In Another Life

14 - "Whenever you look at me I wish I was her"

14 - “Whenever you look at me I wish I was her”

The thing about Zoey was that she was a really good person.

“We know. You’ve told us like a thousand times already,” Lynn grumbled, popping peanuts into her mouth and leaving all the raisins behind. She refused to buy the packet that only had peanuts because the raisins gave a certain flavour to her peanuts that she liked, or so she said. Sometimes, Lynn spoke things that made sense only to her. Honestly, Ava didn’t mind because it meant more raisins for her packet.

“Hey, let her mope. Her man is leaving in two days and she's trying to be a good person,” Haley said, defending her. Then she turned to Ava and sighed. “But Lynn is right, girl. You praise Zoey a lot.”

Ava dropped her head back against the couch and tipped her ginger beer towards her mouth, sipping on the spicy liquid before sighing. “When I met her that night, it was like a smack to my face. She was so pretty and f*cking sweet. Like who is even that sweet without being condescending?”

Tina waved a hand to the ceiling. “Jessica. Like literally.”

Everyone hummed and nodded in agreement.

“It’s like you want to hate her but you’d only be the bad guy for doing that. She gives no justification for it,” Haley added.

“Zoey is just like that, only she’s a redhead.”

Lynn snorted out a laugh. “That’s excuse enough for me.”

Haley rolled her eyes. “You can’t dislike her just because she has the same hair colour as your ex.”

Lynn harrumphed. “The mind does what it wants.” She crossed her legs where she was sitting on the floor and sat up straighter. “Honestly though, she must be a saint for allowing you and Adam to be such good friends when she’s dating him.”

“It would be weird and clingy if she forbade him from having female friends, no?” Ava asked, thinking that she too would be really wound up if her boyfriend was so good friends with some other girl.

“Maybe. Depends on how long they’re dating and how close he is with that friend,”  Haley said, scratching her head before shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know. Depends, I guess.”

Lynn turned to Haley. “I gotta ask though. How is it for you? Like, are you fine with your girl having other girl friends?”

Haley thought about it for a second. “Jemma and I are really casual for now so I can’t say for sure. It’s really about trust. You can’t not have friends but there has to be boundaries, I think. Adam and Ava are super close. Like, too close, I think. I don’t think I’d want my serious partner to be that close to anyone other than me. You know what they say?”

Ava tried to stop Lynn from asking the inevitable but she did it anyway. “What do they say?”

Haley grinned and locked eyes with Ava. “A shoulder to cry on is a d*ck to ride on.”

“Eeewwwww!” Ayeleen cried from the doorway. “Why do I always walk in on your nasty conversations?”

Haley grinned mischievously and flapped her tongue obscenely. Ayeleen smacked her head before flopping down next to Ava on the couch, snuggling under the blanket that she herself was under. “What were you talking about anyway?”

Ava sighed. She was feeling weird about what Haley had said about her friendship with Adam. “We were discussing whether it’s okay for your partner to have friends of the gender they’re attracted to. What do you think?”