Page 37 of Dance with Me on New Year's Eve

She laughed. “OK, I get it. You’re a little tipsy already.”

“Just a wee bit,” I said, assuming the accent again.

She tsk-tsked. “Just don’t have too much. You’ll just get sick.”

“Yeah, yeah, still acting like my RA, aren’t you?” I said, returning to my own voice. “Then again, that Julia wasfun. Remember how we’d have binge-reading and wine-drinking weekends? It was seriously the best part of college.”

“Yeah, I just wish we hadn’t met those jerks from the baseball team.”

I smiled ruefully to my usual audience of no one at home. “In fairness, it was our breakups that inspired those fun books-and-wine weekends, so maybe we should be grateful to those guys.”

“Nah, they were idiots who didn’t deserve us, Rox.”

“I wish I could be so confident,” I heard myself saying.

My chest tightened as the regret poured in. Why did I say that? Sure, Icouldtell Julia almost anything—she was the only person I trusted with the real me—but that didn’t mean Ishouldadmit to everything. After all, I didn’t want to drive her away as I’d done with many others in my life.

The real Roxy wasn’t someone that people wanted to befriends with.

“I wish that too,” she said quietly. “You are a wonderful person who deserves only the best in life. We both are.Problems, like having social anxiety, don’t define us.Wedefine us.”

I took a sip of wine as I settled back onto the couch. I reached for the remote control for the ceiling fan and turned up the fan speed. It was warm and humid, as per usual for early September, and I was determined to reduce my A/C usage. “I know, Julia. I know all that, it’s just—harder to internalize it. Like, it applies to you, to anyone else, but somehow not to me.”

“I know, Rox.” She paused and then spoke hesitantly, “Have you thought about—”

“Oh, hey—” I interrupted her because I knew what she was going to say. It had come up before: She was going to suggest therapy. To me, a former therapist. The idea of it was silly. “I—uh, I just remembered I was going to ask you about your weekend in Bath! What was that like?”

“It was OK.”

I gasped. “JustOK? You went to see Roman baths, the Abbey, one of the homes whereJaneAustenlived, and it was only OK?”

She exhaled slowly. “It’s just—do you remember how my family and I spent a lot of summers at a lake house up north?”

“Odd change of subject, but yeah, you’d go to your grandma’s house, right?”

“That’s the one. Well, there was this boy at the lake who was just theworst. His family lived next door, and my parents and grandparents were really friendly with his parents, so he was arounda lot. I swear he was such a moody butthead.”

I snorted. “Did you just say ‘butthead’? You’re showing your age, Julia.”

“Very funny. I’m only two years older than you,” she said dryly. “But yeah, it was over ten years ago, so I called him a butthead. A lot. To his face. Because hewas—seriously, Roxy, I swear he lived to torment me with his condescending faces and … and words. And, you know … that sort of thing.”

I tried not to giggle. “He made faces at you? He sounds like a real villain.”

“Laugh it up, Rox. It’s hard to explain, but he was just so frustrating. So difficult, always. But often so aloof at the same time. He thought he could criticize me because I was younger and … well, I don’t know why else. He always had something against me, I think.”

“I believe you. What on earth does this have to do with Bath though?”

She breathed in and out audibly. “Heis here.”

I gasped. “No.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“He’s on the other side of the world, inBath, on the same day you are? The odds of that have to be miniscule.”

“No—well, yes, he was in Bath too, but he’s at the university too. He’s in the same master’s study abroad program.”

“What?” I nearly screamed. “How didthathappen? And how am I just hearing about it now, halfway through your program?”

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