Page 48 - In Five Years

Bella watches me and laughs. “You’re so deprived,” she says.
I throw her a disgruntled look as I make my way to the crepes. “I have a job.”
“Yes, how is that going?” She tilts her head to the side.
“It’s great,” I say. I want to add some of us have to work for a living, but I

don’t. I learned a long time ago there is a difference with Bella, and our
relationship, between judgmental and unkind. I try not to stray over the line. “I

think it’s going to be another year, and then partner.”
Bella does a little shimmy in her chair. Her sweater slips from where it sits on
her shoulders and I’m met with a slice of collarbone. Bella has always had a
zaftig figure, glorious in its curvature, but she looks slimmer to me today. Once,

during the month of Isaac, she lost twelve pounds.
Greg. I already have a bad feeling.

“I think we should all go to dinner,” Bella says.
“Who?”
She gives me a look. “Greg,” she says. She sucks her bottom lip in, lets it pop

back out. Her blue eyes find mine. “Dannie, I’m telling you, you don’t have to
believe me, but this one is different. It feels different.”
“They always do.”

She narrows her eyes at me and I can tell I’ve crossed it. I sigh. I can never
quite say no to her. “Okay,” I say. “Dinner. Pick any Saturday two weeks from
now and it’s yours.”

I watch Bella as she loads up her plate—first eggs, then a crepe—and feel my
stomach start to relax as she eats with gusto. The sky changes from rain to
clouds to sunshine. When we leave the streets are almost entirely dry.