“What does all this mean?” I asked.
“Well, Jeremy’s got two weeks to get there and start working. Apparently, there are some big deals they need his help with. So, we’ll have to do the long-distance thing for a while.”
A while. The important news wasn’t in what she said, but in what she didn’t say. A while meant that, sooner rather than later, my best friend was going to be moving across the country. Instead of getting together two or three times a month, it might be two or three times a year, if that.
I wanted to be happy for her. I really did. But at that moment, all I could think about was myself. Selfish, I know. But losing your bestie to the opposite coast was not exactly something to jump up and down about.
Even worse was going to be the culture gap that would loom between us. I liked working in a restaurant. I liked living the ‘blue collar’ lifestyle. I liked the idea of rocking out and being a badass chick for decades to come. If I ever had kids, I’d teach them to be free spirited ass kickers, too.
Not Mella. Her life was going to become tea parties, charity walks, and within a few years, community and school bake sales. She was going to worry more about the price of rooibos tea and how much soccer camp for Mella or Jeremy Junior cost than what working class people made. She’d start sipping Zinfandel and listening to Celine Dion or someone like that.
In other words… we’d grow apart. And we both knew it, even if we didn’t want it to happen.
So, when Mella invited me to have a girls’ weekend at Black Mountain Lake, I couldn’t refuse. I mean, sure I’d had weekend plans already to get another tattoo, a star near my elbow to match the one on my right and complete the constellation I’d worked hard to put on my body.
Still, I wasn’t going to pass up what could be the last hurrah with my best friend.
* * *