I pace my apartment before dialing Beth’s number. Of course, there is only so much space in which I can pace, so I’m essentially walking the few yards from my bed to the sink, but it’s something. I’m nervous. Nervous to admit my current state. Nervous to admit that maybe Beth’s instincts were right.

What I had said to her when we last spoke, how I was a better version of her, was in some ways true. But what I hadn’t realized until just now was maybe Beth liked her version better. The unlikable, burly, in-your-face version that I could never muster. I was always too nice, a people-pleaser. I would never be a good lawyer.

I had always been more popular. But I guess what I’d forgotten in that heated exchange was that Beth’s MO wasn’t to be well-liked. But to be herself.

Finally, I text her. A short, Can you talk? Within a minute I hear my phone ringing, and I almost let it go to voice mail, but she already knows I’m there, waiting.

“Dude. What the fuck?” Her voice is raspier than I remember, and I lie back, my head touching the wall behind my bed.

“Hi. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“No shit, dumbass. I thought you’d been kidnapped or something. Where the hell have you been?” So we talk. And hearing her voice is so familiar, so wrapped up in memories, ones that I can recall in crisp, defined detail instead of in hazy snapshots, that I find myself spilling everything out, an overturned cup, repeating all the details I mentioned to Gavin.

For once, Beth doesn’t make a sound. And though I expect her to go full in with the judgments and criticisms, there’s a silence on the line when I’m done, when I stop to take a breath. I’m so goddamn tired.

She wants me to ask how she’s been. So I do.

Predictably, she dumped Ellery in July. Predictably, she got a 175, a great score, on the LSAT. Unpredictably, she’s decided to hold off on dating until after she gets into law school. Predictably, she’s in a fight with one of her roommates because they drank her orange juice, and now she’s bought a mini-fridge just for her room.

“But summer was bland. Just work. Went to Fire Island for July Fourth weekend.” I wince. I know and love that trip. It’s the one my college friends and I have been going on since junior year where we rent an Airbnb and Beth likes to argue with Josselyn about the morality of celebrating US independence when we are a power-hungry homicidal void of a country that has committed domestic genocide and enabled the same in countless other places. Then they make up and we all take edibles and roast marshmallows on the kitchen stove.