Chapter 28 - Old Friends

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The condensation on my plastic cup trickles down the side of it, creating a ring of water on the table. I trace my finger around it, listening to Marley talk my ear off. 

It’s a welcome sound, honestly. 

“Maggie just had her baby. You remember Maggie, don’t you?” he asks. 

I do. Maggie Anderson went to school with us for years. She was Einstein smart, beautiful, humble, and sweet. I never was very close with her, but always felt she was someone I could confide it. 

It saddened me when I learned that she never left Texas. She married her long time boyfriend a few months after graduation, and fell pregnant just a couple short weeks later. 

When I got out of Texas, I stayed out. 

For a few different reasons. 

But mostly because I knew I belonged somewhere else. 

And that somewhere else, is New York City. 

Maggie’s just given birth to her third child, and it makes me a little sick to think that she’s my same age, and is already a full time mom. 

She never went to college, and she will never make anything of herself. 

Other than an oven for her and her husband’s buns. 

But look who’s talking... the surrogate. 

I prop my chin in my hand, trying to remember what Marley asked me about. “Uhhh...” I stall, embarrassed that I was caught daydreaming. 

"I was asking you if you’d heard from Maggie lately. She asked about you.”

I shake my head, staring into my cup of lemon water. The woodwork on this table is fascinating, so much so I don’t want to answer Marley’s question. 

I am such a chicken. 

I clear my throat, looking back at my old friend. 

“No, I haven’t.”

“You should call her. Her dad died recently. He had a heart attac-”

The words die in his throat as he realizes what he said. I bite my lip, looking away and feeling like a baby, because, even after ten years, the mention of a car crash sends me speechless. If a news story pops up on the TV about a multi-car pileup on the freeway I have to run away. I’m scarred for life in that way. 

But that’s not going to change. 

And neither is the fact that Matt is dead. 

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