I send my best friend, Lucille Victor-Kelly, a message later when I settle in for the night, asking if she wants to hang out while I unpack. She doesn't respond, which is totally fine. It sounds like it's not fine, especially since we haven't really seen each other in almost a year since her breaks from school are filled with her family. My spring break didn't align with hers, so the last time I'd seen Lucy was an awkward lunch we'd put together at the last minute the last week I was in town during Christmas break. We're both a part of the group chat from high school, but we haven't talked one on one. It's fine, though.
"What's wrong?" Jacob asks, leaning into my room from the doorway. Helo trots in around him after finishing his dinner and flops onto his bed in the corner of the room, falling straight to sleep without a problem. "You seem upset."
"Lucy is ignoring me."
"She probably lost her phone again."
I nod.
"You right, you right," I say quietly. "I just haven't seen her in so long, and we've barely talked. I just feel like we're drifting apart, you know? We promised college wouldn't do this to us, and yet it has. That's kind of why I'm not doing a summer semester. I just thought that it would, I don't know, ruin our relationship forever."
"Nothing can ruin your relationship. You're Lucille and Joanne."
"That means nothing if she's ignoring my texts, Jake."
He shrugs.
"I'm just saying, Jo, that Lucy won't stay away for long even if she's mad at you, which she probably isn't. She can't keep track of her phone for more than an hour at a time, you can't spring to the conclusion that she's mad at you."
It's my turn to shrug. He picks his way across the room to sit down on my bed across from me. He's a tall, broad-chested man in his early twenties, with the same straw-colored, wavy hair we'd inherited from our father, and the same round, chubby-cheeked face with a sharp nose. His eyes are warm and kind, something that he did not inherit from our father. It had managed to develop naturally despite everything.
"Look, Jo, you – I know you -"
"No, stop. We're not talking about that, Jake."
"You should talk to someone about it, you know. Lucy, even. Especially."
"No, dude, stop. That's, it'd ruin everything."
"Don't pull that afraid to ruin our friendship bullshit with me, okay? I know you are best friends, but you could be more, you know? You could take the chance and -"
"No."
He shrugs again, this time with a roll of his eyes.
"You're ridiculous, I hope you know that."
"I do know, and I've accepted it."
He nods but leans in to give me a small kiss on my hairline.
"Think about it, kid. I've got to get ready for bed."
Jake leaves before I can call him out for going to bed like an old man, but he does work early in the morning. I can't actually fault him for heading him to bed.
"Oh, Heelie-boy, what a miserable, lonely night, my boy."
Helo keeps sleeping.
"Yeah, same," I say, and go back to unpacking alone.