Could I be any lamer?

“Oh,” I said.

“Alice.” Bette flicked her cigarette to the ground and faced me. “It’s a big deal to go from friends to…” She gestured between us as if to say ‘whatever the ***** this arrangement is’.

I agreed. And she made it sound terrible.

“Come on,” she said, putting her arm around me. “We’ll go back to my place.”

***

That was over a month ago. And staying over Bette’s still seemed like a big deal sometimes, like I was doing something wrong, or stepping over a line. And I’ll totally take the blame for these unprompted, paranoid thoughts-I mean, it’s not like Bette has ever made me feel unwelcome. In fact, she was nothing but annoyingly, sickeningly sweet for the entire week after our one-month anniversary, probably on account of her still palpable guilt.

“Why’d you give up smoking anyway?” Bette asked in the darkness of her bedroom. We both watched the smoke curl up from her cigarette before she stamped it out in the ashtray on the nightstand. “Your mom said-”

“Why are you having secret correspondences with my mother?”

“-that you used to. I am not having secret correspondences with your mother. You’re paranoid.”

I glared at her. She attempted to apologize by putting her arm around me and I moved closer to her in the bed, resting my head on her shoulder. It made sense that way. “I… uh, I don’t know,” I said, honestly considering it. “I guess I just, you know, graduated from college, cut my hair, and made a conscience decision to start being an adult or something.” At Bette’s raised eyebrow, I amended, “Not that smoking is a kid thing. Except, for me it was-it was just this thing I did because I wanted to be rebellious and out there. A lot of what I did in college was all for effect.”

Bette smiled. “Half of college is for effect,” she mused. “I was smug and arrogant until the moment I got my degree and I realized I’d have to do something with it. Then I wondered what I was so smug about.”

“Really?” I asked vaguely, yawning. “I wish you’d wonder that these days, too.”