Page 11 of Finders Keepers

“Whyyyyy?” I whine, sitting up in bed. It’s only…Okay, it’s actually almost eleven in the morning, so the loud power tool sounds happening outside aren’t as egregiously inconsiderate as I thought. But still, it’s not my preferred alarm clock.

I clear the crusties from the corners of my eyes and roll over to grab my phone from the nightstand.

There are three emails from job search sites, helpfully informing me that there are no new posts matching my criteria, and a missed video call from my best friend, Sabrina.

Shit. We were supposed to chat this morning.

But since I’m now living on Unemployed Sad Person (USP) time, I completely slept through our usual Monday eight a.m. catch-up.

If it’s eleven here, it’s…twelve, one…four p.m. in Belfast?

She used to teach a class around this time, but I’m pretty sure her semester also ended last week, so hopefully she’s free.

I call her back, and my phone very rudely turns on my front-facing camera as I wait, prompting me to sit up so that I’m at least looking less like a blobfish when Sabrina answers.

“She lives! Hooray!” she shouts, throwing an arm into the air and almost dropping her phone. For a second all I can see is the top quarter of a row of beautiful old brick townhomes and a rectangle of light gray sky.

“Sorry,” I say. “I forgot what day it was and slept in. Is it too late to talk? Are you busy?”

“No, no, not busy at all. Just off to Malcolm’s for the night,” Sabrina says, then seems to recall that Malcolm is her boyfriend (a thing I no longer have), and winces.

“Anyway, he can wait.” Her eyes dart around as she examines the framed poster hanging over the bed behind me—David Bowie jumping in the air while reading Dostoyevsky.

“Ooh. That’s a strangely sensual picture,” she says, tilting her head.

“Bowie was a strangely sensual man.”

“Too true. You know, I think Labyrinth was my sexual awakening.” She holds in a laugh as an elderly woman in the midst of entering her house, a fluffy dog cradled in her arms, gives her a stern look for saying the word “sexual” on the street like a hooligan. “How’s it being back home?”

“Mostly strange,” I say. “My parents seem glad to have me here. Almost too glad. Well, Mom at least. Dad spends most of his time in his workshop, appearing only for food and to do whatever chores my mom asks him to do.” I pause, unsure if I want to mention Quentin.

He feels like a can of worms, and even if I don’t provide a can opener I know that Sabrina will happily pry it open with her bare hands.

Then again, not telling her feels like I’m hiding something.

No reason to hide something that really is no big deal.

So I add, “Also, an old childhood friend who lived next door has coincidentally just moved back too.”

“Ooh. What are they like?”

“He’s…” It’s hard to answer this question, I realize, because I’m not sure whether to base it on what I know of young Quentin or this new, grown-up version. I eventually land on, “Mostly very frustrating.”

“Hmm. Now that’s interesting.” Sabrina brings her topaz-colored eye closer to the phone, like a detective leaning over a clue with a magnifying glass.

“What’s interesting?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s only you paused before ‘mostly very frustrating.’?”

“There was no pause,” I insist.

“There most certainly was. And, well, I don’t know if you remember, but that was also how you used to talk about…That’s what you said before…”

I know she means before you and Cole got together but isn’t sure how I would feel about her bringing up my ex less than a week after our split.

“Quentin is a very different kind of frustrating,” I say, freeing her from having to finish her sentence.

I found Cole frustrating back then because he always seemed to swoop in and check out whatever books I needed from the university’s library before I could get to them.

Eventually that led to a realization that, if he wanted the same obscure monographs I did, we probably had a lot of things in common—including the areas we were focusing on for our comprehensive exams. Which led to me suggesting we study together.

Which, perhaps inevitably, led to us doing a lot more than studying.

It’s sort of mortifying, now that I think about it, that I somehow managed to stretch what Cole must’ve intended as nothing but a three a.m. coffee-fueled convenient hookup into a six-year-long relationship.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sabrina verbally waves away my words before grinning.

“So. Is this very frustrating old neighbor friend of yours single?” she asks.

While I’m not a huge fan of this line of questioning, I’m glad to at least shift my focus away from Cole and the uncomfortable mixture of sadness, anger, and shame that intensifies whenever I start remembering the way things were between us.

All the red flags to which I was apparently oblivious.

“Sabrina,” I chide anyway.

“Well, is he?”

“Yes. Newly,” I admit.

“Hmm,” Sabrina hums, and I know it’s a placeholder for just like you . I both love and hate the way I always know exactly what she’s thinking even without her saying a word. “Wait. Is this the same guy who moved away after some sort of treasure hunt–related drama when you were in high school?”

I tuck my hair behind my ears as I try to recall which margarita-fueled night in grad school resulted in me spilling my heart about Quentin.

Probably the one where I wound up puking in the bushes behind a church and insisting I could speak Portuguese.

(I cannot.) “Ugh. Don’t you ever forget anything? ”

“Never.” She pauses. Then amends, “Almost never. I did have a student this past semester, could not remember her name for the life of me. Kept calling her Emma, but she was actually…Amy? I think. I still really don’t know!

” Sabrina’s beautiful round face lights up as she smiles, and I realize that the scenery behind her hasn’t moved for some time.

“You’re outside Malcolm’s now?”

She looks over her shoulder quickly, as if checking to confirm. “Oh. Yes. That’s his flat. But I don’t need to—” The sudden return of the buzz saw’s screaming drowns out the end of Sabrina’s sentence.

“No, no, go on and have a nice evening with Mal. Some asshole is using power tools outside and making it hard to hear you anyway.”

“If you’re sure?” she says. “I don’t mind…”

I know she’s offering to talk more about what happened with Cole, since it happened so recently that we haven’t been able to discuss it outside of a few quick messages.

But no part of me feels the need to rehash that mess right now.

Maybe it’s like when you injure yourself and it takes a second for your body to register the extent of the pain.

I’m still in that infinitesimal lull between cause and effect.

Sabrina is offering up her kit of best friend emotional bandages, but I’m not sure what size I even need yet, so I respond, “I’m sure.

Besides, it’s nearly afternoon here already.

I should really get up and get moving. Find something to occupy myself with so my parents don’t start worrying about me.

” Also so I don’t start worrying about me.

My memories flash back to the fall of 2008, sobbing into my pillow at night as I felt my sadness like a physical thing spreading throughout my body.

The heavy, dull ache that would flood in after the numbness I felt during the day.

Hopelessness that things would ever get better mixing with the anxiety that they would keep getting worse.

Clinging to my ambition was the way I dug myself out of that hole then, and if I lose the ability to do it now I don’t know for sure that I won’t stumble right back in.

“All right, then,” she says. “Till next week, unless you need me before. Love to my Neen.” She blows a kiss toward the camera.

I blow one back. “Love to my Breen.”

“Chat soon,” she says, before hanging up.

For a moment, I allow myself to imagine the scene unfolding 3,300 miles away: Sabrina unlocking Malcolm’s door with the key he gave her an almost worryingly short amount of time after they started dating.

Her kissing him hello. Filling him in on the conference paper she worked on between meetings with students.

Listening to a funny story about one of his patients.

Them settling on the couch, limbs tangled as they discuss their dinner plans.

Giggling as they fall into bed a few hours later.

Jealousy blooms deep inside my stomach, like a digestive juices–immune lotus flower.

I hate feeling this way about someone I love so much.

It’s just that, since we met at orientation for our PhD program, Sabrina has been not only my closest friend but also a helpful yardstick by which I can measure my progress toward the life I want.

We’ve both been working toward the same things for so long: A university faculty position.

A supportive partner. A beautiful home and a bright future.

All things Ambitious Nina worked her butt off to secure—was so close to finally having.

Sabrina and I used to be inches apart at most, but now it seems like she’s miles ahead, and it stings to see her disappearing into the distance while I collapse from a sudden muscle cramp.

That Bon Jovi pillar from the rest stop pops into my mind. It’s ok to map out your future—but do it in pencil.

At least remembering the overly smug expression on the rock star’s face plastered above that quote gives me enough of a spite-powered burst of motivation to actually get out of bed.