Work Text:
It begins with some texts.
Jen sips on her horrible latte as she watches her best friend Agatha giggle down at her phone. The coffee at this place tastes like dirt, but Agatha loves their matcha so much that she makes Jen come with her every weekend. “Why do I have to go with you? I hate matcha,” Jen frowned. “I swear to God, I’ll throw away all your little Gua Sha stones if you let me go by myself, Jen,” Agatha threatened her. And Jen would not be caught dead with her face looking puffy, so she’s been sitting through vile coffee frequently enough that she actually feels empty when she misses even a week. Agatha once jokingly called it Stockholm syndrome.
“What’s so funny?” Jen narrows her eyes.
“Oh, you know. This and that.” Agatha finally looks up, that stupid smile still plastered on her face.
This has been going on for about a month now. Whenever they go out together, Agatha’s phone lights up every two to five minutes with a text from someone, then she laughs under her breath as she types out a response. Jen tried to glance over multiple times to see the sender’s name, but it always showed up with only a black heart emoji.
“Did you meet someone, Agatha?” Jen blurts out.
“What? Uh–why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why did you ask me that?”
“Well, you’ve said a total of four sentences to me ever since we got here over an hour ago. And you keep texting someone. Am I finally free from this shit coffee torment or what?”
Agatha’s mouth opens slightly, then she closes it into a thin line, and lets out a long sigh. Her eyebrows furrow, like she’s debating on something. After a good silent minute, she lets out another longer, deeper sigh, and looks up at Jen.
“Fine. I… may be seeing this girl.”
“Who?” Jen gasps, her eyes widen. “And why is this the first time I’m hearing about her?”
“It’s still pretty new. I want to be sure first.” Agatha says, and Jen swears she sees some pink creep up her cheeks. Jen only ever saw pink creep up Agatha’s cheek when she was on her second glass of whatever alcoholic beverage they were having.
“Uh-huh. So who is she? How did you guys meet?”
Agatha’s teeth peek out from how big her smile is. “Her name is Rio. She’s an Omakase chef.”
“Let me guess, you met her at her Omakase place and hit on her?”
“Pretty much it.”
Huh. Since when did Agatha go to Omakase restaurants? And without Jen, too?
“Damn, Harkness. Didn’t know you were fancy like that.” Jen jokes, but it comes out sharper than she intended.
“My bitch mother was being a bitch again, and I didn’t feel like cooking, so I wandered into the first place I saw that had actual nice food. Cost me a day’s worth of salary, but at least I came home with the hot chef.” Agatha winks, her upper teeth fully present behind her grin.
Jen has never seen her friend like this before. Not even when she was in that year-long relationship with that redhead–Wendy? Linda? Whatever–Agatha’s longest relationship to date. This Rio woman, whoever she is, has flipped some kind of switch inside Agatha, turning her into a giggling teenager who's just got her first crush. It’s honestly somewhat unsettling, but Jen is happy for her. Really.
At least until this whole thing inevitably ends.
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Three weeks later, Jen wakes up to a text from Agatha, asking her if she’s ok with Rio joining them for their regular latte-matcha meetup at The Road. I thought you said you wanted to be sure first? Jen responds. She doesn’t hear back from Agatha until half an hour later, when her phone lights up with a single text: I think I am, Jen.
So Jen goes.
When she arrives, Agatha has been waiting at their usual table, but only by herself.
“Hey! Rio’s running a little late. They’re selling some fresh fish at the market that she said was only available a handful of times in a year, so she went to buy it for her restaurant.” Agatha says.
Jen goes to order her coffee. As she waits for her name to be called, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Agatha standing up. Then, a woman—a very good-looking one, judging by what Jen can make out from her back—comes up and hugs her friend. Agatha buries her face in the crook of the woman’s neck, briefly closes her eyes. And when she opens them to look up at her, there’s that stupid smile again.
Huh. That must be Rio.
Holding her latte, Jen walks back to their table. Finally, she can see Rio’s face now. Rio smiles brightly as she offers Jen a hug, careful not to spill the cup in her hand.
“Hi, I’m Rio. You must be Jen.”
“The one and only.” Jen raises an eyebrow.
“Agatha said a lot about you.” Rio turns to look at Agatha, whose hands are now wrapped around Rio’s biceps.
“Oh yeah? All good things, I hope.”
“All exceptional things, even.” Agatha says, her grin reaches her eyes.
Their conversations flow fairly smoothly after that. Jen can see Rio’s appeal. Aside from being one of the hottest women Jen’s encountered in recent years, she’s also smart, funny as hell, and bounces back and forth with Agatha like they’re two peas in a pod. Occasionally, when Jen looks down, she always sees her friend caressing the calluses on Rio’s hand, which also never leaves Agatha’s.
When Agatha is in the middle of telling some wild story from her college days, Jen glances at Rio. She’s looking at Agatha with that look in her eyes, the kind that makes Jen feel like she’s invisible, like Rio’s sole purpose on Earth is to admire the woman next to her. Jen is far from being religious, but she imagines that’s how people look at goddesses, at someone who parts the sea and invented the first concepts of the universe.
Jen lets out a breath and wonders if anyone has ever looked at her like that.
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The door beeps as Jen punches in the passcode to her apartment. She plops down on the burgundy sofa with a heavy sigh, both legs on the armrest as she swings her bag on the nearby coffee table. It’s been a long day at work. Her company is developing a new product line, focusing on incorporating natural ingredients local to the U.S. into skincare. Jen’s been working overtime for the past three months, just hours after hours of hunching over test tubes, and she’s quite sure her laundry baskets are filled with an egregious amount of stained lab coats.
When she was nine years old, Jen overheard her mom talking to her aunt, Naomi, while they were watching her run around the park. “Since when did you have so many wrinkles?” Naomi’s voice was quiet as she touched her sister’s forehead. Jen’s mother smiled, glancing over at her beaming daughter. “I had to stop using products on my face when I was pregnant. I didn’t want to risk any chemicals absorbing into my body and affecting her,” she gave Jen a small wave, “and after childbirth, my hormones changed and I guess my skin just decided to give up.” Jen didn’t think much about what she heard then. In her eyes, her mother had always been the most beautiful woman the world had ever seen. But as she got older, Jen looked at the vanity mirror and saw her mom drag her fingers over her face with woeful eyes every night. Jen decided something had to change. So after high school, she went straight to UC Berkeley and stayed on top of her classes for four years, then brought her B.S. Chemical Engineering degree to grad school for some more years, before starting up her own skincare company. The debt was insane and took half of her career to pay off, but she finally achieved her goal of helping women feel like themselves throughout major changes in their bodies. When she took her mom on a tour of her company for the first time, Jen’s mother was blinking through tears as she kissed the top of her head and told her how proud she was of her daughter.
Jen takes out her phone and goes through her notifications. Work, work, work, DoorDash, a text from her neighbor apologizing for blasting music too loud during their birthday party last night, work, a Spotify reminder to renew her payment plan, more work.
Jen puts her phone down on her belly and stares at the ceiling. Then it hits her: she’s been living the same day for at least two years now. Every day is just waking up, going to work, coming home, filling her stomach with whatever edible stuff, maybe watching a few episodes of some reality TV show, and going to bed just to do everything all over again the next morning. It’s not like she hasn’t tried to break out of the routine. She’s been to book clubs, gotten herself into pilates, and hopped through nearly every bar in town whenever she has some free time. But her job has been more demanding lately, and if she is being honest, all those hobbies and bar-hopping are only fun when there’s another person to do them with.
That’s why she’s grateful to have Agatha. Neither of them would say it even with a gun to their heads, but they have been the most important person in each other’s lives ever since their friendship bloomed in college. Agatha has seen Jen at her absolute lowest, and never failed to pull her up again time after time. She is Jen’s rock and the top name on her emergency contact list. They’ve been on so many adventures together, always the first person to come to each other’s minds whenever they want to try out a new experience.
Lately, that hasn’t been the case anymore. Jen only vaguely remembers the last time she saw her best friend, which was about two weeks ago, when they ran into each other on the streets. Agatha was on her way to surprise Rio at her restaurant, while Jen was heading to their usual coffee shop to grab her awful latte.
(Jen doesn’t think she can call it their ‘usual’ anymore. Because she started going there on her own, two months after she was introduced to Rio, since “the matcha at the cafe down the street from Rio’s work is to die for, Jen.”)
Jen doesn’t hate Rio. Not really. What reasons does she have to hate her, anyway? She’s a genuinely nice person and she cares about Agatha, as much as Jen does. Maybe even more than Jen does. The point is: Rio is good for Agatha, and Jen is very happy for her best friend.
But Jen also misses her best friend. She misses her sprawling on Jen’s sofa, with a takeout carton in her hands, talking shit about whatever episode of Real Housewives that was on the TV. She misses their late-night wine sessions, Jen bawling her eyes out about some frustration at work, and Agatha rubbing her back until they both pass out from dehydration. She even misses waking up at ungodly hours to open her apartment door for Agatha to crash after she snuck out of her one-night-stand’s place; “Thanks, Jen. You’re the best,” Agatha often said as she gave Jen a sloppy kiss on her cheek.
Jen doesn’t hate Rio. But she surely dislikes the fact that with her appearance in Agatha’s life, Jen doesn’t seem to have a best friend anymore.
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It’s not like Jen’s never had a love life. She has no problem, as the kids say, ‘getting bitches’, thank you very much. Never mind the fact that her last serious relationship ended five years ago (they were together for four years before she cheated on Jen with another man ), Jen is pleased with where she is right now, in which she’s a strong, independent, fulfilled woman. And she knows she’s hot as fuck, too. There has never been a day that Jen didn’t turn at least three heads when she was walking down the street; on some days, one of them even stops to compliment on how glowy her skin looks. All that to say: Jennifer Kale doesn’t need anyone to be her better half; she herself is the best whole damn thing.
But sometimes, in the dead of night, when she lies on her king-sized bed alone in her two-bedroom apartment, Jen thinks of Agatha and Rio, of how Agatha fits perfectly in Rio’s arms like she belongs there, and how Rio always carries extra hair ties with her because Agatha’s always get lost down her unruly mane. Jen thinks of their playful whispers, of stolen kisses and quiet ‘I love you’s when they thought Jen wasn’t looking.
For the first time in a long time, a thought crosses Jen’s mind: If only there were somebody for her to come home to.
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“Hey, Jen. Can you help me give this to Agatha when you see her?” Rio says as she hands Jen a big tote bag stuffed to the brim. She sounded urgent when she asked to meet Jen at The Road—the coffee shop where they met for the first time. Jen takes a quick look inside the bag. There are multiple kinds of meds and containers of something that Jen cannot make out.
“We had a huge fight and she hasn’t been returning my calls or texts. She didn’t look very well when she stormed out of my apartment. I’m worried she’s sick.”
“Why don’t you just give these to her yourself?” Jen asks like it’s the most obvious thing in the world that somehow Rio hasn’t thought of.
“She refuses to tell me where she lives. We’ve just been hanging out at my place.”
Jen can see why Agatha has kept her address a secret from Rio, however long they’ve been dating. Having been friends for nearly 10 years, Jen has been to Agatha’s house exactly once, when Agatha almost passed out drunk at their cohort’s graduation party and Jen didn’t trust her to step into an Uber and not arrive at another bar. Throughout their college days, Jen rarely heard her mention anything about her family, only let slip through one too many cans of beer that she had been taking care of her mother, who insisted on Agatha living in the same house as her. “Just in case something bad happens, God forbid,” Agatha had said in a mocking tone while hunching her shoulders. Fast forward years later, as Jen parked her car in front of a three-story building said to be where Agatha and her mother lived, she locked eyes with an older woman sitting by the open window. When the woman saw Agatha being dragged out of Jen’s car, she spat— spat— out the window, and Jen was pretty sure she heard multiple slurs came out of the old bitch’s mouth, too.
The next morning, Agatha woke up in Jen’s apartment. The first thing she did was ask if Jen had taken her back to her house last night. She breathed out a sigh of relief when Jen shook her head. Jen never told her the truth.
“Alright. I’ll give this to Agatha.” Jen says, and Rio’s eyes instantly light up.
“Would you please text me if she’s okay? And tell her to call me as soon as she can?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see what I can do.”
Rio cups her hands in Jen’s and lets out a soft “thank you”. Then she leaves the cafe, fingers typing nonstop on her phone screen.
Jen riffles through the tote bag again, just out of curiosity. There are also chocolate bars—KitKats, Agatha’s favorite—and a little green folded card. Jen really doesn’t mean to pry, really, but the card is opened slightly, just enough for Jen’s mindful eyes to peek into. And so she does.
My love,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things to you. Something happened at work and I just wasn’t myself. Please believe me when I say I did not mean to make you feel that way at all. I’d do anything to make it up to you, I promise.
I think you were having a cold when we fought, so I got you some meds. I marked everything according to what the guy at the drugstore said. The containers are cubes of chicken and miso soup that I cooked and dehydrated. You just need to dissolve them in hot water before eating.
When you feel better, please call me back. I miss you so much, Agatha–
The card doesn’t end there, but Jen doesn’t want to look anymore. So, she downs the rest of her latte—somehow leaving an even fouler aftertaste than usual—and walks out with the bag in her hand.
Later that night, when Agatha breaks down in Jen’s arms, face flushed and smudged with tears, Jen hugs her tight until they both fall asleep on Agatha’s childhood bed.
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Jen wakes up to the smell of freshly baked croissants and a warm plastic cup pressed against her cheek. She opens her eyes with a grunt. Agatha is standing directly in front of her, next to the bed.
“Wake up, snorer. I got us breakfast.”
“What time is it?” Jen blinks slowly.
“Almost 11. I woke up a few hours ago.”
“Are you… ok?” Jen sits up and takes the cup of coffee from Agatha’s hand. It’s from that awful shop. Her awful shop.
Agatha is silent for a while. She sits down on the bed, runs a hand through her hair, and breathes out a long sigh. Her bedroom floor is scattered with crumpled-up tissues from the night before. Some of them got into Jen’s purse.
“I don’t know. I think I will be. I called Rio after I’d woken up. She has work today, so we’ll meet when she’s finished later.”
Jen lets out a small “hm”, just enough for Agatha to hear. “So I guess you don’t need me here anymore, then?”
Agatha seems to pick up on Jen’s weird tone. She stops halfway through biting her pastry and puts it back inside the paper bag. “What do you mean?” Agatha arches an eyebrow.
“I mean I should go before your mother calls the cops on me for breaking into your house.”
“That’s not what this is about, Jen,” Agatha gives her a skeptical look. She puts her hand that isn’t holding her croissant on Jen’s knee. “What’s going on?”
Jen tries to swallow as she feels a giant lump in her throat. She shouldn’t say it. She’s not here to talk about it. She’s here to comfort Agatha, that’s it. She can’t make this about her when her best friend is in distress.
“Nothing. Really, Agatha. You should get some more sleep.” Jen says as she pushes Agatha’s hand off and quickly gets off the bed. Jen turns to walk away, but she feels a strong grip on her wrist pulling her back.
“Don’t do that. Don’t act like I don’t know you like the back of my hand.” Agatha says, but her voice comes out a bit choked. She looks at Jen, and there’s that look in her eyes. Jen is all too familiar with that damn look. It’s Agatha’s ‘no bullshit’ look that she throws at Jen whenever Jen is being passive aggressive.
“What do you want me to say? I haven’t seen you in God knows how long, and when I finally do, you’re like… this.” Jen gestures down at her friend.
“What’s ‘this’?” Agatha’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.
“Hurt, Agatha. You’re broken. I’ve never seen you like this, ever. And I’m worried. We stopped seeing each other and somebody hurt you. And some part of me wants to gloat, but that’s awful. You’re my fucking best friend, Agatha. I miss you so much.”
Jen doesn’t want to cry. She really doesn’t. But she can’t stop the hot tears from rolling down her face. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, but they just keep coming, and now she can’t breathe.
Agatha’s stunned. She opens her mouth, trying desperately to say something, but nothing comes out. So she does the only thing she can. She wraps her arms around Jen and pulls her in.
“Hey, hey. Don’t cry, Jen,” But Agatha finds herself crying, too. “I didn’t know you felt this way. I’m sorry for not reaching out to you. And I miss you, too. So, so much. You’ll always be my best friend, you know that, right?”
“You don’t have to be sorry. You did nothing wrong. I’m just being a jealous loser.” Jen sniffles.
“No, I am sorry,” Agatha breaks the hug to look at Jen, “I got too wrapped up in my relationship.”
“She’s a good person, Agatha. She cares about you a lot.”
“But you do, too. And I’m sorry I ever forgot that.”
The tears have stopped now. Their eyes stay on each other through quiet sniffles. Jen holds her best friend’s hand, a wave of relief courses through her body. She’s missed this sense of familiarity, this feeling that she can overcome whatever life throws at her, as long as Agatha is right next to her. Her chest tightens, but this time it’s a welcome heaviness; this time, her heart swells with content.
Agatha takes a croissant out, breaks it into two pieces and gives one to Jen. Jen takes a bite and chases it with a sip of her latte. It’s the best coffee she’s ever had.