to New York City, where she worked for several years as a journalist, freelance writer, and content strategist (sometimes simultaneously). She currently lives in Toronto.

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