Michelle is a lot of work.
The first time they get coffee, she bursts into tears and cries for an hour, while Leela pats her hand awkwardly and everyone in a three meter radius stares at them. She blames it on the hormones, but Leela has her doubts.
Not that she says anything about it.
Leela still feels numb and exhausted, all the time. It's the way she felt the day Fry died. Some part of her assumed it was the shock, that it would wear off over time, but it hasn't. This dull lack of feeling has become her new baseline.
She still can't bring herself to feel any warmth for Michelle. Most of the time when they meet Leela just sits and stares into her coffee, while Michelle pours out her feelings. She knows she should be offering advice, helping Michelle to navigate her collapsing marriage and impending motherhood. But what would she know about motherhood? What does she know about marriage?
The old Leela wouldn't have let that stop her. She would have lectured Michelle regardless.
She can't remember where that old self-assurance came from. The new Leela is uncomfortably aware that she never knew anything, and is in no position to judge.
The new Leela feels blank inside. Michelle talks for hours, sometimes, but all Leela registers of the conversation when it's over is a vague impression of loneliness and her tear-stained face.
But she keeps meeting Michelle all the same, and does her best to hide it when she feels herself zoning out of the conversation. These coffee mornings are the only thing she does outside of work anymore. And it never feels like a good time to drop the friendship. There is always some new drama with Michelle. She serves Pauly with divorce papers, and then she decides to move to New New York. There is a new apartment to find, and a new job, and a new doctor. Then Pauly contests the divorce.
"He wants a paternity test." Michelle gives a brittle laugh, as they browse an aisle of miscellaneous baby-related items one Saturday afternoon. "Can you believe that?"
This does sound like an asshole move, even for Pauly.
"What a jerk," Leela says, tapping a mobile of tiny rocket ships and watching it spin.
"I know. He thinks -" Michelle gives another splintered laugh, avoiding Leela's eye "- he thinks Fry is the father."
"What?"
Leela almost topples into the crib. She pulls back just in time, fighting the sudden, shock of nausea that crashes over her at the idea.
"Why would he - think that?"
It's stupid. It's crazy. It's not true.
Of course it's not. But her heart rate has accelerated out of control. The possibility yawns like a sinkhole under her feet.
"Because," Michelle says flatly. "He's an asshole."
If she noticed Leela's moment of discomposure, she doesn't comment on it.
She sighs.
"He has this whole stupid story he built up in his head, about how I was secretly in love with Fry and having an affair with him the whole time we were married. Which is such bull. Like I didn't try to make it work with him. Like he wasn't screwing his secretary for months before I found out about it. But now he wants to rewrite history so he's not the bad guy. In mediation last week he actually told me -" She stops herself. "It's not important. Whatever. In the world according to Pauly, all of this - my friendship with you, moving back to New York, everything - he thinks it's all my way of processing my grief after the man I was secretly in love with died." She rolls her eyes. "He thinks he has me all figured out."
"But it's not true."
Michelle scowls.
"No! This was supposed to be my fresh start. He was Pauly Shore. I tried like I hadn't tried since Charles, to make it work, and I don't know why I bothered. It's like my mom always said: you give your all to men and they take you for a ride. I wish I had been screwing around with Fry all along. It would have served Pauly right. But I hadn't even seen Fry again until after I found that cheap skank's lipstick on Pauly's collar."
"I'm sorry," Leela says.
"It's okay." Michelle shakes herself. "I know it's dumb. But I hate that he cheated first. I hate that he won. It's like every time I really care, they don't. Every time I trust a guy and stop playing games, he makes me feel like I was stupid even to try. Like I should have crushed his heart like a bug when I had the chance."
Leela nods slowly. Michelle may be taking the sentiment to embittered extremes, but it's hard not to see where she's coming from, after years on the dating scene. After a while it does start to feel like a game, where guys break the rules with impunity to get what they want, ignoring the emotional devastation they leave in their wake. Leela has lost count of how many men have lied to her to get her into bed. She won't ever forget the nausea she felt, looking at the smug post-coital faces of Zapp Brannigan or Alcazar, and feeling like they'd won, like she'd been duped in a game she hadn't even known she was playing.
Maybe for someone like Michelle, who can't take her revenge by kicking these guys' asses, punishing the next guy is the only way she can regain her self-respect.
Leela knows how it feels to stop trusting in men, and draw up a hard, protective shell around herself. She knows how it calcifies with every romantic disappointment, until the person who once lived behind it feels almost impossible to reclaim. Until it's too late and mistrust is all that remains, and a protective hardness that gradually metamorphoses into the problem.
"I know what you mean," she murmurs.
It's all she can say, but Michelle seems to recognize the fellow-feeling in it anyway.
They browse a while longer, in a silence that feels almost comfortable. They're passing a display of soft toys when Michelle reaches out and picks up a brown fuzzy puppy, with flopped-over ears.
"Fry used to have a dog like this," she says thoughtfully. "I forget what it was called."
Leela coughs.
"Seymour."
Michelle blinks.
"Yeah," she says slowly. "Seymour. That was it. How do you know that?"
Leela shrugs. She has that feeling again, like someone is standing on her chest. In her mind's eye she can see Fry. Talking about the dog. Telling her how much he loved him. Smiling.
It hurts.
"You should buy it," she says, to cover her reaction. She nods at the dog. "It's cute. You should buy it."
Michelle nods vaguely.
"I wasn't in love with Fry. And I don't want Pauly back," she says suddenly. "I don't want any man! Ugh. Pauly thinks he knows everything but he has no idea what I'm feeling. This is my second failed marriage. I'm in a place where I don't belong and all I want is to hold onto something that makes me feel connected to my old life. And I know it's crazy, but that's Fry. That's you."
"I don't think that's crazy."
Leela taps the nearest crib mobile, a cluster of little Earths and moons. As she watches they bob around the tiny sun in the center, in their own trundling orbit.
Michelle follows the rotation.
"Thanks," she says at last.
She takes a deep breath.
"I know I'm not easy," she admits. "I can be a bitch. I know that. But I really appreciate your friendship, Leela. And I'm hoping this baby can be a new leaf for me, the way I thought freezing myself would be. Before I woke up and saw Fry's face again, and fell right back to needing a man to make me feel safe."
She frowns down into the smiling, snub-nosed face of the stuffed puppy.
"I want to live my life on my terms, for once. I guess I've never really been alone. Before I left one relationship, I always had the next one lined up and ready to go. Even if it meant I had to cheat. I was just so scared of being on my own. I was scared to find out who I was without a relationship to define me. But now I think . . . I want to find out."
Leela turns this over. It feels like the sort of pronouncement she should give her full attention to.
"I think that's a good idea," she says at last, weighing her words with care. "It sounds . . . healthy."
Michelle smiles at that - actually smiles, an expression Leela has never seen on her face before. For the first time she understands what might have drawn Fry to Michelle in the first place.
"Speaking of healthy decisions," Michelle says. "You look terrible. Are you sleeping at all?"
Leela shrugs.
"Not much."
"You look like a zombie. Maybe you should see someone about that. A doctor. Get a sedative, you know, just for a while. It might help."
"I hadn't thought about it," Leela admits, honestly enough.
Sleep has evaded her for so long now it no longer seems like a priority. She snatches what she can, when she's worn her body down to a point of such exhaustion she drops. She can't remember the last time she fell asleep naturally.
"I don't like the idea of drugging myself," she says. "I don't want to become dependent."
"Well, maybe you could try something else. Hypnotherapy. Or a hot bath."
"Maybe."
Michelle sighs.
"It was just a suggestion." She examines the puppy again. "I'm gonna get this. It is cute."
Leela watches four hours of Hypnotoad that night when she gets home. It doesn't soothe her. She lies awake in bed afterwards the same as always, white noise buzzing in her brain as she watches the clock crawl closer to 4 a.m.
The next day Hermes upgrades the coffee machine. The new machine boils faster and has twice as much caffeine per cup. Leela fills up a flask, and joins the rest of the crew in pretending this new development has nothing to do with her.
When she accidentally dumps a cargo consignment out of the hold mid-flight, despite his efforts, Hermes is gracious enough to send her a written reprimand instead of confronting her himself.
A week later Amy just so happens to have an extra ticket for a week long spa vacation.
It doesn't particularly relax her, but Leela goes anyway.
They're trying.
She finds herself sitting at Michelle's sonogram soon after that.
"It's a boy," the technician says, and Michelle bursts into uncontrolled laughter.
She laughs so much the jelly slides off her stomach and the tech loses the image, but she doesn't seem to care.
Leela watches her, and tries to remember how it feels to laugh.
She can't.
Michelle starts going to a single parent support group. She buys a bookshelf, and fills it with books that have titles like What You Didn't Know To Expect When You're Expecting and Lean Up: The Single Gal's Guide To Self-Ownership. They're ridiculous, but Michelle seems to be getting something out of them. She doesn't complain as much - unless it's about Pauly, who seems to be an eternal trigger for her - and she's not as unpleasant to be around. Spending time with Michelle still feels like work, but work like it's work to be around her parents or the crew at Planet Express. Leela stops suffering through it and starts wishing she had more to contribute to the conversation instead.
She doesn't, most of the time. That blankness is still there, eating her up from the inside out. The zoning out is getting worse and worse.
She watches Michelle swell out week on week and wonders if it's ironic that she herself has never felt so empty.
"So anyway, my doctor put me on an iron supplement," Michelle is saying, and then she says "Do you ever think about it?" and Leela realizes she zoned out again.
"I'm sorry, what?"
Michelle blinks.
"Kids," she says slowly. "Dating. I was asking if you ever think about your future. Maybe it's time to put yourself out there. If you're not happy, you don't have to stay so stuck."
"I'm not stuck."
"Aren't you?"
"I'm perfectly happy with my life," Leela says, nettled.
Michelle gives her a long look.
"Are you?"
"I'm comfortable. On my own. I like my own company."
It's what Leela tells her parents these days, and Michelle doesn't look any more convinced by it than they do.
Recognizing her doubt, Leela sighs.
"I've been engaged," she explains. "Twice. Adlai and Alcazar. It didn't work out. They were jerks." She hesitates. "And I was married, once. During the time skips. I don't remember it."
Michelle gives her a long, careful look.
"To Fry?"
Leela says nothing. She doesn't have to.
"What happened?"
Leela shrugs.
"I was the jerk. I panicked and accused him of tricking me into it. Then we never talked about it again." She stirs her coffee, then stirs it again. "I do that. Did that. I don't know why. I don't know what I was so afraid of. Ruining our friendship, maybe. It just felt easier to pretend it never happened."
She stares at her hands. She still has the rings, in a box under her bed. She'd found the invoice for the jeweler on the next quarter's credit card statement.
She'd paid for her own rings. That only confirmed her worst suspicions, because Fry may have been perpetually broke, but he had certain ideas about romance and -
"You know what the worst thing is?" she asks Michelle.
Michelle tilts her head to one side.
"Fry never talked about it either?"
It's a good guess.
But . . .
"No." Leela fidgets with her fingers. "The worst thing is, I think I asked him."
She shakes her head.
"I can be impulsive, in relationships. I let myself get swept away. But I can't see that happening with Fry. I knew him too well. And I was too used to being the sensible one in our relationship. There was no reason we had to be married. I don't see how we would even have wound up at the altar unless it was something I wanted." She hesitates. "And . . . I paid for my own engagement ring. Maybe there's a good explanation for that. Maybe Bender stole my AmEx card. But -"
"Maybe you bought it because you proposed," Michelle finishes. "Like in a leap year."
It had been a leap summer.
A year later, it's still a blank in Leela's memory, no matter how hard she tries to bring it back. The memories remain locked away somewhere unreachable; the Leela of that summer an unknowable stranger.
Leela stares down at her hands, frowning.
"I never told him," she says softly. "I couldn't prove it and it seemed cruel to bring it up again if I wasn't prepared to follow through on the consequences. And . . . I wasn't. I was too scared. It felt safer to pretend it never happened. But I still thought about it sometimes. Wondered about it."
I try to picture his face, she thinks but doesn't say. I imagine how happy he would have been. The way he would have looked at me.
"It's not good to wonder." Michelle's voice is surprisingly gentle. "You can't live your life torturing yourself with what might have been. Fry wouldn't want that, and you don't deserve that. You need to let the past go. Move on."
Leela hardens.
"I don't need another relationship," she says stiffly. "Frankly, I'm surprised you're trying to push me into one."
Michelle sighs.
"I'm not trying to push you into anything. Don't be so defensive! All I'm saying is, what works for me doesn't look like it's working so well for you. I like being alone. I like being single. I feel like I'm finding myself for the first time in my life, and finding out I can be someone I actually like. I'm learning to be a friend and a mom and maybe this is all some kind of early life crisis but I don't care, I'm grateful for it. It saved me."
She sighs again.
"But that doesn't mean it would be the thing that saves you. We're not the same, Leela. I spent my whole life clinging to men like a life raft . . . but you spend yours shutting people out because you're too afraid to let them in. Even your friendships. You keep everyone at a distance and it's not making you happy. I wish you could see that. I wish I could help you, like you helped me. Your biggest regret is not letting Fry in, and now he's dead and you're making the same mistake all over -"
Leela cuts her off, suddenly furious.
"My biggest regret isn't not letting Fry in," she snaps. "I let him in. I can't let him go. My biggest regret is not - not saving him. And now you think I should - save myself from the pain of - no. No."
Michelle stares at her, stricken.
"Fry was a good person," she says at last. "And he cared about you. But he's gone. What is it going to take for you to believe he would want you to be happy?"
Leela stands up abruptly, her chair falling away behind her.
The blood is roaring in her ears.
"He can come back from the dead," she says tightly, "and tell me himself."