My father returned carrying a packet of crackers and a paper cup of tea. He looked at the empty chair beside me, but the only question he asked was whether I wanted something to eat. When I said no, he put a hand on my shoulder and told me to take a walk down the hall before I made myself ill with worry. I sat instead, listening to the electronic chime of a monitor in the next room and wondering why I had expected more.
Marissa did visit my mother two days later with flowers. Mom thanked her warmly, and we never discussed the missed evening in front of my parents. At home I said I'd felt alone in the waiting room, and Marissa apologized before explaining that she'd been exhausted from work and that game night had been arranged in advance. I asked whether there had been any possibility of missing one game, and she sighed like I had reopened an argument we'd already settled.
There was always an explanation for each choice. None of the explanations sounded completely absurd on its own, which made it easy to feel petty when I lined them up. A wedding was on a Sunday after a festival, a graduation was long and boring, a hospital was stressful, and a game night was important to keeping friendships alive. What I couldn't explain away was how every sacrifice fell in the same direction.
She also expected a very different kind of flexibility from me. The month before our anniversary conversation, my phone rang at two in the morning while I was asleep before an early work meeting. It was Marissa, speaking over music so loud I had to move the phone away from my ear. Finn had been drinking, their rideshare had canceled, and she wanted me to drive across town to a dive bar I'd never heard of.
I asked if everybody was safe. She said yes, but she sounded annoyed that I was wasting time on the question. I pulled on jeans, found my keys, and drove through a part of the city where the traffic lights seemed to change for nobody. When I arrived, the group was taking photographs outside beneath a flickering beer sign, and Marissa held up a finger to tell me to wait while Tasha tried to get a better angle.
Finn stumbled toward the car and thanked me with a slap on the shoulder that nearly knocked my glasses off. Khloe wanted to know if I could drop everybody at their separate apartments, because it would be cheaper than another ride. I told them I could take Finn home because he shouldn't drive, but I had work in five hours and couldn't run a shuttle service across the city. Marissa rolled her eyes, then spent the twenty-minute ride discussing a man Khloe had met at the bar.