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“Is this where you give me a kiss goodbye?”
Freddie manages a laugh, but her eyes stay dim, the way they’ve looked since Grace told her she was moving out. It’s only been a week, but it feels like a lifetime. The glory days of their youth feel like nothing more than a distant dream.
Grace hates to do this to her best friend, but shit happens. Paths diverge. College was sucking the life out of her. How could she be what Freddie needs if there's nothing left of her at all?
“Hey,” Grace says softly. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah,” Freddie replies, hoarse from trying not to cry. Her disbelief is obvious.
So was her lie, Grace thinks with a sinking heart. But it’s time to go and there’s nothing that will comfort Freddie besides a confession that she’s changed her mind, so she unclips her seatbelt and climbs out of the battered black sedan. Freddie stays in the driver’s seat, listless.
The air remains fraught as Grace moves to the trunk and unloads her final few bags. The streets are settling around them with the onset of dusk, the shadows long, the light ethereal. A week ago, they might have been spending this time watching the newest episode of Freddie’s current anime obsession, or wrestling the disparate contents of their fridge into something edible. Grace imagines it with a smile, but the expression quickly fades.
They might never share that kind of domesticity again.
That’s the depressing spiral of thought Freddie’s stuck in, she knows. And it makes her sad too, but Grace is an adult now. She has to decide what’s best for herself, even when it hurts.
“After all,” she begins as she steps up onto the sidewalk, “it’s not like I could stay away for long when I love you so much.”
It’s only half a joke. And maybe she’s just making things worse, but Freddie is so quiet and so sad that Grace wants to at least remind her that none of this is her fault. That they’re still on good terms. That Grace still cares.
She watches Freddie’s lip quiver, and dismay turns her hope to ash.
Grace sighs, chest aching. She lets her duffel bag slump to the ground and goes to Freddie’s rolled-down window. Braces her hands on the frame and leans in to plant a kiss on her best friend’s cheek. Pretends not to notice her quick intake of breath; the way her hands twitch like she wants to reach out.
What would be the point, when they’re about to part ways? It’s far too late for her to be brave.
Grace pulls back reluctantly. Freddie doesn’t say anything, but her eyes speak for her, brimming with betrayal and pain.
Grace lowers her gaze. What is she supposed to do when both paths ahead demand leaving a part of herself behind?
But, hey. It’s not like she’s dying. Freddie will learn to adjust to texting more often than talking. To seeing her sometimes instead of all the time. To…to living alone.
And so will Grace.
God, this sucks.
There’s nothing left to do. Grace picks up her bags and ignores the gaping hole that’s opening up inside. “Good night,” she whispers.
Freddie watches in silence as she turns to face the building before her. Twelve stories soar into the sky, one of which houses the place she’ll now call home. With one last glance over her shoulder, Grace heads inside. She feels eyes on her back all the way to the elevator.
When she sets foot in her new apartment, it feels half-empty.
…
Freddie lies alone in the dark. The apartment is quiet. No rustle of Grace changing into her PJs on the other side of the wall. No clink of shot glasses after a bad test day or the chatter of the TV spouting another rerun of her dumb reality dating show or the hiss of the shower running. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional dull roar of a car going by outside.
Her phone screen burns a bright spot against the blackness. It’s still open to Grace’s text thread. Their last messages were a broken smattering of functional I’m backs and did u lock the doors and memes that Grace didn’t understand. Days, weeks, months old. They’ve never been the best texters. After all, they didn’t need to be.
Freddie holds backspace on her latest unsent message, damning it to the void like she did with the last six. Because maybe in fanfictions it's a good idea to send your best friend and secret love something like come back or please don’t leave me, but this is real life, where being cringe has consequences.
But she has to say something or risk dying of dehydration by ceaseless crying into her pillow.
miss you already, is what she finally fires off before fear can paralyze her.
Twenty minutes of drifting in and out of a doze later, her phone buzzes her to alertness. Grace has responded.
<3, she says.
Freddie’s chest aches. But she supposes she can’t really expect anything more. This is their life now. Apart from each other. Alone.
And she never even came clean.
God, this sucks.
Freddie curls tighter beneath her cold sheets and cries herself to sleep.
…