“You want the truth?” I huffed, falling into our worn gray couch.
“Always.” She nodded, her expression morphing into one of blatant concern.
“I don’t know what to do with…all this.” I waved a hand around the coffee table, which was full of snacks, magazines, face masks, bath bombs, a new pair of slippers for both of us, and even a gel nail kit. “I’ve never taken active steps to relax, so this is just awkward for me.”
Internally, I wanted to run away and never come back. Humiliated didn’t even begin to cover how I felt, but along with that, I was just fucking sad. My life was sad.
“Well,” Frankie drawled, lowering herself to sit next to me. “That’s the point, P. You need self-care to relax. It’s necessary for us girls to take time away from the everyday shit we deal with. I hate social media sometimes, you know? I’m not ashamed about wanting to go back to when we all had sleepovers and spent the night gossiping about celebrities and listening to boy bands. I miss when things were easier. Now we live in the heart of LA and everyone is miserable, and I need nights like this. We’re just giving ourselves time to unwind and letting our brains breathe. Watch mindless TV, eat some snacks, put a face mask on, and make your skin feel good. It’s all necessary.”
“I know,” I agreed, letting my head fall back to the cushions behind me. “I’m not saying it isn’t, and I don’t want you to think I don’t want to do this with you. I’m just sucking down my pride right now, because I feel like I’m asking for help and it’s fucking sad.” After taking a solid breath, I lifted my head to meet her eyes.
She watched me for just a second before blowing out a breath and leaning back into the cushions next to me. “I don’t think you asking for help is what’s sad. I think you not knowing what self-care is at twenty-three is sad.”
“I know what it is.” I rolled my eyes, falling back again. “I’ve just never done it.”
“Well, then, let’s do it, babe.” Frankie’s small hand smacked my naked thigh gently. “Up you go, we’re getting this night started.”
Just give it a shot.
Maybe this would make me feel better.
Four hours later, Frankie and I were lying on the living room floor, high as fuck, drunk off one too many Truly’s, and flipping through an actual print version of Cosmopolitan magazine. The clay face mask she put on me was rapidly drying on my skin, making it difficult to talk as we scanned the pages. My nails were done—painted a soft pink to accentuate my tan skin—my belly was full of gummy worms and Junior Mints, and I was actually having a good time.
“You know,” Frankie started, not bothering to look up from the article she was skimming—something about new tips and tricks to keep your man interested in a long-term sexual relationship. “We used to be the shit.”
I barked out a laugh. “Where the hell did that come from?”
She moved quickly to sit up, facing me completely with almost too much energy. She was about to make a point. I settled in.
She paused for just a moment before blurting out, “You’re a buzz kill.”
…Jesus.
The smile slipped from my face. “Damn, how do you really feel?”
Just like that, anger creeped its way up my spine. The words, “you can fuck right off” were right there on the tip of my tongue. But this was my best fucking friend, the only person who stuck around while I ignored everything and everyone, and she was trying to tell me something. Her soft, angelic features were pinched, even a little nervous, which was unlike her.
As much as I knew I needed to listen, hear her out, take responsibility, it wasn’t fucking easy.
“I don’t want to be an asshole, Phoenix,” Frankie sighed, looking down at her hands in her lap before shaking off her melancholy and pinning me with a concerned stare. “But I think you forgot that you were my best friend just as much as I was yours. We did all that shit in high school—we rebelled, snuck out, fucked up, we did our thing, and that’s just what it was. It was ours. Then you left and…” She trailed off, looking toward the TV with an angry tick in her jaw. When she brought her blue gaze back to mine, I understood just based on the rage in her eyes. “I’m angry at you, Phoenix, but I don’t want to be, because what you went through wouldn’t be easy on anyone. It would destroy people stronger than you, and I know that, but did you have to leave me too? Why couldn’t you have done whatever it is you did in New York, here? I would have been there for you. I would have done it with you. We were supposed to be a fucking team.”
She didn’t even realize that high school was just the beginning for me. I wasn’t happy back then, and neither was she, if she were honest with herself, so my leaving only helped her. I was on a dangerous path, headed straight for destruction, and I decided to leave, not only for me, but for her as well.
Except, in moments like this, my trauma spoke for me. I struggled to properly sift through everything I was feeling in order to have a mature conversation. All I could see was she cornered me. She was just now bringing all this up, when she had four years to do so before.
“That’s the point,” I snapped, hating my life, my father, my grief. “If I stuck around, I would have dragged you straight to hell with me, Frankie, and I refused to do that. Why would I? Look at your life right now. You make bomb ass money from a social media platform because you’re gorgeous as hell, you rock the no-filter lifestyle, and that kind of real wouldn’t have fit in the world I got lost in. You have the balls to run shit, to make a difference. It’s working out. But if I had stayed, that would not have been the case. You wouldn’t be where you are right now.”
For a good minute, she simply watched me. Her pretty eyes locked on mine, reading everything my stare told her. I stayed open, letting her see what she wanted—my soul, my intentions, my heart. It was never about leaving her. I didn’t want to leave her, I wanted to save her from my shit storm.
Finally, she asked, “You needed to leave so you could, what? Get it out of your system?” It was clear she didn’t fully understand, but she was trying to.
“No,” I replied with a bitter laugh, wishing there was someone in the world whom I didn’t have to explain this to. Someone who would just fucking get it. So far, music had been the closest thing I had to that someone. “This isn’t something I can just fuck out of my system, and poof, it goes away. It doesn’t work like that. What my father did?” I swallowed, hating the ball of sticky resentment in my throat. “It’s something I have to learn to cope with, and I haven’t figured out how yet. Me moving back here is my first step toward figuring that out.”
Her eyes widened a little. “So that’s why you came back? Because you want to figure out how to live happily?” She seemed genuinely confused, which made me feel even worse because, really, how did we get here? We grew up together, for fuck’s sake. Puberty, boys, sisterly fights, sharing clothes—she was my partner, my soulmate.
“More like I want to figure out how to live, period,” I admitted, hating the tears forming in my eyes, the lump in my throat that continued to grow to the point of nearly choking me. Out of nowhere, the walls of our living room started closing in. I could suddenly smell gunfire in the air as the memories came back to haunt me. I pushed through. “I haven’t been living at all since that day, Frankie. I was so fucking young and it…I don’t know…shaped the way I think, I guess. I’ve been trying to figure out how to live ever since it happened, but if I’m going to stay on this Earth, then I need more than what I’ve been feeling for the last ten years. I need life, joy, good memories to cloud the bad, even if it’s not always my own life that’s exciting.”