Page 10

In college we learned from an Austrian hallmate that there was a German word for someone you immediately want to slap when you start talking to them— Backpfeifengesicht .

This immediately became our favorite inside joke.

We were endlessly searching for German words for strange things, and if one didn’t exist, we would invent our own.

There should be a German word for a guy who gets much cuter after three vodka sodas, for the freedom and giddiness you feel when someone cancels plans at the last second and you have a free afternoon to yourself, a German word for the grossness of discovering you put a new tampon in but haven’t taken the old one out.

“Or a German word for how two shots of tequila and a THC gummy make you believe you’re whispering shit talk to your friends instead of broadcasting it to the whole room,” I say in the elevator. If this is where she wants us to start, right back in our shared intimacies, I can match her.

She giggles.

“Or for women who think massive water bottles are a fashion accessory. Did you just get here?” she asks, making direct eye contact with me so that I can’t look away from her bruise.

“Yeah. About half an hour ago. My plane was delayed.”

“Do you have plans for tonight?”

“There’s a welcome circle, right?”

“Did you want to go to that?”

“Not at all.” I don’t feel like lying to her.

“Me neither,” she says. “It’s a lot of self-congratulatory selfie-taking and a circle jerk of brand placement.”

Her tone and crass words catch me off guard.

Much like the women talking about her outside the elevator I realize that I haven’t heard Bex’s real voice in years.

Her videos have captions. She hardly speaks.

But it’s all done in a way that I hadn’t noticed.

I’d felt like she was speaking directly to the camera for the years I have peered at her on the phone, but now I realize it was all a sleight of hand.

I heard the words in my head and not out loud.

Her real voice is as low and gravelly as it ever was.

Her tone is perfectly tinged with sarcasm and skepticism.

She is the same girl I fell in love with during that first week of college. She’s still in there.

We arrive at my room before I even realize she was walking me here all along.

“Can I come in and sit down? Maybe we could order a drink?” she asks almost shyly.

The familiarity continues to be jarring. Why did you ditch me? I scream in my head, despite how ridiculous it sounds to my adult brain. Why haven’t I seen you in nearly fifteen years?

“Sure,” I say, remembering she’s the one who paid for the room, and that has to give her some privileges.

Once we walk in, I realize I will be sleeping in a mountain-view suite with a massive king bedroom, a sitting area, and a balcony the size of my nursery that leads out to a private infinity plunge pool.

“Wow, Bex. Thanks for booking this.”

She waves her hand in the air like it’s nothing, which I guess it is for her, and a twinge of jealousy tightens my throat.

“I didn’t book it. The conference offered as many rooms as I wanted if I would do the keynote talk tomorrow.”

“Yeah, about that. Why are you doing it?” I sling my suitcase onto the bed, but don’t unzip it. I’m embarrassed at the early-morning packing job I did in the dark so I wouldn’t wake Peter. My clothes are balled up in little bundles. I have no idea if the underwear I threw in is clean or dirty.

“The conference? Or the keynote?”

“Both, I guess. You don’t do that many of these, right?”

She sinks onto what looks like the most comfortable sofa I’ve ever seen.

“I always come to the conference. It’s a good way to get in front of sponsors.

But no, I don’t ever do any of the big speeches.

I always figured no one wanted to hear what I had to say.

Could we order a drink and some food before we start talking?

I’m dying for french fries and a burger and a martini. ”

“I thought you didn’t drink,” I say.

“A lot of people think a lot of things about me.” She raises a perfectly groomed eyebrow at me. “You heard those women at the elevator. They all have their opinions and none of them are nice. What do you think about me, Lizzie?”

It doesn’t feel accusatory. In fact, she seems to genuinely want to know.

Still, I stutter a little. No one has ever asked me so directly what I think of them except for Peter once during an argument right after he lost his job.

“Do you think I’m a failure?” he had asked.

Only a little, I didn’t say. I avoided telling him I thought he could have hustled a little harder, that he was too set in his ways, that he could have found a way to save himself if he had tried just a tad more.

I hate being asked what I really think of people.

“I think you seem lonely.” I don’t know where it came from. The words just vomited out of my mouth before I could process them.

Even though she’s drowning in lovely-looking children and money and land and has that stone fox of a husband, something about her perfectly curated life seems sad.

“Yeah. I am,” she says simply, and heads for the door. Now I’ve gone and insulted her with my big fucking mouth.

“Hey, Bex, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not offended. And it’s nice to be called Bex.

Gray prefers Rebecca so that’s what everyone has called me forever now.

I was just going to head to my room to change.

I hate this bathing suit. It’s riding up my ass.

I’ll put in a drinks and food order while you unpack and freshen up. What do you want?”

“Whatever. Same as you.”

“Easy. It’s nice to be with someone who feels so easy.”

It does feel easy. It’s not at all what I expected.

I certainly didn’t expect to fall back into the comforting rhythms of the friendship we established as roommates at age eighteen.

Not after the things she said to me in that last email.

The reason I never reached out wasn’t just that she ghosted me, but that she humiliated me and abandoned me.

Maybe that’s dramatic, but it was how I felt at the time and how I still feel when I conjure the memories.

“Be back in twenty,” she says, and swoops out the door.

I barely have time to move my scrunched-up clothes from the suitcase to the dresser, swipe a washcloth under my arms, and take a pee before Bex returns in a T-shirt and sweatpants, her hair on top of her head in a messy bun.

She’s still got on plenty of makeup and these fake eyelashes so long they seem like they could reach out and tickle you.

But she looks less photo-ready and more, I don’t know, more normal.

“Snacks will be here in a few.” And with that, a bellhop is knocking on the door. He brings in a cart with more food than I would order for my family of four.

“I’m starving,” she says.

There are two burgers and fries and onion rings. A platter of nachos and a brownie sundae—the exact opposite of the homegrown and nutritious snacks on Bex’s Instagram.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” I had wondered on the way out here if she would have a publicist with her all the time or an assistant, perhaps a mini me who looked exactly like her in the same prairie dresses and golden curls.

Bex, but slightly smaller. The next size down of a Russian nesting doll.

I’ve never seen any of these people on her account, but they must exist.

She shrugs. “Nope. Just us. I wasn’t thinking straight when I ordered the ice cream. It’s gonna melt. I guess we have no choice but to eat that first.”

There’s also a massive shaker on the cart, out of which the server pours two martinis the size of small fishbowls.

Bex grabs a glass and begins digging into the brownie sundae. I don’t admit that I’ve been attempting a carb-and-sugar-free diet that is foiled every day by the scraps of chicken nuggets and cookies on my children’s dinner plates and I grab a spoon and drip hot fudge onto my tongue.

“Remember when we always had dessert in the dining hall before we ate an actual meal?” Bex says.

“Or Froot Loops. Because we could. Because there was a never-ending supply of Froot Loops in the dining hall and when there’s so many of them you have to eat them.”

“Exactly,” she says. “I think about those days a lot.”

I don’t want to tell her I do too. Instead, I scoop the last of the brownie from the bottom of the sundae into my mouth and pretend to focus intently on chewing.

“Let’s sit out on the balcony,” Bex suggests. “We can watch the sunset.”

I hadn’t even noticed that the sky had turned a cotton-candy pink and orange behind the craggy peaks.

“It’s beautiful out here,” I say. “You live close, right?”

“Not far. It’s flatter where I am. More desert prairie vibes, but we have these massive weird rock formations that just appear as if from nowhere. It’s a little like Mars. But these mountains are so dramatic. I love them. We did our honeymoon at a little place over there. We hiked to that peak.”

“Do the two of you still hike together?”

“No,” she says flatly, and heads outside while balancing two plates like a waitress.

Once we’re out on the balcony she shovels fries into her mouth and then polishes off the burger in about three minutes before turning back to the martini and starting to pick at the nachos. I don’t match her speed, but I’m pretty hungry myself and dive in with relish.

“It’s nice to be away from my kids,” she finally says.

“Do you miss them?” I ask.

“Every other second, but it’s still nice. There should be a German word for the phantom cries you hear when you aren’t with your kids.”

“Or the relief you feel when a kid cries and you realize it isn’t yours…something like Nichtmeinkinder .” I don’t realize I’ve been storing up these quips for years, just waiting to tell her. Maybe she’s been doing the same.

“Oh my gosh, I love that one! Nichtmeinkinder !”