Page 36 of Best Friend Burden

As I put the pod into the coffee machine and got it going, I said to her, “You're cleaning up.”

“Just like I said I would,” she said. “I may not always get things done right away, but they do always get done.”

“I guess so.”

“Let me tell you something about me,” she said. “This'll be helpful for you to know if... well, if I'm going to be staying here for a little while.”

Her eyes took on a semi-serious tone. I let her talk.

“I was seeing this guy back in Austin,” she told me. “Guy named Desmond. We were pretty serious, at least at first. He was a lawyer at a good firm, specializing in family law, but he also always made time for me and would send me little texts throughout the day. He wanted kids, and I saw him with his nieces — he was real good with them.”

I didn't know where she could possibly be going with this.

“So he was the real deal. Any woman's dream: good job, good looking, good with kids. My friends were telling me that he was marriage material.”

“What'd he do?” I asked. “Cheat on you or something?”

Melody shook her head. “Loyal almost to a fault,” she said. “He'd never dream of it."

“So what was the problem?” I asked. “Why are you here and not there with him?”

“He'd tell me to do things, and I wouldn't do them right away,” she told me. “Reasonable things like make sure the laundry was done or do the dishes if it was my turn to do them. He was a rigid guy in that sense. He lived his life to a schedule, and if things weren't done on his timeline, he'd get upset.

“And then I'd get mad because he was trying to boss me around, force me to live by his rules. I don't know, maybe I was the one being crazy, but I hate it when other people tell me what to do. He did it. My dad did it, too. Everyone always telling me what to do. And maybe they were even right about it, but I'm my own person. I'm a grown-ass adult, and I get to decide what I want.

“Maybe I'm going to make a mistake every now and then, but at least they'll be my mistakes to make and not somebody else's. I'd rather fail on my own than be someone else's idea of a success.”

She was getting pretty worked up. I could see it in her face, which was ever so slightly red. And her hands were shaking too.

The coffee started pouring into my mug and I grabbed the handle, appreciating the aroma that I needed in the morning to get me going.

“Don't be like them,” she said. “You need me to do something, let me know, but don't press me about it. It'll get done.”

“Noted,” I said, taking the mug and having my first sip, doing it slowly and quietly so as not to suggest to Melody I was ignoring her.

“I'm a free spirit,” she said.

“You certainly are.”

She was. You could tell by looking at her. Melody was someone who didn't care what other people thought of her — she just cared about being herself. So many other people tried to be someone they weren't, but she didn't wear a mask the way the rest of the people in the world did.

It made her uniquely her, and it was maybe my favorite thing about her.

Other people were so often interchangeable, different versions of a given type.

Not Melody. She was herself. And I'd never met anybody else like her.

“Try to chain me down,” she told me, “and it'll only force me to fly further away.”

I took in her words and processed them for a few seconds.

“So that's why you're out here, then, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “At first, it was a pipe dream. Telling people one day I'd like to move out to Los Angeles. And every goddamned person kept on telling me to stay in Texas. My dad telling me he didn't want me leaving the state. Desmond asking me how we were supposed to start a family if he'd have to move out to somewhere else, learn a whole new set of laws, and pass a different bar exam.”

She shook her head. “Maybe I'm going to want some coffee after all,” she told me. “That smells good.”

“Not a problem.” I popped the pod out and put a new one in, pressing the button to brew up a new cup.

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