PAST

"I kind of hate that you wanted to go camping for your birthday. How are we best friends again?" Eliza asked.

Lydia laughed as she pushed the stake into the semi-frozen ground.

"It's freezing out here, Lydia," Eliza continued.

"It won't be inside the tent."

"But we're outside the tent."

"Because you're not helping me with the tent. You've been standing there the whole time, just watching me put this thing up."

"I don't know what I'm doing. I'd probably just break it, and then we'd be out in the middle of nowhere with no tent."

Lydia stood up and crossed her arms over her chest.

"What?" Eliza asked.

"We're in a state park and on a campsite. There's an actual bathroom with toilets about twenty feet away. The road is ten feet behind us, and my car is parked just off it. The drive from the entrance of the park to here took us about seven minutes, and there are three other campsites right next to us. I think we'd be okay. Now, can you get the sleeping pad laid out in there and put the sleeping bags on top of it while I get the rest of the stuff from the car?"

"Fine. I'm being dramatic."

"No, you're not. I know you're doing this for me. And I also know that this is the first time you've been camping since…" Lydia faded out.

Eliza looked down and said, "It's not the same. I mean, I don't think of this as the same, if that's what you're worried about."

"I didn't want to ask you because of it. I thought it might bring back some bad memories," she offered.

"The memories are always there, right at the surface, no matter what I'm doing. And they're still blurry and foggy, and I wish I'd just been able to–"

"Hey, it's okay. We don't have to talk about it. Do you want to just get settled in for the night? We can talk about the hike to the falls that I want to take tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure," Eliza replied .

Lydia had been her best friend since high school. Eliza had been the new girl after her mother had moved them to another town. As a freshman entering school mid-year, it had been hard for Eliza to make new friends, but Lydia had been in her fifth-period science class, and one day, she'd just passed Eliza a note. They'd been friends ever since. No one had been privy to what had happened to bring Eliza to the new school. She'd told people that her mom had gotten a new job and they'd had to move, but that wasn't the truth. Lydia had been the only one to get that truth, and that had been during the summer after their freshman year.

During the fall of their sophomore year, Lydia had come out to Eliza and told her that she liked her as more than a friend, but Eliza, for her part, hadn't ever given her sexuality much thought back then. She'd had more on her mind than boys, girls, or dating. She'd tried to tell Lydia that it was okay that she liked her that way but that she wasn't sure she saw anyone like that. And it had been the truth, at first. Her life had been irrevocably changed the summer before her freshman year of high school. Right when she was supposed to be figuring out who she was, getting a part-time job, joining clubs, making friends, and maybe finding someone she liked, she'd lost someone important to her in a way that made thinking about any of those things difficult.

The move had only made it harder, even though her mother's goal had been to make things easier on them both. The therapy sessions were also supposed to help. Her mother had hers. Eliza had her own. Once or twice, they'd also gone together. For Eliza, though, therapy had felt a little too much like when the cops had asked her questions that night, so while the doctor had been nice enough and tried to help by asking her questions, the whole experience felt too similar, and Eliza hadn't been able to get much out of therapy. She'd stopped it around the time she'd also gone off the meds the doctor had prescribed her. She hadn't been depressed. She'd been a normal, fully functional fifteen-year-old when it had happened. Then, she'd been grieving. She'd been through a trauma. She'd just needed a doctor to be patient with her instead of asking her a ton of questions and prescribing her medication, which only made her feel numb.

It was during her junior year that she'd finally gotten off the anti-depressants the right way and felt a little more like herself again. Eliza noticed it then, how she felt about Lydia, but it had been too late: Lydia had found a girlfriend. That girlfriend and Lydia had both played soccer, and they'd started dating during their summer practices. Eliza had been the supportive best friend and even the third wheel most of the time until they broke up around Thanksgiving. Eliza had helped her get through the breakup, and for Christmas, she'd gotten Lydia a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant. It had been meant to represent their friendship, but when she'd watched Lydia open the box, Eliza had rambled out her feelings.

"So, I… Uh… I know you just got out of a thing, like, a month ago – I think it was a month ago – and you really liked her, but… Um… Remember how you used to like me? I like you like that," she'd said.

"You like me like that now?" Lydia had asked.

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yes," Eliza had confirmed.

"Well, I still like you like that. It's why we broke up: she thought I wasn't over you. And I'm not."

"You're not?"

"No. I just know what you've been going through, so I didn't want to tell you that I still wanted us to be more than friends."

That had been it. Their first kiss had been at the end of their second official date, and it had been awkward and, well, pretty bad, so they'd laughed and tried again. They'd been one another's first about two months after that. It, too, had been awkward, but they'd tried again and again whenever they could find privacy. Eliza's mom usually worked late, so it had often been after school that Lydia would come over, and they'd have a few hours to themselves before she'd go home for dinner. It hadn't always been romantic. In fact, it had rarely been that. They'd been horny teenagers figuring out what they liked and what they didn't like. They were still best friends, though, so that made the new part of their relationship better than she supposed it would've been with anyone else.

Senior year had come and gone, and they'd gone their separate ways for college. Being a six-hour drive apart and with both of them having difficult majors in school, they'd lasted for about six months that first year and decided to break up for the sake of their friendship because it had just been too hard. Eliza had been the one to officially deliver the blow. And it had been a blow. They hadn't talked for a while after that. Then, when the summer came and they'd both gone home, they'd acted almost as if the romantic part of their relationship hadn't ever happened. It had been a survival technique, Eliza knew, but it still hurt, and she was sure it had hurt Lydia, too .

After college, they'd both moved back home, and Eliza thought they'd start back up again. It made sense to her that they would. College and the distance from one another had been the things that had gotten in their way, not how they felt about one another. The distance had been too hard for them to overcome back then, but after school, they'd been in the same place. Lydia had met someone else, though, and Eliza had, once again, been the supportive best friend. Then, Eliza had met someone else, too, and they'd gone on double dates together. Those relationships had ended, and new ones had begun, but they'd never found their way back to one another how she'd always wanted. Of course, she'd never said anything to Lydia about it because Lydia hadn't ever seemed to have a problem meeting new women, and Lydia had never said anything about still being in love with Eliza how Eliza was with her.

Now, Eliza was thirty years old, on a camping trip to celebrate Lydia turning thirty-one, and she didn't really want to be here. It also wasn't because of what had happened to her when she was a teenager. It was because that feeling of missing out on something important hadn't ever gone away. Yes, they'd been high school sweethearts, and most of those relationships didn't work out, but they were still best friends, and finally, they were both single at the same time.

"Hey, how are you doing with the whole breakup thing?" Lydia asked her later when they were both bundled up in their sleeping bags, staring at the ceiling of the tent and listening to the crickets and the wind rustling through the leaves.

"It's been a month," she said without really answering.

"I know. Still asking, though. You were with her for seven months. That's a long time for you."

"Hey!" Eliza laughed.

"What? It's true. Your longest relationship was with, well, me, and we were eighteen."

"Seventeen when we started and almost nineteen when we ended," she reminded.

"And I think you've had one girlfriend long enough to celebrate a birthday with you."

"Why are we talking about this?"

"I'm trying to make sure you're okay," Lydia said.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"She told you she loved you, and you broke up with her, Eliza."

"I didn't love her. "

"But she waited. She waited seven months to tell you, when I know she felt it much earlier because I could see it."

"Are you trying to make me feel bad?"

"No, I'm just wondering why you let it go on for that long if you didn't love her."

"I thought I did. Well, I thought I could, at least. I kept waiting for that feeling to hit me, but it never did. When she said it, though, I realized that I needed to tell her that I wasn't there and didn't think I would be. It was unfair to her, and I still feel horrible, but I didn't mean to hurt her."

"I'm starting to worry about you."

"What? Why?" Eliza rolled on her side to face Lydia.

"Because whenever you date someone, we end up having a conversation similar to this one: you thought you could love her, but you couldn't."

"It's not always like that. Sometimes, I get cheated on," she argued.

Lydia laughed a little and said, "Out of the five relationships you've had since college, seven months was the longest, and you didn't love her. One of them cheated on you, yes, but the other three were brief, and you didn't love them, either."

"So?"

"So, Eliza, I want you to be happy."

"I am happy."

" Are you?"

"Yes. And I'm not in a relationship, but so what? Not everyone needs to be in a relationship. I have my job. I own my own home. I have a car that runs. I have a best friend."

"I love that I come after the running car," Lydia teased.

"You know you come first."

" You need to come first," Lydia suggested. "Do you know why I wanted to go camping with you instead of staying in and watching a movie or going for a drink?"

Eliza shook her head.

"Because I knew it was the only way I'd be able to talk to you about this stuff without you fleeing. I have the keys to the car tucked safely away, so you can't escape."

"You kidnapped me? Is that what you did?"

"Friendnapped sounds better." Lydia shrugged.

"You can't just go around forcing me to do things." She laughed .

"It's the job of the best friend to do that exact thing sometimes. I needed to make sure you were okay. I'm worried about you."

"Why? I'm okay."

"Because you don't seem happy. You seem… lost, El. I can still see it in your eyes. It's been there since we met. In fact, the only time I ever saw it go away was when we–" She stopped and turned her face toward Eliza's. "When we made love. And only when we did that in the dorm room, not when we were still in high school."

"I was away from my mom in college."

"I know that. She tried to make it better but made it worse for you, so being in college was your chance to move on. And I know how much it hurt you when it ended with us because it was too hard to be with each other but never get to be with each other. I'm only saying that you're thirty years old now, and that's the only time, I think, that I've seen your eyes look… happy or not clouded with pain. Obviously, I don't see your eyes when you're with another woman, so maybe they've been happy when you were, you know, with someone else."

They weren't. Eliza knew that for a fact, but she didn't say anything. For years, she'd been holding this in, and maybe now was finally the right moment to tell her best friend that she'd always wanted them to get back together, but Eliza had always been a bit of a coward, so she wouldn't be doing that now.

"I just want you to find it," Lydia added.

"Find what?"

"Whatever it is that makes you push things away."

"I don't do that."

"Yes, you do. And you did , Eliza."

"Did what?"

"Pushed me away."

"No, I didn't. We ended when–"

Lydia turned on her side to face her and said, "I said it was too hard being with you but not actually being with you. You stopped visiting. You also asked me not to come on the weekends, even though I was ready and willing to make the drive. Once, I had my car packed, and I was about to pull out of the damn parking lot, but you called and told me you needed the weekend to study. That was the last time. I never packed my car up again because I expected you to call and tell me not to bother or that you weren't making the trip to see me like you'd planned. "

"I was back in therapy," she revealed.

"What?"

"When I got to school, I decided to check out student health, and there was a counselor there. I did the consultation, and she seemed okay enough, so I started going to her at the end of September."

"You never told me that."

"I didn't want to admit that I needed it. Besides, I also wasn't sure it would work. I guess I just assumed she'd give me meds like the first one had done, and I'd go numb again, or I'd stop because it wasn't helping, so there wasn't much of a point."

"I was your girlfriend, Eliza. I was your best friend, too. Not that I think you had to tell me that you were going to therapy, but you could have. I would have supported you. It would've helped to know that. I wouldn't have–"

"Broken up with me? Why? Because you would've pitied me?"

"No. And that's not what happened; you know it. Because I would've understood that you were going through something and that it might keep you from me sometimes."

"It didn't, specifically," Eliza said. "My appointments were twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. I could've visited you, or you could've visited me. But the more I went to my sessions, the more worried I became about losing you. It was like dealing with what had happened back then made me more worried about my current relationships somehow. I called my mom a lot, checking on her and asking her to check in with me when she got home from work. I told her to make sure to lock the doors. I was scared I'd lose her, too. Then, I'd think about losing you, and it was like I couldn't breathe."

"Oh, El," Lydia said and cupped Eliza's cold cheek.

"It was easier to push you away, okay?"

"This counselor sounds like she needed some more training."

"It takes time," Eliza said with a smile. "To work through it all. And I'd been keeping things in for so long that it took a while for me. I think I'm still working on it."

"And you didn't think you could tell me?"

"I felt myself pulling away, but I couldn't stop it. I felt horrible, but I kept doing it until finally, we were fighting on the phone, and I suggested that we should break up. We just ended, and I actually felt this pressure lifting because now, I could focus on school and therapy and not worry about disappointing my girlfriend and best friend."

"You didn't disappoint me," Lydia told her .

"Can we just talk about something else?" she requested. "We're supposed to be celebrating your birthday."

"Eliza, it's thirty-one. I don't care. I just wanted to hang out with you."

"I'm here. We're hanging out."

Lydia rolled her eyes and said, "We should just get some sleep. The falls are four miles away, and you're not much of a hiker, so it'll take us all day to get there."

"Hey!"

"Am I wrong?"

"No," Eliza said with a small laugh. "Are we okay?"

When Lydia tilted her head back and forth as if she were considering, Eliza bit her bottom lip in anticipation because if Lydia said no, Eliza didn't know what she'd do.

"We're okay. It was a long time ago. We were young, and you had things you needed to work through. Now, I do think we should just get some sleep."

Lydia rolled over, away from Eliza, and burrowed into her sleeping bag. Eliza rolled onto her back then and stared up into the blackness again. It was nights like this that the nightmares often returned. Nightlights were a requirement in her house. She had them in every hallway and every room, along with two in her bedroom. The darkness made her think back to that night, and that night changed her entire life for the worse.