Page 13 of How Freaking Romantic

“Wait… what?” Maggie yells into our FaceTime call, her confused expression taking up my entire phone screen. Despite the deafening sound of Travis hammering something on the other side of their kitchen, I know she heard me the first three times, but I still repeat myself again.

“Nathan Asher is taking over my class,” I say, poking at the last peanut in my kung pao shrimp.

I haven’t bothered with a plate, just set up the array of Chinese food containers next to me on the sofa.

I had treated myself with delivery tonight, a way to soften the blow of still not having any responses to my job inquiries.

The empty inbox is open on my laptop, a glowing harbinger on the cushion beside me.

“So, you’re working with the same guy who stuck his tongue down your throat?”

“Technically, I stuck my tongue down his throat,” I correct her, but my words are swallowed up by a commotion behind her.

“Trav, I think it needs to be higher!” Maggie yells, motioning to where he stands off-camera. “No, higher!”

“Do you need to go?” I ask.

“No, it’s just… one more inch! Yes, there!” Then she returns to me. “Sorry, trying to get this all done before the Miami trip might have been too ambitious.”

Something crashes behind her.

“It’s fine!” Travis yells. “I’m okay!”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “All right, so back up. How did this happen?”

I sigh, abandoning my chopsticks and pushing a few curls away from my face. “Apparently my professor was Nathan’s professor back when he went to law school or something. They’re still friends, so Frank called in a favor.”

“Wow.” She smiles. “This is the best thing I’ve heard all week.”

“I’m glad you find this so entertaining.” I glower at the peanut.

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t stormed into his office like a crazy person, then proceeded to get drunk and kiss him, all of this wouldn’t be so hilarious.”

“Oh, right, like I should have somehow anticipated the fact that I would see him again.”

“Of course you should have anticipated it,” Maggie says with a snort. “It’s New York. You always run into people you never want to see again.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh really? Remember when I had that one-night stand senior year with that guy we met at that bar in Brooklyn and then two years later he came in for an interview to be my assistant at Westfield Holdings?”

Damn it. I do remember that.

“Are you talking about one-night stands with your boyfriend in the room?” I ask, trying to deflect.

“It’s fine. He’s hanging shelves and not even listening,” she says.

“Yes I am!” Travis calls out.

Maggie ignores him. “So, what are you going to do?”

I frown at her. “What can I do?”

“Well, you hate this Asher guy, so I assume you’ve contemplated resigning?”

It was a good question, one that had been swirling in my mind ever since that meeting in Frank’s office. But every time it popped up, I always ended up at the same conclusion.

“I can’t. The only way I can afford law school is with this position, so I have to just deal with it.”

“Right,” she says as if she’s considering my options and also coming to the same realization. “Well, at least you can put dry humping on your résumé now.”

I glare at her. “That’s not happening again. I haven’t even thought about it.”

She scoffs. “That’s such a lie.”

She’s right, it is a lie. The most blatant, bold-faced lie I have ever told in my long history of lying.

“Whatever,” I say, popping the lone peanut in my mouth. “I’ll barely see him. We’re just meeting before class to review assignments and discuss course material. Which is my job, by the way. So really, I’m just doing my job.”

Maggie hums to herself, as if she doesn’t believe me at all. “Well, I guess this means we don’t have to worry about him getting that restraining order anymore.”

“Who’s getting a restraining order?” Travis yells across the room.

“Yeah, Bea.” Maggie waggles her eyebrows at me. “Who’s getting a restraining order?”

I scowl at her. “No one.”

Travis abandons the shelf and joins Maggie on camera. “I thought maybe it was Josh this time, since you broke into the apartment and stole his baking shit.”

I roll my eyes, suddenly aware of the box of baking dishes sitting on the floor beside the sofa. I had lugged it home earlier that week and promptly forgot about it.

“It’s Jillian’s baking shit, actually,” I reply.

“Well, in his text he said it was his.”

“Wait, what happened?” Maggie asks.

“It’s nothing,” I say before Travis can offer what will no doubt be Josh’s version of events. “Jillian just forgot a few things at the apartment, so she asked me to go pick them up.”

“Oh God,” Maggie groans. “Did you have to talk to Josh?”

“It was fine,” I say. “I took some bakeware. He called me a bitch. Then I left.”

Travis laughs, and I realize Josh’s version of events probably doesn’t sound very different from mine.

“Wait,” Maggie says, shaking her head. “I’m still confused about what Jillian forgot. Didn’t we pack everything up when we were down there?”

I lean over and poke through the contents of the box.

“It’s not much. Mostly just a lot of bakeware from her grandma that she was keeping above the fridge,” I said, eyeing the Pyrex dishes. “Looks like some cutlery, too, and some fridge magnets. And…”

Something small and round catches my eye in the corner of the box.

I shift one of the dishes and reach for it, pulling it out and resting it in my palm.

It’s a light green pill, about the size and shape of a generic ibuprofen, but it doesn’t look like ibuprofen.

It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.

“What?” Maggie asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say, bringing the pill up to get a closer look. “I just found something in here.”

“What sort of something?”

I hold it up to my phone so they can see.

Travis leans in closer. “Is that a pill?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Maggie and Travis are silent for a minute. I know what they’re thinking—it’s impossible not to. That’s the problem with knowing anyone as long as we have all known each other. We know all the best bits, but we know about the other bits, too.

We never talk about Josh’s other bits anymore.

To be fair, we never really talked about it at the time, either.

After he ruptured his Achilles tendon during a football game junior year, he worked hard to rejoin the team well before his doctors thought he’d be able to.

We were all happy for him, even as we ignored his weight loss, his mood swings.

We told ourselves it was stress; if he wasn’t on the team, he would lose his scholarship.

But then he and Jillian broke up. He stopped going to class.

It all got progressively worse until the night Travis found him on the floor of their bathroom.

A few hours later we were in an ER listening to a doctor explain Josh’s accidental overdose and how that injury months ago had led to Josh’s addiction to prescription painkillers.

Suddenly real life wasn’t an abstract idea discussed in the middle of the night from the safety of our dorm rooms but the here and now, punctuated by stark fluorescent lights in a hospital waiting room.

Josh went to counseling for months. And we all did our best to listen and learn and help. Then one day he announced that he was better. Not long after, he and Jillian were dating again. And slowly, the worries of that night faded into the background behind every other worry that life threw our way.

But now, as I stare at the pill sitting in my palm, it resurfaces with crystal clarity.

“It’s probably Jillian’s,” Travis says. “It’s all her stuff in there, right?”

“Maybe,” Maggie says. “She said she was going to talk to her doctor about getting on something for her anxiety.”

I nod absently as I trap my bottom lip between my teeth, an unconscious habit whenever I’m thinking too hard.

Silence extends across the line again before Travis finally sighs. “Will it make you both feel better if I drop Josh a text and ask him about it?”

Relief floods my body as Maggie and I answer in unison, “Yes.”

“Fine. But I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“We know, sweetie,” Maggie says, patting his shoulder. “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”

I snort. “Sure. Okay.”

An earsplitting crash fills the line, and Travis curses as he bounds out of frame.

“Ugh, all right, we need to go,” Maggie says. “We’re losing shelves.”

“Okay. Tell Travis to call me when he hears back from Josh.”

“I will,” she says. “And tell that new professor of yours that I said—”

I hang up before she can finish.

The pill is still sitting in my palm. I study its dull edges, its soulless shade of green. It’s probably nothing, I tell myself as I walk to the bathroom and flush it down the toilet. I almost believe it, too.

But I’m still thinking about it when I crawl into bed that night.