“Lucy?” Chad was still making an effort to be pleasant, like this wasn’t the first time the three of us were back together since Penny had told me we weren’t friends anymore. He shifted the paper bag in his hands.

Penny tugged at Chad’s arm. “Let’s eat,” she said, cradling the tub in her arms.

I wove my fingers through my hair, thankful I didn’t have to answer him.

“Yeah.” He lightly clasped Penny’s wrist when she began to walk away. She stopped. “It’d be cool for the three of us to hang out again. Wouldn’t it, Pen?”

The ball was in her court now. Penny didn’t say anything.

Even as I waited … and waited … and waited. When the silence became uncomfortably thick, almost suffocating in expectation, Chad’s smile slipped. It was just like when we were kids and someone pissed her off. She was punishing me, withholding the thing I needed most of all. Her friendship.

Before she passed, Gran had been fond of saying that your family gave you roots, your past made you who you were. Both gave you a home, a place to go back to. I’d always liked that idea. When I was little, I thought of it as a save-game point in a video game, a way to reset your bad decisions and go back to a time when it all worked.

I hadn’t realized that roots could also be a noose around your neck, anchoring you to a point in your life that felt as ill-fitting and oppressive as a scratchy, too-small sweater. It strangled you into compliance and habit. It made you love being held in place.

My blood blazed hot. Any trace of my guilt at being here with Levi burned away, leaving her in my path of fire. I wanted to scorch away the thorns and bramble tangled with my roots. I wanted to be who I was. Me. Just Babe, not Babe and Penny and Chad.

Penny’s eyes, dark and starry as the night, crackled with the reflection of the fairy lights. I remembered my crush on her in middle school, something that had faded and flared intermittently until she began dating Chad. As I looked upon the two faces that I knew so well, it was painfully obvious that the three of us didn’t know what to say to each other anymore. Their loss was painful, but it was a phantom ache. Like with Elodie, maybe we made better strangers than friends. I had to move on. It was scary, but not any scarier than standing still in a dynamic that didn’t fit me anymore.

Grief welled in my throat, diffusing the fire. Voice thick, I said, “It was nice seeing you guys.”