"Tell me one thing," she says, smirking now. "Are you actually stll in love with Kyle, or did you do it to, like, avoid something else?"
"It wasn't a big deal," I snap. "It just happened."
"Wow," she says again, exhaling in that long, resigned hiss. Somehow, she looks satisfied by this entire story, like it's finally solved a longtime mystery for her. "It's amazing. You really do sound exactly the same."
"Excuse me?"
"You're always so, like, 'things happen to me'." Kristen shrugs. She shoves a hand in her purse and puts a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. It's enough to cover both our drinks two times over. "Poor me, living in New York. Poor me, I don't get along with my mom. Poor me, I kinda slept with Kyle. This is classic you, and you know it. Kyle deserves better than that. He's the only person who thought you might show up to Alex's funeral. Like, he kept driving by your house to see if you were home. The rest of us knew better."
"Fuck you," I say, watching her slip her coat on and surprising even myself with the vitriol in my voice.
Kristen laughs. "There was a point when it would have gutted me to hear you say that. But you know what? We're all gown up now, Audrey. And if that's what you want to say to someone who knows you better than anyone else and will give it to you straight, then okay. Fuck you, too. I don't give a shit anymore."
"Obviously you do," I snap again, "or you wouldn't be running away from me again, like you did at Eastwoods."
"I'm not running away," Kristen says, zipping up her coat with a neat jerk. "I just know when it's time to go. There's a difference, Audrey."
She yanks a knit cap onto her head, and for a second, I can see flashed of the old Kristen, who used to wear the same cap in PE whenever we were forced outside to play flag football--somezhing that I'd hazed with this primal aversion that rose from deep inside my brain stem, while Kristen loved nothing more. She'd never been afraid of a good brawl even then.
-Central Places (2023), by Delia Cai, pg. 223-224
