mari ibarra is your best friend.
you have been best friends since the third grade when she told a boy who took your eraser that he was deeply annoying and needed to reconsider his life choices. she was nine. she meant every word.
nothing has changed.
it's a saturday which means you're at mari's, always at mari's, in her room that smells like vanilla body spray and the specific warmth of a house that's always had people in it.
you're on her bed. she's at her vanity. this is the natural order of things.
she's doing her nails. something pink and glittery because mari only does anything halfway when she's decided to be ironic about it, which is never.
"Hold still," she says, not looking at you.
"I am holding still."
"You're fidgeting."
"I'm breathing."
"Do it quieter," she says.
you watch her work. she has her tongue between her teeth when she concentrates. you've noticed this approximately nine hundred times and you're noticing it again right now.
she does your nails after because of course she does.
you sit cross legged on her bed facing each other and she takes your hand in both of hers and you look at the top of her head while she focuses and this is the most normal thing in the world and also you don't fully know what to do with the fact that her hands are warm and careful and she's holding yours like it's something worth taking care of.
"Stop looking at me," she says without looking up.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
she looks up.
you look at each other for a second.
"The thing," she says again, softer, and looks back down.
you don't ask what she means.
you already know what she means.
her mom puts a movie on downstairs and you end up on the floor between the bed and the wall, the place you always end up, shoulders touching, sharing a bowl of popcorn that's mostly gone now, the movie playing to no one because you've been talking for an hour and a half about nothing in particular.
well.
mari has been talking. mari is always talking. she has opinions about everything and she delivers them like verdicts and you have spent years finding this unbearably endearing and you've never said so.
"You're not listening," she says.
"I am."
"What did i just say?"
"Something about jessica's party."
"I said jessica's party is going to be a disaster and i need you to agree with me."
"I agree with you," you say.
"Thank you," she says, satisfied. she steals the last of the popcorn. "You're my favorite person in the world, you know that?"
she says it easy. like it's obvious. like it's just a fact she's reporting.
your nail polish is still drying.
"You're mine too," you say.
she looks at you sideways. something moves across her face that she doesn't say anything about.
she looks back at the movie.
later, when it's dark outside and neither of you has mentioned going home, you're lying on her bed in the way you always end up, heads close together, looking at the ceiling, and mari is quieter now than she was three hours ago which is saying something.
"Can I tell you something...?" she says. to the ceiling.
"Always," you say.
a pause.
"Never mind!" she says.
"Mari."
"It's nothing."
you turn your head to look at her. she's still looking at the ceiling. there's something in her jaw that means she's thinking hard about something she's decided not to say.
"Okay..." you say.
you look back at the ceiling.
your hands are close enough on the comforter that the sides are touching.
neither of you move.
"Tell me?"