want to ask and couldn’t have cared less about the answer, Emily managed to ask, ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, me? Fine, everything’s fine. I can’t believe it’s already been a year, can you?’
Silence.
‘You remember Alex, right? Well, he ended up moving to Mississippi, for a teaching job.’ Andy still couldn’t bring herself to admit that he’d broken up with her. She willed herself to stop talking but she couldn’t. ‘And Lily, that friend of mine who was always stopping by the office late at night, after Miranda left, the one who had the accident while I was in Paris? She moved too! To Boulder. I never thought she had it in her, but she’s become a yoga fanatic and a rock climber in, like, under six months. I’m actually writing now for a wedding blog, Happily Ever After. Have you heard of it?’
Emily smiled, not meanly but not nicely either. ‘Is Happily Ever After affiliated with The New Yorker? Because I remember there was a lot of talk about writing for them …’
Andy felt her face grow hot. How naïve she’d been! So young and foolish. A couple of years hitting the pavement, interviewing subjects and writing dozens of pieces that would never get published, cold-calling editors and relentlessly pitching story ideas, had set her straight: it was an enormous accomplishment to be published anywhere, writing about anything, in this city.
‘Yeah, that was pretty stupid of me,’ Andy said quietly. She stole a quick glance at Emily’s thigh-high boots and buttery leather motorcycle jacket and asked, ‘What about you? Are you still at Runway?’
She’d inquired merely to be polite since there was no doubt Emily had been promoted to something glamorous, where she would happily remain until she married a billionaire or died, whichever came first.
Emily doubled down on her zucchini slicing, and Andy prayed she wouldn’t nick off a fingertip. ‘No.’
The tension was palpable as Andy accepted Emily’s matchsticks and sprinkled them with chopped garlic, salt, and pepper before adding them to the sizzling pan. Immediately it began spitting olive oil.
‘Turn down that heat!’ the instructor called from his perch at the front of the kitchen. ‘We’re browning zucchini here, not having a bonfire.’
Emily adjusted the stovetop flame and rolled her eyes, and with that barely perceptible movement, Andy was transported directly to their anteroom offices at Runway, where Emily had rolled those same, slightly brighter eyes a thousand times each day. Miranda would call out a request for a milkshake or a new SUV or a python tote bag or a pediatrician or a flight to the Dominican Republic; Andy would flounder about, trying to decode what she was saying; Emily would roll her eyes and loudly sigh at Andy’s incompetence. Then they’d rinse and repeat, over and over again.
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