Page 41 of Girls Will Be Girls
I won’t allow it.
At least what he said about being annoying enough so that I don’t try to please him seems to be working. I definitely don’t have an overwhelming need to be nice to him all the time, like I do with most people. So in that respect, I guess I’m grateful he’s infuriating.
Somehow, I’ve found myself in the middle of the living room floor, sprawled out like a starfish. I roll over to the coffee table and pick up my phone, before retreating back to the floor life.
After only two rings, they both pick up.
“Lou Lou!” Frida yells.
“What happened?” Dylan’s groggy voice comes through.
“Oh my god.” I cover my mouth with my palm. “The time difference. I forgot. Again. I’m sorry!”
I have an incredibly selfish habit of forgetting that different time zones exist when I’m away. You’d think after years of doing this for work, I would be all over it, but somehow my brain still refuses to remember that any time that isn’t the time I’m in right now exists.
If this was anyone but Dylan and Frida, I would be stuck in a guilt spiral for weeks. But with these two, I don’t have to be. I don’t need to please them either.
“It’s fine.” Frida beams.
“I was more talking to Dylan,” I say.
“What makes you think…” Dylan starts to yawn. “That I wasn’t out raging.”
“I can practically see you walking to your porch right now,” I say.
“I bet you have a red fluffy blanket wrapped around your shoulders,” Frida adds on.
I continue. “And cozy socks on your feet.”
“And your hunk got up with you and is either building you a fire-”
I finish Frida’s sentence. “Or making you a hot drink.”
“I need to get out more.” Dylan quips.
Frida and I both scoff and snort because no one has ever been more content and happy with their life than Dylan is right now. She met Elijah — who we lovingly call hunk because he is one — a couple of years ago at the very same cabin she’s in right now, and now they’re disgustingly loved up, engaged, and living the life of pampered domesticated cats. We still see them all the time; they haven’t gone full hermit, but they’re definitely starting to lean into being thirty. I’m talking asleep by nine and love weeknight Jeopardy.
Luckily the rest of our friend group are either all tragically single or clinging onto youth with an iron grip. Fred and Lucas, or Frucas — they begged us to call them Led instead, but we refuse — are the other loved-up couple in our group, and they are so far from being old it’s almost worrying. They’re out every night we are, and I’m pretty sure Lucas still does laundry at his mom’s place. Thirty is the new twenty-one for those two.
As for me, Frida, and the last two in our group, Caspar and Gordy, we’re all thirty, flirty, and attempting to thrive.
“So what’s going on?” Dylan asks. “How’s Tahoe?”
I pause for a second and then yell out. “I want to rage fuck someone right now.”
Frida giggles with glee as a deep voice rumbles through the phone on the other end.“I did not need to hear that.”
“Are you on speakerphone?” I squeal at Dylan.
“Just for a second! I can’t drink a mug of cocoa this big with one hand.” She defends.
“Elijah, you’re so predictable.” Frida laughs.
There’s a moment of clearly confused silence in Vermont as Frida and I laugh. “Because you made me a drink,” Dylan explains to him.
“I’m such a monster.” He deadpans.
We hear Dylan thanking Elijah for the drink, cooing, and kissing, and being straight-up nauseating considering the circumstances. As he leaves, to presumably go inside, he yells, “Happy rage fucking, Lou.”.
