“It’s not a big deal,” my best friend said over the phone, her voice dripping with condescension after she canceled our three-week-old dinner plans with a last-minute text.
I was standing in my bedroom wearing a new silk dress, holding a phone that felt like a tiny bomb.
This wasn’t the first time Jenna had bailed. It was just the last.
For years, I swallowed the disappointment while she told me I was being too sensitive for expecting a friend to simply show up.
She thought she could hide on her couch after hanging up on me, but she had no idea I was about to put her disrespect on display for everyone we knew to see, using nothing more than my phone and the empty chair across from my table.
The Last Straw: The Ritual of Preparation
The silk felt cool against my skin, a soft black whisper in the quiet of our bedroom. I’d bought this dress for a reason, a specific, ridiculous, hopeful reason. It was the kind of dress you wear when you want the evening to feel like an event, not just another Friday night. It dipped low in the back, and I had to do that awkward contortionist move to get the zipper all the way up, my shoulder protesting with a dull ache.
Mark poked his head in, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Wow, Sarah. You look… expensive.”
I laughed, a short, breathy sound as I turned to the mirror. “That’s the goal. We’re going to that new place, The Gilded Glass. You can’t show up there in jeans.” I smoothed the fabric over my hips. It had been a while since I’d felt like this, like a version of myself from a decade ago who didn’t have to coordinate school pickups and client calls. My job as an event planner meant my entire life was a color-coded calendar of other people’s perfect moments. Tonight was supposed to be mine.
“Jenna’s going to love that dress,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.
I met his eyes in the reflection, my smile tightening just a fraction. “Assuming she shows.”
The words hung there, a puff of cold air in the warm room. It was the unspoken thing, the little landmine we both knew was buried under the evening’s plans. Jenna. My best friend since we were college roommates, sharing ramen and secrets in a dorm room that always smelled faintly of burnt popcorn. And now, the most unreliable person I knew.
It wasn’t a sudden change. It was a slow erosion, a chipping away at plans, promises, and my patience. The concert tickets for The Lumineers that went to waste because she “felt a headache coming on” an hour before the show. The weekend trip to the coast she’d bailed on the morning we were supposed to leave, claiming her cat looked “anxious.” Each cancellation was a small paper cut, insignificant on its own, but the cumulative effect was a thousand tiny wounds that refused to heal. Mark called it The Jenna Tax—the emotional price you paid for making plans with her.
I picked up the silver earrings from my dresser, my hands moving with practiced precision. “She will. She promised. She knows how much I’ve been looking forward to this.” The words sounded hollow even to me. I was trying to convince myself. My son, Leo, padded in, his pajamas on backward. He wrapped his arms around my leg.
“You smell like flowers, Mom.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” I bent down to kiss his forehead, careful not to smudge my lipstick. He was the reason nights like this were so rare, so precious. Finding a babysitter, coordinating with Mark’s schedule, the sheer logistical gymnastics required for one night of adult conversation and overpriced cocktails. It was a production. An event. And if there’s one thing an event planner hates, it’s a no-show from a keynote speaker.
I gave myself one last look in the mirror. The woman staring back looked confident, put-together. She looked like she had a friend she could count on. It was a beautiful lie.
The Five-Word Gut Punch
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, a cheerful little chirp that felt entirely at odds with the knot forming in my stomach. I’d just finished the final spritz of hairspray, a chemical helmet to ward off the Carolina humidity. It was 7:15 PM. We were supposed to meet at 7:30. She was probably just confirming, or telling me she was running five minutes late. Jenna standard time.
I picked up the phone. Her name glowed on the screen, a little profile picture of us from two years ago, smiling on a beach, blissfully unaware of the unreliability to come.
The text was five words. Five simple, devastatingly familiar words.
*Sorry, not feeling it tonight.*
I read it once. Then twice. My brain refused to process it. There was no explanation, no excuse, not even a flimsy one about a sick cat. Just a flat, dismissive declaration. *Not feeling it.* As if my time, my effort, the babysitter I was paying twenty dollars an hour, were all subject to her fleeting whims.
A hot flush crawled up my neck. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, a dull, angry thud. I sank onto the edge of the bed, the expensive silk of the dress suddenly feeling like a costume for a play that had just been canceled. All that energy, all that anticipation, fizzled into a sour, metallic taste in my mouth.
Mark walked back in, holding his keys. “Ready to go? The sitter’s here.” He saw my face and his smile vanished. “Don’t tell me.”
I just held up the phone, the screen a stark white flag of surrender. He read it and let out a long, slow breath. He didn’t say, “I told you so.” He never did. But it was there, in the sag of his shoulders, in the sympathetic pity in his eyes that I hated more than anything. I didn’t want pity. I wanted a goddamn friend who showed up.
“Again?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Again,” I confirmed, my own voice tight and brittle. I thought of Leo’s fifth birthday party. Jenna had promised to come early to help me set up. She was going to be in charge of the face-painting station. An hour after the party started, she’d texted: *Got caught up in something, so sorry!* I’d spent the party with a streak of blue paint on my cheek, trying to simultaneously manage twenty screaming five-year-olds and draw a passable Spiderman on a squirming toddler.
Every canceled coffee date, every unanswered call, every last-minute bail—it all came rushing back, a tidal wave of disrespect. And I was just supposed to take it. I was supposed to text back, *No problem! Feel better!* and quietly absorb the disappointment yet again.
Not tonight. Tonight, the dam was breaking.
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