Chapter Seven Soundtrack: We're Going to Be Friends by The White Stripes

Thank God I am meeting Mei tonight: my best friend since I was too young to know the word, the closest thing I have to a sister, and the scariest person I know.

She lives across the city, so we've split the difference. I suggested an old pub, around the corner from Holborn station, where I once went on a catastrophic date with an aspiring lawyer. He had six favourite Supreme Court rulings, and he explained each one to me, in detail. I learned later that he dropped out of uni to become a stand-up comedian. The pub was exactly to his taste, at the time: it's split into small booths, each hidden by a wooden door or a high partition, so that to find a table requires breaking up couples or reunions with an apologetic wave. I have no luck tonight, so I perch at the bar and people watch.

Mei is late, as always, and I'm half a pint in when she arrives at the pub. Heads turn to follow her. Mei is British-Chinese, always in jeans and a baseball cap, never wears makeup, and is so gorgeous that she is regularly approached by modelling scouts. She shrugs them off. She couldn't understand why I would never double-date with her, but I have accepted what she doesn't see: standing beside her, I fade into the wallpaper.

'Ellie!' she squeals, pulling me in for an enormous hug. 'How are you?'

She looks well: better than she has in years, in fact, since she left the brutal hours of her last hospital and took some time away with her boyfriend. I was worried, for a while, that I might lose her to the greyness that coloured her cheeks. But I was also reluctant to watch her choose her boyfriend over her career. Now that she's through it, I see that she's chosen her health over her surgical ambitions, and I can tell how close she was to giving up entirely, and I'm glad to see her glowing again. It's funny, the things you can get wrong about people.

She's still waiting for an answer. The bartender has already appeared, eager to serve her, but she doesn't take her eyes off me.

'Ugh,' I groan, melodramatically, 'bad day.'

'Good story?' she asks. It's her favourite response.

'No. Just bloody Nas being... bloody Nas.'

'Huh. Nas again. I feel like I know him already.' She shoots me a speculative look.

'You'll never meet him,' I say darkly. 'You'd have to crawl into his vampire lair and I'd miss you too much.'

Her enormous smile crinkles her cheeks. 'I missed you too, Elles.'

'How's work? Or, sorry, that's insensitive.'

She laughs. 'Don't worry! You're always worrying over nothing. Work is better. Work is sane, actually, and healthy, and I'm eating again and even sleeping, if you can believe it.'

'And you don't regret it?'

'God, no. Trying to become a surgeon, under those conditions... I wouldn't have survived it. Plus I've realised I like my patients responsive.'

'Really?'

'I mean, not always, but occasionally a natter is a good thing.'

'I'll take your word for it. There's a few colleagues I wouldn't mind killing off.'

'Ugh, Nas again. I'm still so intrigued.'

'Stop. I hate him.'

She grins and, mercifully, changes the subject as the bartender brings her a lemonade. Swirling the straw, she asks, 'How's your mum?'

'Oh, you know, probably terminally ill or about to lose her house or alone in the world. She hasn't updated me today but I'm sure I'll get an earful. She asked after you, though.'

Mei takes a deep breath. 'I actually have to tell you something. I haven't told anyone else yet.' She takes my hands in hers.

I look into her dark eyes and see her flushed cheeks, and I know. It's written all across her and it looks like happiness.

'He asked you,' I say, and she nods and shows me her ring. It's massive, too big for her delicate fingers, and she laughs about it while she taps the stones against the table, twice, like a tiny heartbeat only she can hear.

My stomach twists even as I hug her. My best friend is going to marry the love of her life. My best friend is leaving me behind.

Worse, my best friend is marrying my fiancé's brother. My dead fiancé's brother. We were nearly sisters-in-law, as well as in-friendship. Now that will never happen.

I met Ben thanks to Gabriel: Ben, the love of my early life, the guilt I can't forget. I loved him instantly. Mei avoided pursuing Gabriel for years, insisting our friendship came first, and as soon as I assured her it was fine, I lost my happiness. I can't resent her for that—can I? Can I expect everyone to mourn a future that never came?

My ears are ringing. Mei is talking, her eyes alight with happiness, and I can't hear a word. How can I be this selfish? How can I think of my grief when the person I love most is so happy?

'—The rest of our lives,' she's saying. 'It's terrifying.' She interrupts herself, and I know she realises what she's said. She's lucky to have their lives ahead of them. 'Sorry, El, I—'

'Don't worry.' I will not dwell on myself, not right now. 'I'm delighted for you. He's the luckiest man in the world.'

'Well, of course. I tell him that every day,' she grins. 'Plan my hen to congratulate me?'

'Don't you have to ask me something first?'

She squeals. 'How could I forget?'

Mei releases my hands and clambers out of the booth, nearly knocking over my drink as she does. She lowers herself to one knee and the familiar pose twists my gut. I plaster on a smile.

'Will you, Eleanor Abarough, oldest and bestest friend, be my maid of honour?'

'Of course. Don't you dare ask anyone else.' I pull her back to her feet. Across the pub, a drunk man applauds. 'Tell me how he proposed.'

As she starts the story, the love in her voice takes me back nearly a decade, to Mei's first year of university, when she shared a wall with a blond, rumpled Irishman who made her tea whenever she was hungover. He was gentle, and cautiously funny, and nothing like his brash older brother. Ben interrupted our first night out, sweeping me into his arms for a dance, ignoring my insistence that I had no rhythm, and carried me into a relationship in his wake. We left Mei and Gabriel watching from the bar.

But when Mei introduced me to Gabriel as her friend, I knew she would marry him. He looked at her like gravity tugged him towards her, instead of the ground. It was only a matter of time before she realised too. And when Gabriel introduced me to his lanky older brother, Ben, I knew I would marry him. He was my gravity, too.

Now, we're twenty-seven instead of eighteen, and Mei wears Gabriel's ring, and there's no one else I could trust with my best friend. He will make her giggle, and lift her to shelves she can't reach, and make her tea every morning for the rest of her life.

'How are you doing, Ellie?' she asks, once she's told me the proposal story. 'You were in Ireland, right? Did you see Ben's family?'

That's what she asks, but what she means is: Are you still grieving? Why won't you try to move on? Don't you know everyone else has?

At least, that's what I hear.

When I tell her I didn't, the disappointment is all written across her face. They're her family now, not mine, not anymore. I can't stand to sit in their silent kitchen, plastered with photos of Ben that will never grow older, hearing the clock tick as we have nothing else to say. Each time they ask me how work is, I hear them wondering why I deserve to live when their son is gone. Each time Mei interrupts to offer Gabriel a cuppa, the room lights up again. Easy to see why she's still invited for Christmas and I'm not.

'But you're okay?' Her voice is soft. That's how I know she's really worried: Mei is loud, and ballsy, and confident in her terrible jokes. She's never soft.

'Sure, I'm fine.'

'Ellie.' Her tone accepts no argument.

That's why the raw, ugly, selfish truth escapes me. 'Most days it's easier, but lately I just miss being touched.'

Mei doesn't understand. After all, I live in London. I brush against a thousand strangers a day.

I continue, 'Not just hugged hello, or handshakes. I mean an arm around me on the couch, or falling asleep spooning. Being touched just because.'

Mei's eyes soften. She slides around the booth and embraces me, and I smell her soft vanilla and feel the warmth of her hoodie. She buries her head into my shoulder and doesn't let go until the man at the bar shouts 'Lezzos!'

Then she throws my drink at him and we have to run.

*

happy friday! i've had a looong week with some work stresses, but i'm doing nothing this weekend so i can catch up on some writing. do you have any plans?

obviously i'm also binging ttpd which goes without saying...