Page 98 of October
“Oh, hey,” Finley said when she saw India walking by her.
“Oh, hey,” India said back, repeating Finley’s greeting. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’m walking around the city,” she replied. “Have been for a couple of hours now. I haven’t done this in a while. It’s nice.” She looked around the still-not-busy sidewalk. “You?”
“I went for a run. I’m in my cooldown,” India said, pulling the earbuds out of her ears and pressing the screen of her phone, probably trying to turn off her workout playlist that Finley knew all too well. “Why are you out walking? It’s, like, ten in the morning. And you’ve been out for a couple of hours already?” India squinted at her in suspicion. “You don’t wake up before ten on the weekends.”
“Well, today is the exception,” she said.
“What’s going on with you right now?” India asked her. “You don’t seem like yourself, and you look exhausted. Wait. Were you with Molly last night? And you’re exhausted. Don’t tell me. I don’t need details.”
“I’m just tired. I woke up early, for some reason, and my body needs more coffee than the one cup I’ve had.”
“Well, I can let you get back to it. I was going to walk the rest of the way home and get some work done.”
“Okay. Yeah. Cool,” Finley said.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Can we just… I don’t know. Can we maybe try to be friends? I mean that for real. No tricks. No trying to get you back or anything. I know that you’re with Molly now, and I respect that. I think I’m only starting to realize that I really miss you. I’m not talking about the being together part. Idomiss that part, but I mainly mean the part where we hung out sometimes. It was nice.”
“It was nice because we always did the things you liked. You wanted to go shopping. I went with you. You wanted to see some French film with subtitles. I went with you.”
“Okay. So, I was a bad girlfriend. I get it, Finley. I’m trying here.” India tucked her phone into the side pocket of her workout pants and asked, “What would you want to do if we just hung out?”
“Grab a beer. Go to a football game. Shop at a tech store; not one that sells clothes.”
India laughed and replied, “So, nothing I’d want to do. Got it.”
“You can have wine, India. I can have the beer. And I don’t actually expect you to go to the football games or even watch them. Molly loves football.” She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t need you to go shopping with me, either, so maybe we just grab a beer and wine one night sometime.”
“Molly would be okay with that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can talk to her if you really mean this, India. It’s not a ploy?”
“It’s not.” India shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that. I like Molly, and I can tell you really like her. I’m not trying to cause problems for you two. I just don’t have many friends.”
“You have a ton of friends.”
“Notrealfriends, Fin. I have a few friends from work, but they’re not going to be there for me when I really need a friend. Case in point: they’re not here for me now when I’m trying to get over a bad breakup.” India looked around then. “I have my old college friends, but I barely talk to them these days, and I’ve got a couple of old family friends, but they’re the rich people friends. They’re the kind of people you see at parties, and you all brag about things and embellish to make yourself look good, so you’re notreallyfriends with them.” She looked at Finley. “I know I wasn’t perfect, and I’m not great at compromise, but I’d like to try to work on that if it means we canattemptto be friends. I’ll even consider letting you pick out a beer for me or something.”
Finley laughed a little and said, “Okay. Maybe.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket then, so she pulled it out and was surprised and grateful to see a text from Molly, even without knowing what the message would say, because she’d worried that after she had run out on her this morning, she might never get a text from Molly again.
Molly Jewel: Hey. I’m not sure if you’re awake, but Jules invited us to this barbecue thing with Gwen’s sister-in-law and her partner. I guess it’s pretty open, and a lot of people will be there, so it’s not a big deal to add two more to the list. Logan and Rory, whom you know, and maybe Ava. Plus, Candace and some others. They’re going to be there around two. Do you want to go? We could hang out, meet some new people, and maybe talk. Let me know.
“Molly?” India asked.
“Yeah,” she said and looked up at India. “Do you want to put your money where your mouth is?”
“What money, exactly?”
“There’s a barbecue today. It’s an open thing hosted by a friend of Juliet’s. Or, I guess, her girlfriend’s. Molly and I aregoing. Do you want to go, too? I think it’ll be a bunch of lesbians, and at least one of them is for sure single.”
India laughed and said, “You’re trying to set me up?”
