If Victor ever shows up and gives me permission to go to Boston, I silently added, taking another big gulp of my pre-dinner glass of wine. I’d already tried asking Yaron if I could leave Rhode Island to visit my best friend. He was usually pretty easygoing with me, especially after I started cooking us dinner every night. But that request clamped him right on up.
“You’ll have to ask Victor about that,” he’d told me.
“Okay, how do I do that?” I’d asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. It wasn’t Yaron’s fault he worked for a complete ass.
Yaron had just shrugged. “If he wants to be in touch, he’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, my instructions are to make sure you stay here until he says otherwise.”
So no, that conversation hadn’t made me feel great about myself. I was basically wiling the months away until Victor felt like paying me a visit. Hopefully, Lena could make do with phone calls until then.
“Ah, actually, I won’t be here this fall,” Lena answered. “I got into med school last minute.”
I paused in the middle of taking another sip of wine. “What? Where?”
Lena and I had applied to all the same programs our last year at Mount Holyoke, and as far as I knew, she hadn’t even made the wait-list at any of them.
“Kind of far away,” Lena admitted. “Out in California. Get this. My dad applied for me behind my back! It’s so crazy that I actually got in.”
I wanted to be happy for Lena, but…
“That’s really far away. What is Keane saying about you going to school all the way out in California?”
As it turned out, I had totally been right about something going down at spring break. Lena had hooked up with Keane, this college hockey player she used to know back in high school. It ended badly, but then he got drafted by the Boston Hawks and begged her to forgive him when they ran into each other at the place where she was interning that summer.
She’d forgiven him, alright. And from what I’d heard on our calls which I deliberately kept one-sided, it had been a total summer of love. I’d never heard Lena sound as happy as she had these last three months, dating her crazy hot hockey player.
The truth was, I’d been kind of jealous that she’d unexpectedly started living her best life. Her romance with Keane was going great, and she adored her internship at this therapy collective, called the Institute for Better Boys. She’d even started talking about letting go of her father’s med school dream and applying to a few grad programs to pursue a degree in child psychology.
So, I really didn’t understand why she was so hot to leave all that behind for med school in California.
“Oh, Keane…” Lena’s voice became a lot less cheery. “I broke up with him.”
“You broke up with him?” I repeated. “Why? He’s been so great to you. Plus, he’s, like, famous and insanely hot. Are you out of your mind?”
“No, just the opposite. I’m being practical. I mean, Keane and I don’t really make any sense. He’s this big deal hockey player, and I’m just me. I doubt we would have lasted much longer, even if I had stayed in Boston.”
Anger surged through me. “What? How can you say that?”
It was like Lena was writing a revisionist history about what had gone down this summer. Unlike her college boyfriend, Keane had treated her like gold. Even though he was a professional hockey player, he’d made her a top priority. Also…“You two were so happy. Do you think those kinds of relationships just happen all the time?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it one way or the other,” Lena answered, her voice careful like she was talking to one of the kids with mental health issues at her internship. “I mean, I’m only twenty-two. I shouldn’t be thinking about relationships right now. I should be thinking about my career. Like you.”
“No, not like me,” I insisted. But then I had to stop because how I was supposed to conclude that argument. With the truth that I wasn’t interning in New York on the cusp of medical school because I’d been revenge married to a Chinese gangster who thought I’d betrayed him?
Still, it made me so mad that she was just throwing her healthy relationship away. I ended up giving Lena an excuse to get off the phone just a few minutes later. And I couldn’t force any enthusiasm into my voice when I congratulated her on being accepted into med school before I hung up.
If I still had my freedom, I would’ve gone up there and talked her out of moving halfway across the country. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Which made me feel like a shit friend.
