Two thousand eight hundred forty seven dollars. That was the number on my screen, and I read it out loud, slowly, one request at a time. Dinner in March. Concert tickets. Half the cabin in the mountains. Her share of the gas.
Dana stopped laughing somewhere around the cabin.
I did not raise my voice. When I got to the end, I put the phone face down on the table and said I lost my job on Tuesday, and I could not cover anybody tonight, not even for her birthday. I was sorry.
It was so quiet I could hear the kitchen.
Then Megan, who had been looking at her plate, looked up. She said she had a few requests out to Dana too. Then Josh said the same thing. Then another girl at the end of the table said she stopped inviting Dana to things two years ago and never said why.
Nobody was mean about it. Nobody piled on. They just said it. After three years, it felt like the whole table finally let out a breath.
Dana put down cash for her own meal and left without saying goodbye. The rest of us split the check. Megan paid for mine and would not let me argue.
I went home and cried in my car. Not because of Dana. Because of the job, and the bills, and the feeling that I had just blown up a friendship I had for ten years.
Four days later, Dana knocked on my door.
She looked like she had not slept. She was holding an envelope. She sat on my couch and told me she had been drowning for three years. Credit cards, a car loan, medical bills from when her mother got sick. She had been too ashamed to tell anybody. So she laughed it off and let me carry her, and then she made fun of me for noticing, because that was easier than the truth.
She said hearing that number out loud in front of everybody was the worst moment of her life, and also the first time she stopped lying to herself.
In the envelope was a check for eight hundred dollars and a handwritten list of payments for the rest. Every two weeks. She had already called a credit counselor and cut up two cards.
I did not want to take it. I needed to. I took it.
She has not missed a payment. She even rounds up.
And Megan, the one who paid for my dinner that night, called me the next week. Her company was hiring. She had already passed my name to her boss. I started a month later.
Dana and I get coffee now, every other Saturday. She pays. She insists. Last time she slid the receipt across the table to me with a smile and said, see, I remembered my wallet.
We both laughed. It was a real laugh this time.
Three years of I will get you next time. Turns out she finally did.