Page 49 of Silver Linings
Her mouth pops open, and she hesitates. Fuck—did she have a different reaction to Friday night than me?
I mean, I thought that kiss was…good doesn’t even scratch the surface. From her reception of it, I would’ve thought she did too, but I’ve been out of the dating game long enough to doubt myself now.
“Actually…”
My stomach sinks. I don’t know how, but I must have misinterpreted everything wrong, and I’m suddenly feeling very stupid.
The front door opens. “Hello, brother wife.” Kena saunters into Respect the Drip with the confidence of a king, dressed head to toe in vibrant floral brocade.
A smile spreads across my face at the sight of Silver’s best friend.
“Could you,for once, not make me look like a bum in this coffee shop?” Silver throws up her arms in exasperation before looking at me. “He always comes in here looking like a Disney prince when I look like this.” She points from her messy top knot down to her sweatpants and cropped tee.
“I think you look beautiful.” I sip my coffee.
Kena’s head whips to me with a smile that can only be described as maniacal.
“Oh?” There’s a lilt to his voice as it raises several octaves, and he looks between Silver and me.
“And on that note,” Silver grabs Kena by his shoulder and twists him towards the door, “we’re going to Drag brunch in a bit.”
“Unhand me, you goblin,” Kena says while I chuckle from where I’m standing. They’re basically siblings, and it makes me think of mine and how we used to act the same way.
She starts walking towards the door, dragging Kena with her as she goes. “I’ll see you tomorrow night though?”
She’s almost fully out the door when I nod my head in their direction and salute them with my coffee. “See you then.”
Something changed, I can see it in her face, hear it in her voice. I just don’t know what.
“I’m telling you, the koala population in Australia is in danger because they’reallgetting chlamydia. It’s an epidemic, and you all should really care more.”
The three of us stare blankly at Sam as he takes an irritated pull from his IPA, indignant that we didn’t know about theburgeoning threat to marsupials in the farthest reaches of the eastern hemisphere.
“How did we get here?” Jae’s eyes dart around, looking at each of us in confusion.
“I asked where the new beer on draft was imported from.” Faye rubs circles into her temples. “Apparently, it’s from Australia, and now, I’m full of regret.”
“This is a serious problem. Depending on the region of the country, up to ninety percent of the koala population is affected.” You would think he’s on trial with how serious he is.
I take a bite of the wings I ordered as I sit and watch the chaos of my friend group unfold.
Faye is telling Sam he should get fixed until his frontal lobe develops, Sam is looking at Faye with hearts in his eyes, and Jae is singing along to the song playing over the speakers—loudly.
This is pretty much what all our nights consisted of when we were all in school together. We spent our days running around the city, going to different classes for different majors, but we always found our way back here by nightfall, at The Blackbird, together.
Some nights, we drank ourselves under the table playing whatever drinking game the others had come up with that made absolutely no sense, and some nights, we covered our table in textbooks with notes and highlighters everywhere.
It was the memory of these nights that I missed the most, that I longed for once I moved back to Seattle. I wanted to stay here, open my own business with the degree I earned from NYU. But when I shared that with my dad, even showing him business plans I had drafted, he said it was time to come back home and work under him like I had agreed before I left for college. There was no room left to argue.
When I left for school, it didn’t seem like such a bad compromise—a small price for four years of freedom from hisconstant scrutiny. I loved the work at the shop, especially when I was designing my own pieces, but I didn’t expect to feel so at home in New York. After my four years were up, my pride saw me back on a flight to Seattle. It had been drilled into me from adolescence that a man was only as good as his word. For a while that kept me in line.
Until a few weeks ago.
Ever since, I’ve been avoiding my family’s calls—well, Mom and Laurel’s calls. Dad stopped speaking to me altogether, but that silence started long before I left.
I need to stop being a coward and face the music of their disappointment. I’m just not sure what good the argument will do when I don’t want to leave New York again. I shouldn’t have the first time, but a niggling voice in the back of my head says if I hadn’t, I would’ve missed those last few years with my brother. That alone was worth it all.
My friends are now in a heated argument about who would survive the longest in the Australian outback, and I’m going to have to settle this for them the rational way.
