Page 77 of One-Star Romance

She didn’t look directly into his eyes as she said, “The important thing is that we’re here now.” Then her glance skittered back to him. “Oh, but wait, how is your dad?”

“He’s up and down. We’re figuring it out. Thank you for asking.”

“Of course.” She lifted her hand as if to touch his arm, then pulled it back to her side. They lapsed into silence.

And then a key jangled in the lock of the front door, and Natalie swept around. Angus opened the door, on the phone with work, attempting to deal with another emergency. They’d agreed to give him a week off but kept calling him anyway and keeping him on the line while he was trying to do other things. Right now, that other thing was holding the door open for Gabby, who was coming in heavily beside him. Gabby had been moving heavily since Rob had gotten here yesterday, though Angus had said it was due less to physical issues (she was having some pain, yes, but it was nothing compared to what recovery would look like) and more the dread of the upcoming surgery.

“Oh,” Natalie said in a strangled voice, and Gabby looked up.

“Oh,” she said back, her own voice going high.

Natalie ran across the entryway and threw her arms around Gabby as gently as one could do such a thing. Gabby wrapped her arms around Natalie right back, and they stood there breathing each other in, Natalie sniffling, until Gabby said, “I’m sorry, but you smell awful.”

Natalie stroked Gabby’s hair. “I know. Are you okay to deal with it for a few moments longer? I don’t want to let you go yet.”

“I’ll breathe through my mouth,” Gabby said.

31

Finally clean, no longer smelling like an unholy combination of her car, sweat, and drive-through cheeseburgers, Natalie changed into fresh clothes in the small back bedroom that Gabby and Angus clearly intended to use as a nursery at some point. The walls were painted pale blue, and in the corner sat Natalie’s bed for the next week or so, a—what else?—futon topped with decorative pillows. Natalie dropped on it and attempted to breathe through the knot of anxiety in her throat. It was useless. She hadn’t been able to take a full, deep breath since she’d gotten Angus’s email.

It seemed unreal that she was here after almost a year of no contact with Gabby. She kept thinking, in the early days of the pandemic, that one of them would break the silence to check in. But the longer Gabby went without reaching out, the more Natalie felt that she couldn’t either, and their estrangement grew more and more solid, a tray of ice hardening in the freezer. She coped with her loneliness by taking long walks with her neighbor friends in the Los Angeles sunshine or talking out loud to her cat, Dolly (whom she’d left temporarily in Tyler’s care). Now, it didn’t feel right to say that she was grateful to be sitting on a futon in Gabby’s home, because the reason for it was so utterly fucked. But, God, it had been good to hold her best friend again.

Her fingers had been trembling so badly after getting Angus’s email that while trying to call Gabby, she’d nearly dropped her phone.

“I’m so sorry and I love you so much,” Natalie had blurted the moment that Gabby answered.

“Natalie?” Gabby had said, sounding slightly confused.

“Angus told me about the surgery.”

Gabby had sighed. “That sneaky bastard.”

“He is a sneaky bastard and thank God for it.”

“I love you too. I should have called you right away,” Gabby said. “I just…the last time I saw you, I said awful things about how we shouldn’t be in each other’s lives. And then I was going to reverse course the moment I needed help? I didn’t want to make myself your problem—”

“You’re not making yourself my problem. My problem would be sitting here in blissful ignorance while you were going through something hard.”

“Yeah,” Gabby said quietly. “It is hard.” She let out a rueful laugh. Natalie could imagine her shaking her head on the other end of the line. “I’d thought I was pregnant again. I was feeling a similar way, tired and achy, and we’d been trying. So, for a little while, I was happy. Walking around with a stupid grin on my face, thinking that something good might be growing inside of me instead of this.”

“Oh, Gabs. It must have been so disorienting. How’s your family doing?”

“Terrible. My parents offered to come help out, but I think they’d just create more stress. Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, she weeps and then goes through a list of everyone at her church who is praying for me. It’s so well-intentioned but also emotionally exhausting, you know? And Melinda…well, she has basically fallen off the face of the earth. When I told her the news, she said she was sorry and then spent the rest of the call asking for advertising advice on how to grow her business. Like she figured she’d better get it all out of me now just in case. So, not exactly a pillar of strength. I thought a sister’s job was to drive you crazy but to show up when shit hits the fan.”

“I’ll show up,” Natalie said.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it, literally. I want to come help.”

“But you’re all the way across the country.”

“Well thankfully it’s the twenty-first century, and we have transportation options beyond horse and buggy.”

“What about the show? Don’t you have a writers’ room?”

“We’re doing it over Zoom anyway. And I’ll take time off. Someone else can think of scrapes for Dennis to get into.” She didn’t say that she had a final-round interview to write for a different show that week, a show with much more prestige, that needed someone to join the writers’ room ASAP. Hearing Gabby’s voice again, that interview didn’t seem to matter. “I’ll isolate, I’ll drive, I’ll pee in the woods instead of going into rest stops, whatever you need me to do. But I’m showing up. Screw Melinda. I’m your sister-friend.”

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