Page 91 of Sweet Ruin
The timer goes off. Priya doesn’t move for it, which for her is like a surgeon ignoring a heart monitor, so I go and get the croissants out myself and set the tray on the rack. When I return, she’s still standing in place with her arms folded again.
“How long do you have to decide?”
“Until midnight-ish. I assume.” I close the oven. “He didn’t actually give me a time. He just said one day.”
She’s got a look on her face I can’t read. Not judgment. I’m not even sure what I’d call it.
Then she says, “Sit down a second.”
“We should really get to work. I’ve got two hundred—”
“Delilah Aileen Dorsey, sit your ass down right now.” She tugs out a stool and shoves me onto it. Then she pulls one out for herself, sits down, and puts her hands on my knees.
“Is this a come-to-Jesus moment?” I joke weakly.
She shakes her head, not taking the bait of the joke. “Even more serious. It’s a come-to-Priyanka-Osborne moment. Listen to me and listen close, okay? You are not everyone’s savior. You’re not their servant or their babysitter, not their keeper or their handmaiden. You were put on this earth to be happy, alright? So if someone out there, Connor or this ‘lender’ or whoever, thinks they can corner you into doing what they want, it’s not up to you to save the rest of us from them. We’ll be okay. I’ll be… I’ll be…”
Then, out of nowhere, she starts to cry.
I’m confused for a moment, but Pri has my whole heart, so I do the only thing that makes sense, which is to pull her into a hug. We both sink to the floor on our knees, clutching each other.
She’s racked with sobs that don’t quite make sense. “Pri, darling, what’s wrong?” I ask, touching her cheek. “What’s going on?”
“I was… I was going to tell you next week,” she chokes out through broken breaths.
“Tell me what?”
“Amari’s moving out.” She’s talking about her husband, the father of her daughter. “After the new year. We agreed on that so we didn’t do it in the middle of the holidays, in front of Zara.”
The croissants crackle on the rack behind me. “Pri... Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s been coming since the summer,” she says, her chin dropping to her chest. “It’s not a fight or abuse or anything like that. There wasn’t some big night where somebody threw a plate. It just… isn’t working. It’s like trying to revive a dead body, and there’s just no heartbeat left.”
I frown. “But Pri… you worked Christmas week. You worked doubles, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, well.” She lifts a shoulder. “The money situation is about to get a little tougher, so I figured it was good to get it in while I can.”
“Priya, I—”
“The lease is in both our names through September,” she continues over my protests. “So there’s that. And then there’s the fact that I’m about to be paying for an apartment with one income. And Zara’s four, so she’s in daycare, which is eighteen hundred a month.” She rubs her thumb along the seam of her apron. “You’re not the only one who’s been up in the middle of the night wondering what to do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because you had a lot of your own shit going on,” she says. “Clearly.”
“That’s not—” I stop and swallow. “You could’ve told me the second it happened. You should have.”
“I know. I’m stubborn like that. Maybe that’s why you and me get along so well.” She sniffles and rubs at her dripping nose with the back of one hand. “Ugh, I’m sorry. God, the timing is so selfish. Look at me. You come in here with your dream on the line and I hijack the whole thing to talk about my problems. That’s disgusting of me. Who does that?”
“Pri.”
“I mean it. Forget I said anything. Tell me about the loan man.” She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, fast, and takes one more sniffling inhale before she brutally cuts off her tears through sheer force of will. “What else can you tell me? I’ll ask better questions.”
That, I think, is the moment I make my choice.
I look at this beautiful, strong, confident, wise woman falling to pieces in front of me. It’s funny how moments like this make abstract words become so real and so human.
Friend.
