Page 4 of Friends That Heal Us
“I want to talk about it, though. But I know right now isn’t the best time.”
She sways back and forth as if it’s a calming mechanism she gained after all this.
“What made you come to the river?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to feel something other than what I was feeling. Memories of our childhood kept coming up as if I were mourning them. Next thing you know, I ended up here.” She scoffs again. “Like this place was going to be any better. Just brought up more memories I forgot I had.” She looks over her shoulder. “Why did you come?”
I want to tell her I came because of her. But I hold back on telling her how I feel, how I’ve felt since the first day I laid eyes on her. Right now is not the right time to lay out all my truths and regrets. “I was sick of going home to an empty house.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I miss her as a best friend, but as a wife I’m a little relieved.”
She sits up straight, taken aback by my words, then turns her body towards me. “What! What do you mean?”
“We had problems long before all of this happened. Did Rya not tell you anything?”
She shakes her head, her forehead creases getting harder with each shake.
My eyes widen in surprise. Don’t best friends tell each other everything? I mean, I tried to talk to Zay about it, but he brushed it off—like he did with many other things.
“No.” Her mouth parts. “I’m at a loss for words with everything. The only question that keeps running through my mind is who were we truly friends with?” Her jaw sets tight. “Like none of this makes any sense. I thought we knew them, but now that everything has come to light, I don’t feel like we knew them at all.”
“Right. I’ve actually felt this for a while now.”
“You have?”
I nod.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know what to say or how to feel about it. My best friend and my wife were changing before my eyes. They’re all I knew. I was holding on to our friendship.”
“Did you try talking to Zay about it?”
“I tried to tell him how I was feeling about Rya, and he brushed it off like we were in some rut and things would get better. I knew then I couldn’t come to him about our friendship.”
The sky rumbles with a deep roar. I look up and the clouds are now dark above us. “It’s going to rain. We should go.”
She giggles. “Remember all the rainstorms we would play in?”
I chuckle alongside her. “Yeah. I was just thinking about that when I pulled up here.”
Tears stream down her face.
“Don’t cry, Vi,” I say, and wipe her tears.
Raindrops fall, making me blink back when they fall on my eyelashes. The river ripples with each raindrop that lands on top of it.
“How do we get through this? It’s all so much,” she says in exhaustion.
“Together, Vi. We get through it together.”
She leans into me, resting her head against my chest. The rain picks up; the soft patter against the river turns louder. She shivers against me as a gust of wind sweeps through. I pull her a little closer and my heart aches at how fragile she feels in my arms. More fragile than before. She must not be eating. Who would be after all of this? The world around us is silent as we hold each other.
“Ez,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
