Tear You Apart Read online

  “Oh, no,” my friend begins, but I wave her to silence.

  “Shush. If ever there was a day when we needed chocolate lava cake and a shot of Bailey’s in our coffee, it’s today. And lunch is my treat.”

  She protests, but I insist. I’ve missed her so much, it’s terrible and unbelievable we let it go so long. Over cake and coffee, she tells me about her job, boring but with great benefits, and how she could get a promotion if she applied for it, but there’d be too much travel to Europe involved.

  “Wha-a-at?” I let the word drag out, the Bailey’s and laughter giving me a little boost. “Are you crazy? How cool would it be to get paid to visit Italy? Andrea, c’mon! Your kids are grown. What’s stopping you?”

  Her look tells me everything. I feel awkward. She shrugs.

  “I just don’t like to be away from him,” she says. “Even with the problems. I know you’ll probably think I’m crazy for that, too. But I hate it when I have to go to sleep without him. When he’s gone on business, I miss him like crazy, and that’s me being in my own house. I can’t imagine what it would be like to miss him and be homesick, too.”

  I wish I could say I understand, but I don’t. I nod anyway, because how can I say out loud that I don’t miss my husband when he goes away? That, in fact, I’ve come to prefer it when he’s gone?

  “But you,” Andrea says suddenly. “We’ve talked all about me. What about you? What’s going on with you? How were the girls’ graduations?”

  “Both of them told us not to come. And they didn’t want a big party, either, since both of them had to be at work right away after graduation.” I’d wanted to have them both come home for a weekend, but it hadn’t worked out.

  Andrea’s kids are a few years younger, still in college. She shakes her head. “I can’t believe they’re old enough to be out of college.”

  “That means we’re old,” I tell her, though sitting here I feel as if we’re both still sixteen, scribbling notes to each other in class. “Remember our code?”

  For a second she looks blank, then slaps a hand to her forehead. “Oh. Wow. Yes. Holy cow, that was so long ago. How did you remember it?”

  “I guess I’ve been remembering a lot of things.” I can’t keep myself from sounding sad.

  Andrea gestures for the waiter. “Bring wine.”

  We sit in that restaurant for another few hours while I tell her about my frustrations with Ross. They are stupid things. I know it. Dishes in the sink, boots in the wrong size.

  “I couldn’t even exchange or return them,” I tell her. The wine has made me eloquent with my hands, if not my words. “He got them on clearance!”

  “He tried,” she offers helpfully.

  “He tried,” I agree. “But he did not listen.”

  Andrea is silent for a moment or so. Then she reaches to squeeze my hand. “It will get better, Elisabeth. You’re just in a rut. Maybe you should go away together, the two of you. Or try a date night...?”

  I would have to plan a trip. A night out. With his schedule it’s practically impossible to do either, and when it comes right down to it, I realize something I won’t admit to her—I don’t want to. I do not want to go away for the weekend with Ross. I do not want a date night.

  I want to tell her about Will so much. I want to unburden myself, not of the guilt I still don’t feel, but of the anguish over not having listened to his message. I want to tell her everything, not to lift it from my shoulders, but so that I can remember and relive it. But because Andrea is my friend and I love her, because I don’t want to put her in a position where she’d feel uncomfortable, I seal my mouth on my secret.

  “Yes,” I tell her. “A date night. Sounds good.”

  We part with hugs and promises to get together soon, though I think we both know it will probably be another six months before we do. In the last moment before we walk in opposite directions to catch our separate trains, my best friend since forever grabs me in a last-minute hug.

  “Thanks,” she says against my cheek. “For listening.”

  “Anytime.” I squeeze her hard. “Of course.”

  Andrea pulls away with her eyes bright again, and I hate that she’s so sad. For that matter, I hate that I am. “You know I’m there for you, right? If you need to talk about anything, ever.”

  “I know.” And my mouth opens again to spill out everything that happened with Will, how I can’t stop thinking about him. But I remember what she said in the restaurant, and I know there are some things even best friends can’t share. “Same here. If you need to talk, keep me updated, whatever. I’ll be thinking about you. It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, in a burst of optimism that feels utterly fake.

  She makes that tasting-tequila face again. “It’s just sex, Elisabeth. Nobody ever died without it.”

  It’s not the lack of sex that’s killing her, it’s feeling unloved and unattractive and unfuckable, and I’m so angry at her husband that I’d gladly kick him right in his inoperative junk right now.

  “We take our cars to the shop when they need the tires rotated. We get our hair done when we want to look nice, get massages when our muscles are sore, and go to the chiropractor when our backs hurt. Why the hell can’t we go somewhere and just get laid when we need it?” I say, suddenly vehement without meaning to sound so harsh. “I mean, it’s just sex.”

  “But it never would be,” Andrea says. “Just sex, I mean. It would always become something else.”

  “Why?” I demand. “Why does it have to?”

  Andrea makes that face again. “I don’t know. But it would. For me, I know it would.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She laughs and hugs me again, shaking her head. “It would be disaster.”

  “Maybe,” I tell her, “it would be a beautiful disaster.”

  “No matter how pretty it is,” Andrea says, “it would still be disaster,” and then we both have to run to catch our trains.

  On the way home, I stare at the passing scenery and wish I hadn’t had so much to drink. My stomach is upset now. My head aches. My mouth is dry. I close my eyes but that makes it worse.

  I pull my phone from my purse and thumb open Will’s contact information. I don’t have a picture stored for him. Just his number.

  And then, because I’m stupid, I type in a text. My brain’s too fuzzy to make a sentence out of nonsense words. All I can manage is three letters, one for each word I want to say.

  I M Y

  And though I wait and wait, Will doesn’t text me back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Other friendships had come and gone in college, but the one I’d forged with Naveen that first day always stayed. He drove me crazy. We fought, sometimes like brother and sister. Sometimes like the lovers we’d never quite managed to become. He told me he loved me one night while he was drunk and sick, in between heaves. I told him I loved him over the phone, when we were apart for the summer and the boy I’d been dating dumped me without warning.

  Tempestuous. That was the best way to describe our relationship. Up and down, love and hate, lust and affection. Yet it endured through boyfriends and girlfriends, breakups and makeups.

  He’d begun college a year ahead of me but had failed a few classes, which meant we were slated to graduate the same year. It was a tough one for me because I was determined to graduate “on time” even though it meant carrying an extra-large class load, including a killer accounting class that threatened to destroy my GPA. I was constantly on edge about my grades and also about my relationship with Ross, which had been steady for close to a year, but which had recently gone “on a break.” Naveen, for the first time in all the four years I’d known him, was without a girlfriend of any kind.

  We’d kissed a few times over the years, usually after we’d been drinking. We’d shared a bed