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Ragatha was strong, both physically and mentally. She could easily lift over two hundred and fifty pounds, and she was able to listen to and handle all of her friends' problems.
Everyone trusted her with everything because she knew how to listen. Practically every day, it felt like there was something new. She’d wake up, go to the gym, go to work at her local fabric store, and come home to a dozen messages from her friends about their problems.
Sure, it could be rough and exhausting, but her friends needed her. They always needed her.
And it’s not like she ever needed them in return. She’d never dare burden someone with her own problems. No one ever burdened her with theirs, but she just knows she’d burden others, so she keeps it to herself or shoves it down until it doesn’t exist anymore.
The system worked for her, so she kept doing it. It kept her safe.
Today was no different. As the end of her shift grew nearer, she began to feel that all too familiar anxiety. What had her friends gone through today? When had they needed her? How long had she been ignoring them and their needs?
Her manager kept side-eyeing her throughout the last hour of her shift. Ragatha would slightly adjust a roll of fabric, making sure it was perfectly straight, and she’d catch her manager staring at her out of the corner of her eye.
“Is there something you need to tell me?” Ragatha finally asks as she pulls the till out of her register. They were closing in two minutes, so there was no need for her to still have it.
“No, nothing,” her manager replies with a shrug. The two head into the back office so they can reset the till when she adds, “You know, if you’re dealing with anxiety, you should try reaching out to people.”
Ragatha laughs. “My friends have too much to deal with,” she says. “And therapy and meds aren’t really for me. I manage, so no need to worry.”
Her manager looks like she wants to say something, but she just sighs and shakes her head. “Whatever you say.”
Despite it only being six in the evening, the sun was already setting, making the winter even colder than it already was. She shivers, pulling her crocheted cardigan tighter around her shoulders.
When she finally gets back to her apartment, she wants nothing more than to soak in a nice lavender bath salts bath with maybe more bubbles than necessary for a grown woman in her mid twenties.
But her friends needed her first. What she wants can be pushed aside for a few hours while she helps them.
(And of course, because nothing is new, she spends far too much time talking with her friends through their problems, and by the time everyone is okay, it’s too late for a long soak. She ends up settling for a quick five minute shower instead.)
Ragatha wakes up at noon the next day, four hours later than she would’ve liked. She feels groggy, gross, and like she needs another shower. Her mind is cloudy as she stands up too quickly to go grab breakfast.
There was a cafe next door to her apartment complex that she went to every Saturday when she was off work. They were the only place she could find that made peanut butter chocolate chip muffins.
All of the workers knew her by now. The person at the counter smiles and waves at her before typing in her order. Today, their name tag reads Michael. This was not, in fact, their name.
“You’re late today. Your total is $7.53,” they say.
“Hi to you too, Zooble,” Ragatha teases, handing them her debit card. They wave her off.
“It’s still cool for us three to come over later, right?” Zooble asks.
She completely blanks and stares at them for a second before remembering. Zooble, their wife, Gangle, and their roommate, Pomni, were coming over just to hang out and maybe play board games (or something) later.
“Shit. I forgot about that,” she admits. Zooble laughs and hands her her receipt and debit card. “Yeah, just text me before you come up so I know to expect you.”
Zooble hands her her muffin and coffee, which was just handed to her from behind by another barista. “As if we’d ever just barge into your house,” they laugh.
“As if,” Ragatha jokes.
The week before, Zooble had drunkenly stumbled into Ragatha’s apartment. She’d forgotten to lock the door after work, and after her shower, she was startled by Zooble snoring loudly on her couch.
Ragatha waves bye to everyone and heads out, biting into her muffin as the wind slams the door behind her.
Only once she gets back to her apartment does she notice she was still in her pajamas with bunny slippers. She sighs and sits down at her kitchen island, sipping on her coffee that’s finally cool enough for her to drink it without totally burning her tongue.
Ragatha grabs her laptop from where it’s charging next to the wall and opens it to her notes for her newest knitting pattern. Once it’s done and confirmed by a few pattern testers, she’ll upload it online to sell to people.
She loses herself in her pattern writing and her knitting, and before she knows it, there’s a knock at her door.
“Hey!” Ragatha greets enthusiastically. She turns a light red as she realizes she’s still in her pajamas. “Sorry, the day got away from me a bit.”
“Hey, bitch,” Zooble replies, kicking off their shoes as they walk in. They press their cheek to Ragatha’s for a second. It was a habit they picked up while living in France for twelve years.
“Hi! We brought sparkling grape juice,” Gangle says. She holds up the glass bottle, designed to look like a wine bottle.
“Awe, you remembered I don’t drink!” Ragatha gasps. “That’s so sweet.”
“Hi,” Pomni says with a wave. She’s a little awkward and blushing. Hanging from her other arm is a plastic bag. “We got Chinese, too.”
“Yeah, you looked rough earlier,” Zooble admits.
“Thanks.” Ragatha shuts the door behind them. Her hand slightly brushes against Pomni’s.
“I mean it in the way that you needed a pick me up,” Zooble explains. “Like you needed to be taken care of. So, we got you lunch. Or dinner. Whatever meal you eat at 4:30 in the afternoon.”
Ragatha feels touched. All of her other friends would never even think of that. They never remembered that she couldn’t drink; they never remembered that she liked to get Chinese when she wanted takeout. None of them would’ve ever noticed that she was struggling just based on her clothes, facial expressions, or even words.
“You all are too kind to me,” Ragatha says. She presses her hands to her heart, smiling and tilting her head slight. “Thank you.”
“We’re friends,” Gangle tells her. “It’s what friends do.”
It’s almost enough to make her cry.
“Okay, now come sit down,” Zooble says from her couch. They’ve pulled the specific floor pillows Ragatha has for eating on the floor at her coffee table. “I brought a movie, too. DVD.”
“DVD?” Ragatha teases as she sits down on the floor. Pomni sits next to her, and Gangle sits next to Zooble in front of the couch, leaning her red cane against the side table. “Who uses DVDs anymore?”
“I do. I’m not paying a million dollars every month for the seven hundred different paid streaming services that you can’t even share with your friends!” Zooble replies with a laugh.
“Piracy, my good friend,” Pomni says. She points her chopstick at them. “Piracy.”
Gangle hands Ragatha a container of chow mein. It’s only upon smelling the noodles that Ragatha realizes just how hungry she actually was. That muffin from earlier wasn’t nearly enough to hold her over for as long as it did.
“I like pirates,” Ragatha mumbles. She decides her hands are too finnicky, so she decides to eat with her hands instead. It was something she usually only did while alone, but she figures her new friends will understand. “Hot.”
She swears she hears Pomni mutter, “I could be a pirate,” but it’s too quiet for her to be sure.
Ragatha’s mind is too cloudy and fuzzy for this. She wants to lay down in her bed or sit in the bath with all her bubbles. But her friends were here, so she has to be a good host for them.
Zooble side eyes her for a second, narrowing their eyes slightly. Ragatha notices despite how subtle they’re trying to be, and she smiles and waves. They wave back before leaning over to whisper something into Gangle’s ear, who glances at Ragatha briefly then nods.
“I have the board games,” Ragatha announces loudly, not being one for secrets. She stands up. “They’re in my closet. Let me get them.”
“But you’ve barely ate,” Pomni says. Her hand is partially outreached, about to grab Ragatha’s and drag her back down to the floor. “Finish eating first, yeah? Then we can go get the games.”
Ragatha, despite being a grown woman in her 20s, pouts. Like, actually genuinely pouts, as if she’s a small child.
“Fine,” she mutters. She sits back down and crosses her arms.
“We got you teriyaki chicken,” Zooble tells her. “You said last time that it’s your favourite.”
Part of Ragatha hates how much these people remember about her. She was so used to everything about her, from her eye colour to her favourite food, feeling like a secret. It felt far too vulnerable for her liking.
“Why do you remember all these things about me?” she finally asks. Gangle is preparing her a plate with teriyaki chicken, sugar donuts, three different sushi rolls, and egg drop soup.
“Because we’re friends?” Pomni says, although it sounds more like a confused question than an actual statement. “Friends remember these things about each other.”
“No one’s ever remembered things like that about me,” she admits quietly. Gangle hands her her plate of food.
“Sounds like you had shi-” Gangle elbows them- “Ow! I mean, sounds like you had garbage friends,” Zooble says
Instead of defending them, Ragatha just whispers, “They need me,” before taking a bite of a sugar donut.
“Maybe you should try needing us instead,” Pomni tells her.
She doesn’t say anything.
“Ew, look,” Zooble says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “My asparagus looks like a balding middle aged man.”
Ragatha cranes her neck to look at it. “Ew! It does. Eat him!” And, to her shock and horror, she giggles as Zooble aggressively bites the asparagus in half.
“Look, this one looks like one too!” they exclaim. “Your turn to eat him.”
Usually, when Ragatha gets fuzzy brained like this, she would refuse to touch a vegetable. They were yucky, as childish as that sounds. She’d also refuse to take showers, but baths were completely on the table.
Thankfully, when she got like this, she was usually the only person around who had to deal with her, so none of her friends knew how ridiculous and stupid she could get.
Well, of course, until now.
Ragatha bites the asparagus in half, then shoves the other half in her mouth.
“Now he’s super dead,” she cheers. “Dead bald men!”
Her three friends exchange looks, but she’s too focused on eating all of her food before it gets cold to try and figure out what the look means. Maybe she’ll have ice cream after, too. As a treat.
“Hey, Ragatha?” Gangle starts. Ragatha hums, and Gangle pauses for a second before continuing, “How’s your brain feeling right now?”
“Gross!” Ragatha replies loudly.
“Gross?” Zooble clarifies.
“Yes!” She’s louder now. “I hate this brain! Too fuzzy. I want ice cream.”
Zooble nods, understanding, but how could they understand? How could any of them understand? No one feels like this except her.
“You got ice cream in your freezer?” Pomni asks. Ragatha nods her head, then continues nodding it harder because the pressure feels good. “Okay, eat the rest of your chicken, then I’ll get you a bowl.”
She continues nodding and rocking.
When she finishes her food, she looks over expectantly at Pomni with wide eyes. She points to her left, towards her tiny kitchen that barely qualified as one. The oven only worked half the time, and the dishwasher leaked at least once a month. It was annoying, but her landlord refused to fix it.
“Oh! The ice cream,” Pomni realizes. She uses the coffee table to push herself up. “Do you want the cookie dough or mint?”
“Both!” Ragatha calls back. “At the same time.”
Pomni looks over the bar to Zooble and Gangle, who both shrug. She shrugs too then begins scooping both ice creams into one of Ragatha’s pink bowls.
“What colour spoon do you want?” Pomni asks. She holds up two spoons, one with a mint green handle and the other with a pale yellow handle.
“Geen. Green,” Ragatha says. Then she starts whispering the two words to herself, laughing every few words.
They felt nice in her mouth, but especially geen. There was something so fun and silly to her about omitting random letters in words.
“Here you go,” Pomni says, placing the bowl in front of her.
“Bomb!” Ragatha exclaims.
(It was an inside joke between the four. It started off with thank you, then it turned into thanks, then thank, tank, bomb. To outsiders it was a bit threatening, which made it funnier to them.)
Her phone chimes before she can even take a bite of her ice cream.
The sound almost fully pulls her out of the soft and comfortable headspace that her friends had (actually) put her in. She was so deep inside it that she forgot that she’s not supposed to feel like this because she needs to always be there for her other friends. They always need her, and she had selfishly forgot.
“Shit,” she mutters. She goes to grab her phone, but Zooble snatches it up before she can. “Hey, what the hell?”
“Quit that,” Zooble scolds. It makes Ragatha shrink. “Is there something you’re expecting right now?”
“My friends,” she mumbles, looking down at her hands now laying in her lap. “They need me.”
The silence is too loud.
Then, “They always need me.”
“They can wait,” Gangle tells her gently.
“Yeah, we have board games to play, ice cream to eat, and movies to watch,” Pomni points out.
This immediately makes Ragatha perk up. In her worry for her friends, she’d completely forgotten about her delicious dessert in front of her. As quickly as she was pulled out of it, she was pushed right back into that comfortable warm feeling.
“What movie?” she asks, sitting up on her knees so she can lean over to look at Zooble’s DVD that they brought. “I wanna seeeee!”
“It’s called Ponyo. It’s about this fish girl who’s washed up and rescued by a little boy,” Zooble explains. She hands her the DVD case so she can look at the quite frankly adorable artwork. “Gangle’s a big fan of Studio Ghibli, so we have a lot of the movies.”
“Woah,” Ragatha says quietly. “Can we play UNO while we watch?”
“Sure. You got the cards?”
She nods excitedly and all but runs to her closet where she stores all her board games. There were a lot of games stacked on her floor from Asalto to Ziggurat. She pulls the UNO box from near the top of the stacks.
“I got it!” she calls out while sprinting down the hallway. “I got-” she trips over her own feet- “Woah! I got it!” She catches herself.
Gangle takes the deck of cards from her while Zooble puts the movie on. She shuffles it loudly before doing a few card tricks, earning some oohs and ahhs from both Ragatha and Pomni. From behind them, they hear whimsical music blast from the TV. Zooble swears under their breath and quickly turns the volume down.
“Sorry! I like to have everything super loud, cause then I get no thinks,” Ragatha explains. “Thinks are bad.” And she nods once.
“Right?” Pomni agrees. “Why have thoughts when you can simply not do that?”
“’xactly!”
Gangle passes out the cards to everyone, then places the top card from the deck face up. “Okay, does everyone remember how to play?” she asks.
“No, I’ve never counted in my entire life,” Zooble teases, pressing play on the movie. “Yes, butter, we all know how to play. Rock paper scissors for who starts?”
For once in her life, Ragatha feels completely safe here. Her friends are here to take care of her instead of the other way around. She’s completely forgotten about her other friends who only talk to her when they want something from her. Right now, she was soft and loved and being taken care of by people who talk to her because they like her. And later, she’ll finally have that bubble bath she’s been wanting for so very long.