Page 39 of Five Years

“I had an obsession with the ornamental hedgehog on her lawn. She used to walk me back home a few times a year.”

Leah thought the episodes had stopped when she hit her twenties—until she was twenty-five and Grace found her in the kitchen, petting a brand-new toilet brush. Thankfully, it was unused. Grace filmed it, and they’d laughed for days. They named the brush after Leah’s childhood dog, Bryan.

“Are you worried it’s getting worse?” Ariana asked.

“How could it get worse?”

“You could walk into traffic and get hit by a car?”

“Well, then I’d be dead. So worrying wouldn’t help much, would it?” Leah laughed.

“I’m serious. Anything could happen! I used to worry so much—” Ariana stopped herself again.

Leah noticed it throughout the trip—Ariana constantly catching herself whenever she started to talk about their past.

Leah waited.

“I used to worry something might happen to you.”

“And now?” Leah teased.

“I still worry,” Ariana said quietly.

She didn’t have the right to worry about Leah anymore—but hearing her say it brought a strange, comforting ache. Depressingly, it gave Leah a sense of satisfaction. Ariana still cared. That had to count for something.

“So . . .what did I say?” Leah asked.

Ariana played with the zip on her sweatshirt and gave a nervous laugh.

“You’re seriously dragging this out,” Leah said.

“I don’t remember all of it—some gibberish.”

“But youwantedto talk about it?”

“Yeah, I just meant...like, y’know, talking about what we’ve got planned today,” Ariana stumbled.

Leah wasn’t buying it. “What do we have planned?”

“Uh...ask Grace. She made Pinterest-inspired mood boards for every day. I don’t want to ruin her fun.”

Nice save, Leah thought.

“Right. So just to clarify—youdon’twant to talk about what we talked about last night?”

“Do you remember what we talked about?”

“You already asked me that,” Leah said with a smirk.

“Okay.” Ariana nodded, satisfied.

“You’re being weird and it’s freaking me out.”

“You know what? Now that I think about it, maybe I dreamt the whole thing.”

“You dreamt about me coming into your room to discuss plans for today? Riveting.”

“Guess it makes sense. The convo was so boring, I should’ve known you were sleepwalking. There’s no way you’d walk into my room in the middle of the night for that.”