“Yeah, she’s been asleep for hours. Don’t worry about being loud, she’d sleep through a nuclear bomb,” Dania commented, filling a glass with water and handing it to me.

I took a drink and tried not to look like I was snooping, but I couldn’t help it. I was fascinated with the way Dania’s world seemed to have changed. Not only was she a mother again, this time with a child that actually lived with her, but she almost seemed to have her shit together.

Though it wasn’t fair for me to assume I was the only one who could change. If I could turn over a new leaf, why couldn’t Dania?

History had dictated that I not trust Dania’s seeming magnanimous mood. That there had to be a catch. The Dania I had known before was volatile and vicious.

Nothing like the quiet, composed woman who stood before me wearing fuzzy, pink slippers. Her long hair was pulled back from her face and her skin was completely free of makeup.

“Let me go get you a pillow and some sheets. You can go into the living room to watch some TV if you want,” Dania said.

“Uh, sure,” I replied.

A picture on the TV stand caught my eye. I picked it up and looked closer. It was a photograph taken years ago in front of Woolly’s. Dania, not quite twenty years old, had her arm around my waist. She and I were roughly the same height, though it was obvious that she was wearing a pair of hooker shoes that she had been so fond of wearing.

We both looked wasted, our eyes hooded and our smiles sloppy. But we held onto each other to keep from falling.

That’s how it always used to be.

Dania and me, holding each other up because no one else could.

I was surprised that she had a picture of me in her home. The jagged edges of uncharacteristic guilt jabbed at me painfully once again.

I put the photograph down when Dania came back into the room.

“Thanks,” I said after she dropped them on the couch. I sat down, feeling out of place.

Dania perched on an armchair that sat in the corner, pulling her feet up underneath her. “This is strange, right?” she asked, looking at me for confirmation.

I nodded, putting my glass of water down on the coffee table. “Yeah it is. Particularly after how things were left when I saw you at the grocery store.”

Dania sighed and rubbed at her forehead as though she had a headache. “I was pissed, Ells. Really, really pissed.” She chewed on her bottom lip in that telltale sign that she was upset. “Okay, enough dancing around this shit, I’m just going to come out and say it. You leaving like that, without bothering to pick up a fucking phone to let me know you were still alive, was wrong.”

The instinct to placate her was instinctual. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I was sorry and that I was wrong. To say whatever it would take for her to stop being mad at me.

Our dynamic had always been dysfunctional and unhealthy. Dania would fall apart and I would try to make it all better. But I never could. Not when I was just as screwed up as she had been.

But this time I wouldn’t retreat. I wouldn’t back down. I would tell her straight. I would be honest in a way I never had been able to be before.

“I couldn’t call you, D. Because if I did, I would be second-guess myself. I would wonder whether I could actually make it in Maryland. In school. If I kept any ties to this place, to the life I had been living, then I wouldn’t have been able to keep going. I would have gotten sucked back here. It seemed inevitable.”

Dania’s eyes narrowed in a less hateful imitation of an expression had I once been familiar with. “But you spoke to Flynn.”

I nodded. “Yes. I did. We’re together. We have been for over three years,” I told her; proud to say that aloud to the one person I had always felt the need to deny it to.

“So even though he was still in Wellston, it was okay to talk to him?” she asked, her words sharp and brittle.

I let out a noisy breath, trying not to get frustrated. “You and Flynn were…are very different people in my life. Letting go of Flynn wasn’t an option,” I admitted.

Dania seemed to flinch at my statement.

“But letting go of me was easy,” she deduced, her tone acidic and angry. For all of her apparent change, the old Dania was still there, just under the surface. And the old Ellie was trying to come out and hang out with her.

“It’s not that it was easy,” I admitted haltingly. “But it was necessary.”

Dania continued to chew on her bottom lip and looked out the window. I could see in the dingy streetlight that the snow had picked back up again. Finally the lights of the snowplow could be seen down the road.

“I wasn’t a very good person, was I?” she asked softly.

What could I say to that? How was I supposed to answer? She should know what I would say. How could I lie and say anything but the truth?

But before I could give my thoughts I heard Lyla’s cry from down the hallway. Dania was on her feet in an instant. “I’ll be right back,” she said before hurrying toward her daughter’s bedroom.

I sat back in the couch feeling tired. Dania was draining. Though now it was the weight of unspoken words between us that caused the greatest strain. I almost missed the crazy, psychotic girl she had been.

That girl, I knew how to handle.

I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the grown woman who spoke to me calmly and reasonably. It made me feel even more like a jerk for not being there to see this change firsthand.

I hadn’t been there for the birth of her daughter. I hadn’t been there as I had always said I would be. I had gone back on every promise I had ever made to my best friend.