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It has been two years since Emily and Andrea broke up. That is what Emily tells people, anyway, on the rare occasions anybody asks whether she has seen Andrea lately. Two years sounds clean. Respectable. Long enough that nobody tilts their head with concern.
One year, eleven months and nineteen days sounds deranged. Not that Emily knows that. Obviously.
She is perfectly fine. She has a job, no, a career. She has friends. Family. Tennis twice a week. Books stacked beside her bed, music while she gets dressed, expensive hobbies and an online shopping habit that becomes industrious after midnight. She is normal and functional.
So when she spots Andrea across the bar at a charity benefit, Emily does not feel as though somebody has punched the air out of her lungs. She merely stops speaking halfway through a sentence.
Nigel follows her line of sight. “Oh no.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“That sounded convincing.”
“I’m fine.”
“Absolutely. Not saying otherwise.”
Andrea has already seen them. Worse, she is walking over.
Emily has eight seconds to become somebody who has not spent one year, eleven months and nineteen days arranging her life around the absence of one person. She lifts her champagne and smiles.
“Hi.”
Andrea smiles back. Warmly, easily, like this is normal.
“Hi. Wow, it’s good to see you both.”
She is holding a glass of white wine by the stem. Emily notices because Andrea used to hold wine glasses by the bowl, which drove her insane. Fingerprints everywhere, warm wine, a truly horrendous lack of etiquette. Emily corrected her enough times that, eventually, Andrea stopped.
Apparently that survived. How lovely.
Nigel kisses Andrea’s cheek. Emily does not because suddenly she cannot remember what former girlfriends do at charity benefits without causing scenes.
Andrea asks about work, Nigel says something dry. Emily contributes at appropriate intervals. And then Andrea tells them about a Runway project, some impossible shoot with a rain machine and three hundred orchids. Emily listens, or at least pretends to.
It should be bittersweet, seeing somebody you once loved after enough time has passed. A rush of old memories, fondness, perhaps a little sadness softened by gratitude for a shared chapter.
Instead, Emily develops a bitter taste in her mouth so sharp it is almost funny.
Andrea says something about Paris. Emily smiles.
What she really wants to ask is whether there are television shows Andrea cannot watch anymore. Whether a song comes on at the gym and she skips it because Emily sang along badly in the kitchen. Whether there is a restaurant she avoids because they first argued there. Whether she has ever passed a stranger wearing Emily’s perfume and turned around too quickly.
Whether good things happen and, for half a second, she still thinks, I need to tell Emily. Whether she remembers not to think that now.
Andrea laughs at something Nigel says.
Emily wonders if she still has the birthday cards. The Christmas cards. The stupid notes Emily left in coat pockets and books because Andrea liked finding them later. Does she still wear the black hoodie Emily left at her apartment and never retrieved because Andrea looked better in it anyway?
Or did she throw everything out? Maybe on a random Sunday. Maybe she woke up, decided she was done being sentimental and put Emily into a garbage bag between old magazines and expired skincare.
Emily has not thrown anything out. Not technically. There is a box at the back of her wardrobe, which is different.
Andrea asks if Emily still plays tennis.
“Yes, when I can.”
“Your serve was insane.”
Emily almost laughs because Andrea used to say that all the time. There. A memory. Fond past. See? Completely manageable.
She wonders whether Andrea’s friends still ask about her. Whether Lily ever says her name. Whether Andrea’s parents noticed when the stories stopped. Emily said this. Emily did that. Emily thinks. Emily hates. Emily bought me this. Does her father ever ask how she is? Does her mother still see something in a shop and think Emily would like that before remembering Emily is not really in her life anymore?
Nigel says he is going to find someone from editorial and disappears before Emily can murder him. Coward.
Now it is just the two of them. Andrea shifts closer because somebody passes behind her, and her fingers touch Emily’s forearm. Barely, briefly. Innocently. Emily’s entire body recognises it.
Andrea smiles. “I’m really happy we can be like this.”
Emily looks at her. “Like what?”
“You know.” Andrea glances down, then back up. “Normal.”
There is a lump in Emily’s throat so sudden she nearly laughs. Normal.
This is normal. Standing three feet from someone whose absence had to be trained into habit. Listening to her talk about work as though Emily does not know how Andrea’s voice sounds half-asleep. Watching her hold a wine glass correctly because Emily taught her to. Smiling while every buried question claws its way back up at once.
Emily is not normal. She is ripping at the seams. She wants to ask everything and nothing all at once. She wants to say, I still love you, and then immediately throw herself into traffic.
Instead, she smiles.
“Yes,” she says. “Me too.”
Andrea’s face softens. It nearly kills her.
Emily drains her champagne and glances toward the crowd. “I should go find Nigel. There’s someone I need to speak to.”
“Of course.”
“It was good seeing you.”
“You too.”
Emily turns before Andrea can touch her again. She walks away steadily, because dignity is muscle memory, and makes it to the corridor outside the ballroom before she stops.
For nearly two years, she has told herself that if this happened, it would hurt in a manageable way. A little sweetness for what they had, a little ache for what they lost.
Bittersweet.
She understands now that this was optimistic. There is no sweetness in it.
Only Andrea smiling at her like an acquaintance.
Only bitter.