It's not the soft clinking of the glass that really gets to her.
It's her laugh. She laughs and it's like someone has stolen her breath away.
She laughs and she feels it. The sound consumes, it drowns out the rest of her hearing. The rest becomes droning. The sound vibrates inside of her and it makes her want to drown. To go somewhere else, somewhere where she's not. But she gets caught up in it.
She is caught up in the sound, caught up in the celebratory air that she is not a part of. She wants to catch what is being uttered the way that laugh captures her, she wants to be caught, she wants – she wants to know what is making her happy.
So, she is surprised when he asks her again, when he brings her back into their conversation. Into her reality.
"Huh?" she asks.
"What," he murmurs, frowning as he does. His eyes are drawn to her distraction; they look behind her – and suddenly, he knows, they all seem to know – but his eyes draw back, and he resumes, "is the cost?"
"It's just what I told you," she clarifies, her tone affected by the way he looks at her now.
"What," he scoffs, "then do it."
"I don't know."
"Don't you want to move out?"
"Sofia is there."
"So," he starts, and now his eyes look behind her, as though in warning, "is Callie."
"I want," she says, suddenly aware of her presence, suddenly aware of her laughter in a room that is filled with everyone but her, "to be her friend."
"No," he refutes, "you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"Well," he grins, "you sure have a bad way of showing it." And he brings her back again, but to another time.
Callie said that. She never expressed herself enough. See? Why don't you just – If you'd just say this stuff out loud once in a while. If she did, if she did. Say it, say it. Love should be verbalized.
Shouldn't it?
She should have said it more.
Resentment boils. "I'm over it now."
"Yeah, right," he says, and she wants to yell.
"I am," she insists. "I am."
It took time. She's here now. They've been done for months.
Callie left her. In turn, she gave Callie silence. Was she okay? It wasn't Callie's problem. She wasn't her problem anymore.
She wouldn't be her problem.
Callie stopped trying. She took the silence and went on with her life.
So they exchanged pleasantries, only speaking when child-rearing duties were addressed. They spoke when mortgage bills were due. They spoke about cooperative surgeries. Smiles were rare.
Laughter, especially.
The stony silences turned into habitual silences. They grew used to it. Callie did. She did too. She did and her resentment seemed to dissipate. So, it seemed okay. It is okay.
It's okay now.
"Alright," he says, "be her friend. That way, you'll never get over her."
He misses the point, she thinks. She's over it, not her. She realizes that and hesitates. She finishes her wine and stands to leave, staring at him for only a moment before grabbing her jacket.
He says nothing, though – this man that used to be her student. She says nothing too, and she appreciates that mutual understanding. The thought almost distracts her as she makes her way out of the bar, as she passes by her laughing, gorgeous ex-wife.
Not today, she thinks. Not tonight, it isn't the night.
She feels Callie's eyes on her and it makes her want to turn around. But she doesn't. She doesn't when she hears that laughter again – louder, and almost contrived.
She'll say it. But not today.
Friends don't interrupt.