Letters to Sperling ➳ H.S.

Four: Carrie Bradshaw

Although I'd only interacted with Rashida a handful of times in the past few weeks, I felt as if I'd known her for a rather extensive amount of time. I was discovering more and more about her at an astronomical rate and I felt my admiration for her multiply ten-fold the more we hung out together.

I knew that she loved sunflowers, and that she only took her teas with cane sugar (because that's how her mother made it at home) and that she felt the need to apologize to furniture whenever she ran into something because that was just the type of person she was. She was humble and everything about her resonated in the way she carried herself. I didn't really know how I wound up in the position I was in right now, but it was divine and I wasn't complaining at the slightest.

I suppose I'd been spending more time with her partly because I wanted to stay out of the house and away from Rachel, whom I hadn't really spoken to since the argument. Maybe I was being petty about it, but I didn't appreciate how secretive she and Nate were being.

He was off once again for a work trip, this time down to California for some lawyers' conference or something. Usually this would signal a sigh of relief from me, but I still had to be around Rachel, who acted exactly the same as before – just as distant about the situation, and just as cryptic.

"I'm sure there's a reason," Rashida reasoned in the logical, rational way she always did. "Rachel isn't a malicious person."

"I never said she was," I huffed, crossing my arms before realizing how childish I looked and uncrossing them. "I just think I deserve to know what she feels the need to hide."

"Why's that?"

I didn't answer, partly because I thought my answer was obvious, but mostly because I knew that even though my response was predictable, it wasn't justified. Of course I didn't deserve to know anything in the grand scheme of things, but I wanted to know badly enough to feel like I did.

It was difficult not to listen to the things Rashida said – she had the type of voice that beckoned you to listen to it, and she presented herself in such a way that made you trust the fact that she was intelligent and knowledgeable about the things she said – she was correct, absolutely correct, and I didn't mind being incorrect all the time if I knew she was the one to guide me from right and wrong – and I never liked being wrong.

It was inevitable that Rachel and I would have a day off coincide at some point, and it happened to be on a Friday evening when Rashida was staying late at school to work on her thesis (and therefore couldn't excuse myself from the house to be around her because I really had nothing better to do). I was wallowing in my own misery, as usual, in the living room, when I heard the lock on the front door click. If only I could've been proactive enough to remember that Rachel did grocery shopping on Fridays, I probably would've lasted another day without the dreaded interaction I knew I was about to endure.

"Hey, Harry!" she called from the hallway. I forced out a muffled greeting and increased the volume of the TV. I heard the clatter of her keys in the little bowl on the table in the foyer, then the settling of the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, the fridge opening, then the clinking of water glasses, and the running of the tap for a few seconds.

In that moment I felt like a spectator in my own life, watching as things progressed without me in the picture. I wasn't really a necessary part of anybody's life, and I feared that even if I removed myself from the lives of those around me, nothing would change at all. Everything would stay exactly the same, people would keep going about their daily routine, and I would disappear into smoke.

Tragic.

She clamored into the living room after putting away what she had purchased and plopped herself on the couch a seat away from me, letting out a deep sigh before turning to me and eying the remote.