* * *
Ruby: You are excused from this knowledge, dear mother. Xoxo
* * *
Mom: Love you bunches. Give Gigi a hug for me when you see her!
* * *
I return to the Gigi thread, but my estimates were off. She sent so many GIFs that I scroll for a solid minute to get to the part where she tells me where we’re meeting.
Finally, just as my thumb wails and throws a text-thumb tantrum, I find the location and the time at the bottom of the thread.
A cute boutique a few blocks away, and we’re meeting in thirty minutes.
I grin, surprised to find I’m excited. Who would have thought?
I’m not a shopper by nature. I’m a run-into-Target-and-grab-ten-of-the-same-V-neck tees kind of girl. But I learned at a young age to tolerate it, mostly because of Claire.
Claire, with her effortlessly perfect wavy brown hair, freckled nose, and playful green eyes, wasn’t a clothes horse. She was a thing horse. Shiny bracelets, tiny ceramic animals, antique dance cards she framed with pressed flowers, retro clutch purses like Audrey Hepburn carried in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—they had Claire’s name written all over them.
She was a self-declared pretty shiny thing omnivore.
On our last road trip, we pulled off a winding country road into a picturesque town in Vermont with one main drag named, of course, Main
Street. With a wink and a watch my prowess, Claire parallel-parked her red Ford Thunderbird between a beat-up blue pickup truck and a Prius like only a born New Yorker could.
Our goal was to replenish our dangerously low caffeine levels with iced vanilla lattes at Bertha’s Café, the top-rated coffee shop within a hundred-mile radius.
But before we made it halfway down the block, Claire spotted a tchotchke store. Her kryptonite. She thrust her arms out in front of her, take-me-to-your-leader style, and her voice turned hypnotic. “Must shop. Must. Shop. Am helpless to resist.”
Laughing, I grabbed her arm, dug my Chuck Taylors into the sidewalk, and pretended to hold her back. “No. Fight it. I’m not giving up on you, Hendrix. No soldier left behind!”
But it was already too late. She was trapped in the clutches of the store’s tractor beam. I let go of her and we stumbled through the door, laughing the way I only ever laughed with her.
Inside, she was first drawn to a teapot that looked like something a fancy Parisian woman would have on her tiny balcony in a flat in the 6th Arrondissement. Then a sign that said, “Coffee is served. Now please leave, asshole.” Next a display of pillows. Grabbing one, she lifted it, declaring, “This is so perfect.”
She ran her hand down the gold sequins, revealing the other side of the words quilted onto the pillow.
Not today.
“So true.” Her eyes held mine. “Never be afraid to say not today, Ruby. Or no, for that matter.”
I smiled. “Wise words. Maybe you should say not today to the pillow. Don’t you have fifty already?”
She lifted her chin haughtily. “It’s not my fault they multiply when I’m not looking.”
I arched a brow. “Your pillows are banging each other?”
She tutted. “Obviously. When I have sleepovers, they have bangovers. They’re very frisky. But I’m sex-positive, so…”
She bought the pillow, I bought the lattes, and we toasted at Bertha’s Café to the mantra of “Not today.”
Two days later, the pillow was destroyed in the crash.
At least, that’s my best guess. No one salvaged it and brought it to the hospital when the doctors decided it was safe to bring me out of my coma. No tiptoeing into my room, gently offering me the reminder of my best friend. As far as I know, the “Not Today” pillow went to the junkyard with the car Jesse restored and gave her for her twenty-first birthday.
My throat tightens at the memory. I miss Claire, and even that goddamn pillow.