Colleen squinted, her eyes still on the road. “I thought you probably would have. But then I thought, what if you didn’t? I knew that if I did text you about it, and you didn’t text back, that would mean it was really over. And I guess I didn’t want to face that.”

“I’m sorry I disappeared,” I said, gripping the wheel. “I’m so sorry. I just…” I’d thought all the things I wanted to say would be clearer in my brain since I’d written them all down in the letter, but it was still a big, confusing jumble. I pressed on anyway.

“I honestly had no idea who I was without ballet. I still don’t, really. It was all such a mess in my head, and I was angry about so many things, and jealous of you, like so jealous, and I couldn’t deal with it. I mean, I read all your texts, and I was so happy you weren’t totally gone, but I couldn’t… I didn’t… it was too hard, so I bailed. I’m so sorry. It was unbelievably shitty of me.”

I took a breath. “And I’m sorry I made it seem like ballet was more important to me than you. It’s not. And if you hate me right now, that’s totally fair.”

Colleen was watching me closely. Then she tipped her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. “Yeah. What you did was shitty. It was kind of the shittiest.”

Another quiet settled over the car. My stomach dropped. That was the end of it.

“But I don’t hate you,” Colleen said after a minute. “You’re my best friend. I love you no matter what.”

My mouth hung open. “But I… I didn’t talk to you for six months.”

“Like I said, the shittiest. But what happened to you, the injury…” Colleen shuddered. “I was there, remember? I saw it. I heard it. And I can’t imagine what it would feel like to not be able to dance. To lose the thing you’d worked forever for. That is the actual shittiest. Of course you disappeared for a while. It sucked, and it hurt, but I get it. I do.”

The sun seemed brighter all of a sudden as it streamed through the windows. Colleen still loved me. Colleen understood. I’d lost ballet, and I could never get it back. It didn’t mean I could never be happy again. But it did mean that I’d lost something irreplaceable, no matter how flawed it was, and I wasn’t a selfish, horrible person because I was broken up about it.

I’d done something shitty. I could come back from shitty.