Page 68 of Rising Heat

Just good?

Darcy

My ass hurts. I signed up for three more this week.

Darcy

Weather permitting.

Bex

Please. Boston women do reformer in blizzards and then get iced coffee after.

Darcy

I’m learning the local customs.

Bex

Proud of you. Any friends yet?

My stomach drops a little at the question.

Bex knows what I actually did when I moved. I didn’t just leave Brett. I burned the whole thing down and walked away before anyone could tell me I was overreacting.

What nobody warns you about is how much collateral damage comes with that. The engagement and the apartment were obvious. The friendships weren’t.

People I’d known or met first that somehow became his people after the breakup. Somewhere between couples’ dinners and engagement parties and everyone’s lives moving in the same direction, the lines had blurred. The husbands and partners were friends with Brett because of me. Somehow it didn’t matter.

Group chats went quiet. Invitations stopped showing up. Entire friendships and years or memories faded so quickly I thought I had imagined them. It hurt at the time. Now I mostly think it was useful information.

It’s incredible how quickly you find out who was standing beside you because they loved you and who was standing there because your life looked good next to theirs.

Bex wasn’t one of them. Through all of it, she’s stayed exactly where she’d always been, which turns out to be a rare thing.

Maybe that’s why losing everyone else bothers me less now than it used to. For a while, it felt like proof that I’d blown up my life. Now it mostly feels like confirmation that Boston was the right choice. If following my heart was enough to unravel the friendship, then maybe it was never mine to lose in the first place.

Bex, meanwhile, is still applying that same level of vigilance to what she insists is my emotionally inappropriate relationship with a candle.

Darcy

Working on it.

Bex

That counts.

Darcy

I’m not hiding.

Bex

Mhmm.

Darcy

Don’t start.