My getting-home routine in Seattle was a dance I never thought I’d have to replicate once I returned to San Francisco. But with Jamie gone, I do it every night: flip the hallway light on right away, then the kitchen light, the living room lamps. Turn the TV on before removing my music-blasting earbuds.

I’m eternally grateful to Grace for introducing me to Jamie when I moved back from New York five years ago, and forever thankful to Jamie for giving me a room to rent without hesitation, then becoming my best friend, something I needed more than ever. I miss the way she’d careen from her bedroom after her full day working as a freelance graphic designer, all golden retriever energy as she greeted me at the front door.

This place feels so empty without her. I wish she was here tonight, but she’s across the bay instead, out at a dinner Blake’s law firm group is hosting. As for my other options, Adam is probably still spiraling and I don’t want to go to my more superficial friendships to help me process Nia’s bomb.

Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do.

Luckily, I’m used to dealing with the messes in my life alone. I collapse onto the gray couch Jamie left behind (along with the enduring mold of her ass on the middle cushion), and pull up my Notes app so I can start a list of pros and cons.

After ten minutes, I have this:

1.

I’m moving to Seattle again (pro/con?)

2.

For good (con)

3.

If I don’t, then I’m unemployed (CON)

4.

If I do, my friends will probably forget I exist (don’t even have to say it)

Oh god. I can’t move to Seattle.

Even as I think it, though, I remember my time there: those first weeks that I feared would turn into overwhelming loneliness, but instead blossomed into happy hours and weekend explorations with coworkers who turned into friends; the relentless green of it, the way it felt calmer than San Francisco, hushing a vibration in my blood. In New York, there was static noise I could never turn off. I loved Seattle so much I invited Adam and Jamie up to visit, though that never came to fruition.

I suspect I loved it so enthusiastically because I knew I’d come back home. But now San Francisco doesn’t feel like home, so how do I know where I actually belong?

Anxiety starts closing its hands around my throat, humming through my body like—

Wait, no, that’s my phone underneath my ass. When I grab it, there’s a FaceTime request from Adam.

Right, the DJ disaster, aka a problem I can actually fix.

Purpose replaces panic. I can’t wrap my head around a life-changing move with everything else going on, which means I can push Seattle away and deal with it when the wedding is over. For now, Adam needs me.

I sit up, flipping on the nearest lamp before wiping under my eyes, then accept the call.

“Hi!” I chirp.

Adam’s dark brown hair is a disaster, a harbinger of an imminent meltdown. There are shadows smudged under his hazel eyes, but relief

passes over his tan, freckle-dusted face when our eyes meet. “Hey, are you busy?”

“Not at all.” My voice echoes in the empty apartment. “How are we doing?”

He rubs at his jaw. “We’re terrible, but slightly less terrible than earlier.”

Grace pops onto the screen, resting her chin on Adam’s shoulder. She blows a lock of shampoo-commercial-worthy black hair off her exhausted face.

“Hi, Gracie,” I say gently. “I’m going to work on a DJ list tonight, someone who’ll play the raddest shit.”

“Thank you so much.” Her brown eyes fill with uncharacteristic tears as Adam pulls her closer. “Okay, no, I’m not crying over a DJ, I swear.”

“You’re more than allowed to cry over a DJ. I’ve cried over worse, believe me.”

This gets me a wet laugh. Adam shoots me a grateful look, then says, “If anyone should be crying over a DJ, it’s me. You know I spent months finding Stevie.”

“I know,” I say indulgently. This is a man with meticulously created Spotify playlists. Good music at his wedding is non-negotiable. “What’s the latest?”

He sighs. “Grace’s brother’s friend knows a DJ who might be available. We have a Zoom call with him tomorrow afternoon, but keep that list ready to go.”

“I’m on it. See?” I tap the phone screen like I would his chest if we were in the same room. “You’re already on the other side of this fiasco.”

He runs a palm across his jaw, appraising me. “The other thing is, we need two favors.”

“Anything.”

“My grandma and grandpa are flying in from Dallas tomorrow and I was supposed to pick them up. Is there any chance—”

I hold up a hand. “I’ve got them. I love your grandparents, so you’re basically doing me a favor.”

“All right.” He gives me a wary look. “Before I ask you for the other one, I want to talk about Eli.”

 

 

It takes me several beats to digest the sharp turn in conversation. Finally, I get out “oh?” with an evenness I’ve perfected over the last five years.

Logically, I understand. We have to talk about Eli because he’s been Adam’s best friend since our sophomore year of high school and he’s the best man at his wedding, an imminently approaching event. I’ve been watching the appointment on my calendar that reads E here for weeks with a sense of steely doom.

I only have to look at it for another day. He’s flying in from JFK tomorrow.

But whenever Eli is involved, my logic flies out the window, middle finger extended. He’s the last person I want to talk about. He’s Adam’s best friend, yes, but he’s been everything to me: a stranger when he walked into our lives thirteen years ago. A friend. My best friend. My boyfriend, college and then live-in when he asked me to move to New York with him. Then, fifteen months later, a stranger again.

I have an Eli Mora list that’s pages long, but Adam doesn’t know that, because Adam thinks Eli and I found a way to be friends after the most cataclysmic breakup of our lives.

That’s what we’ve made him believe.

Eli and I have never explicitly talked about it, but protecting Adam from the aftershocks of our breakup was mandatory. We came to a silent understanding about how things would work between us in order to keep our collective friendship at status quo, and the first time we saw each other after we broke up, a year later, we fell into it like we’d written the list of rules together.

In my weaker moments, I think about what a fucked-up testament it is to the way we knew each other before: bone-deep, down to the marrow. And I think about how utterly heartbreaking it is that we’re using the same

connection that allowed us to conduct a wordless conversation across the room to know each other in such a clinical way now. Like strangers who’ve seen each other naked in every way that counts, in all the ways that wreck you.

But after five years and plenty of practice, my weak moments are few and far between, aided by Eli’s distant participation.

It helps that Adam’s always been careful not to wade into the fray. There was only one time, when he was helping me move into Jamie’s apartment, where he asked me, grave-faced, if I was going to be okay, and then if we were. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. When Eli and I got together, it was easy to promise Adam that nothing would come between the three of us; anything less than forever was just a monster in the closet. Something that would never get us.

I was sick seeing him so worried over a promise we’d broken, and further terrified to think of what would happen if I got as messy on the outside as I felt on the inside. Adam had never given me any indication he had plans to cut me loose, but I knew, thanks to my mom’s disappearing act and the transient friendships of my youth, that these things could happen anytime and for less legitimate reasons.

I assured him we were okay and after that, anytime he nudged the subject I repeated my line: it’s fine.

And it is. But I don’t want to talk about Eli. It’s bad enough I have to see

him.

I clear my throat. “Okay. Are you planning to leave me in suspense?”

“Listen,” Adam begins. It’s not his Jamie’s Apartment voice, but it’s not neutral either, and my brain sighs out, shit.

Grace stands. “I have a sudden hankering for the hand flex in Pride & Prejudice, so I’m going to leave you two to it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Georgia.”

I blow her a kiss, then fix my attention on Adam. He watches his fiancée leave, his eyes turning heart-shaped. “She’s so going to fall asleep.”

I love that he’s in love, but sometimes watching Adam be soft is like observing an alien life-form. “Yes, adorable, please focus.”

“Right. Okay.” He lets out a breath. “It’s just that…sometimes I wonder if you and Eli are really okay.”

In the ensuing silence, my anxiety crests. “You have to give me more than that.”

“Remember Nick and Miriam’s wedding last year?”

At the mention of the Lake Tahoe wedding of our high school friends, my heart lurches. I might be messy on the inside, but I’m pathologically good at keeping it locked up tight.

Except, unfortunately, when I’m not.

I was shocked Eli even came to the wedding. In the last five years, he’s missed more events than he’s made. I was even more shocked that he was bringing someone, and it was fine, it was okay, because I was bringing someone, too, a guy I’d been dating for a marathon period of three months. He’d just moved to LA but was coming back for the long weekend.

Only, it turned out he had a severe lack of object permanence. He hooked up with his ex two weeks after moving, apparently having forgotten about me back in San Francisco. I went to Tahoe alone.

It was a blow to my iron-clad plan to endure the weekend. I knew Eli and I would keep our distance, but we’d never been around each other with people we were dating. Even before we got together, I rarely integrated anyone into my friendship with Adam and Eli. No one was worth disrupting our dynamic, and it always did—Adam would turn blandly nice, and Eli would turn quiet. I sensed Eli felt the same way; I heard rare romantic rumblings about him, but he never brought anyone around. The entirety of our relationship, from friendship to everything to nothing, was a consistent stretch of not allowing anyone else into our bubble.

Nick and Miriam’s wedding popped it, and I had no one to buffer the experience.

No human buffer could have prepared me for existing in the same space as Eli and another woman, anyway, and the raw flash of shock on Eli’s face when he saw I was alone felt like an additional detonation in my chest. I looked away before it could turn into pity, then spent the night bending my own rules. I faked fine in front of everyone, but I got sloppy otherwise,

splitting my time between drinking myself into oblivion and crying in the bathroom.

Eli got food poisoning and left before the night was over. We barely said a word to each other in front of other people. Another rule broken, flagrantly this time.

I didn’t see him the next morning. Adam said he’d gotten on the road early for his flight back, and weeks later, mentioned Eli and his date weren’t seeing each other anymore. Apparently his job had gotten in the way. It took everything in me not to laugh, or scream. His job got in the way of every relationship he’d ever had. Ours most of all.

“That night felt weird,” Adam says, breaking into my thoughts. “Every other time we’ve been together you and Eli have been fine, but that night you were…not. Lately I’ve been wondering if you’ve been too fine and that night was closer to the truth.”

“Adam, Eli got sick from the salmon and I was drunk. That was the mess.”

“Grace saw you crying.”

My heart falls out of my chest. “I—because I’d just gotten cheated on.” “I’m not convinced you even liked that asshole. Plus, his name was

Julian. You know my theory on J names.”

I rub at the pain blooming in my temple. “Yes, that all J names are inherently untrustworthy. Regardless, I did actually like him.”

Mostly.

We stay locked in a silent standoff before Adam breaks it. “I stopped asking you and Eli about the specifics of your breakup because whenever I brought it up, you both brushed it off and said it was fine, and I respected that. I still do.” Concern and suspicion crease the corners of his eyes. “But are you two really cool with each other? Or has this all been fake?”

I avert my eyes to the FaceTime square I’m contained in so I can monitor my expression. It is fake and it’s necessary. What happened with Eli is the messiest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never wanted to expose Adam to it. Giving him any glimpse into how I really feel a week before his wedding, when he’s already a disaster, would be tragicomic timing.

“It’s not fake,” I manage calmly. “Why are you even bringing this up?

Nick and Miriam’s wedding was thirteen months ago.”

“Yeah, and my wedding is next weekend, and you and Eli are about to spend nine days together, not your normal one or two.”

I’ve never been more deeply aware of something in my life.

“I’m holding on to the crumbling corners of this wedding with two hands,” Adam continues, “and I’m fucked up with anxiety, except it’s mixed with intense joy and all these other weird emotions and Grace—”

He stops with a flinch, then gives me a pleading look. “I need my best people to be okay, mostly because I love you both, but also because I’m not okay. So this is like a speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace moment. If you need an out, tell me and I’ll do whatever you need. Help you figure out how to do the best-people stuff separately, let someone else take over, whatever.”

All I hear is, you won’t be around if you’re too much. It’s an old fear, refreshed on an endless spin cycle.

I exhale to calm my racing mind and heart, then lean forward, wishing there wasn’t a phone screen between us. Wishing there wasn’t any distance at all, physical or otherwise. “Things have been going wrong and now you’re looking for the next disaster. I get it. But that isn’t me and Eli, Adam.”

I should get a goddamn Oscar for this performance—my voice is steady, eyes wide and earnest, the color of a cloudless blue sky. I can already see him shifting this from potential problem to not an issue.

And that’s exactly why the rules on my Eli Mora list exist. I can’t let it crumble now, especially with Adam sniffing around the truth: I’m not over what happened between Eli and me. Not even close.

“You’re sure,” he says, inspecting me so closely I shrink back from it.

I hold up my hands, palms forward. “We’re better than we’ve ever been.”

That’s laying it on thick, but I have faith the dynamic Eli and I created will see us through, just like it has every other time, Nick and Miriam’s wedding aside.

It’ll go like this: we’ll greet each other when he gets here, a casual hey and hello. Our eye contact will be long enough to look normal, but not so lengthy that it clicks like a lock, the way it used to. We’ll engage in friendly banter, will only touch if it sells the story. We’ll reminisce if the memory includes other people, but otherwise never bring up the past. We’ll be the Georgia and Eli Adam knew before we wrecked each other. We’ll do that every day until we have to stand side by side while Adam marries Grace, mirroring the vows I thought I’d say to Eli someday. We’ll be breezy, chill. Whatever Adam needs.

And when it’s over, I’ll let out the breath I’ve been holding. I’ll wave from afar as Eli hops on a plane to New York and disappears back into his job.

Not long before I potentially hop on a plane to mine.

“All right,” Adam says, oblivious to my two-pronged spiral. “If you and Eli both say it’s fine, then it’s fine.”

I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean if Eli says it’s fine?”

“I talked to him, too.” He lifts an eyebrow at my gaping expression. “C’mon, I wasn’t going to ask one of you but not the other.”

That our responses mirrored one another’s bodes well, but I can’t help groaning, “You are a disaster.”

“One less thing to worry about.” He grins, and relief coils around my spine. “Now, back to the other favor.”

“Anything.”

“E’s flight gets in tomorrow afternoon, right around when my grandparents land—”

No, no, no, my brain chants. I stare at my face on the screen, forcing my expression to stay in a Botox-wishes-it-was-this-frozen look.

“Can you pick him up, too?”