Page 21 of Five Years

“I would trade, but I already unpacked my things in the closet,” Ariana pointed out.

“Sorry, it was a genuine mistake.”

“It’s okay,” Ariana said gently.

First, she’d arrived unexpectedly on vacation. Then she’d locked herself in Ariana’s bedroom.

What next?

Leah toddled across the hall—a walk of shame she hadn’t foreseen.

“Leah, wait . . .” Ariana called after her.

“Yeah?” Leah turned to face her.

“Do you want to grab some lunch?” she asked casually.

“Erm...I don’t know if that’s a good idea, is it?” Leah challenged.

Despite the moral obligation to decline the invitation, her pulse quickened with excitement.

“Why not?” Ariana questioned.

Is she for real?

“Well, given our history,” she hesitated. “I’m not sure a solo lunch would be the smartest thing to do—not for any reason, I just don’t want to cause any trouble.”

Leah secretly hoped Ariana would persuade her otherwise. That hope would go down in her daily affirmation journal as a toxic trait under the category:What would you have done differently today?

She hated that question.

Yesterday, she’d spent the whole day cleaning her apartment, eating pretzels, and binging trash TV. Her response to the prompt had been:

I would have eaten fewer pretzels and therefore avoided the yeast bloat that followed.

The statement was as true as any she’d written, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t what the journal intended.

“Oh.”

Ariana’s expression faltered—a flicker of hesitation Leah clocked immediately.

“I meant all of us,” Ariana said, raising her eyebrow in that familiar way Leah remembered. She used to make the exact same expression whenever she took pity on someone.

“Ah. Yeah. Of course. I knew that,” Leah scoffed.

She absolutely did not know that.

And worse, now Ariana knew she didn’t know that—because in the fucked-up parallel universe Leah found herself in, Arianaknewher.

Leah was dying inside. Her heart sank. She had completely misunderstood Ariana’s invitation, and now this hallway interaction was the final nail in her coffin of embarrassment.

“Maybe...I have a lot of work to do, though, so I’ll text Grace.”

With a forced smile, she excused herself.

The sting of rejection lingered.

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