“First comes college, then comes marriage, then comes Lizzie pushing a-“ Sarah nudged me under the table with her bare knee and I jumped.

“Don’t say it!” I stuck out my tongue. “You sound like my mother.”

“Life reduced to a nursery rhyme…” She shook her head, still smiling.

I watched her sip her wine, tuck her hair behind her ear, cut her spaghetti into pieces as if she were preparing it for a child. I wanted to say something, to break things open between us somehow, but I didn’t know the words.

As if she understood, she tipped her head at me and asked, “Isn’t that the usual order of things?”

“Who says I want to be usual?” My eyes didn’t move from hers.

“Now we’re talking…” A smile crept over her face, a smile I’d never seen before, something devious, exciting, her eyes lighting up with it. “And here I thought you were just gonna be another good sorority girl turned real Orange County housewife….”

“Well…” I dropped my eyes to my plate, feeling something heavy in my chest. “I probably am…”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Ha.” I snorted. “You don’t believe that for a minute.”

“Life changes you.” Sarah ate spaghetti with a spoon. I watched her taking delicate bites, amused. Here I was, slurping away at the noodles, and she was being as precise as a surgeon. “Sometimes you find the things that once did it for you just…

don’t… anymore.”

I studied her face, contemplating her words. “I’m not too young to get it, Sarah.”

“No…” she agreed. “But sometimes you just can’t tell people things. Sometimes they just have to happen. Life will happen to you. Trust me, it will. No need to hurry it along.”

“What if I want to?”

“Everyone says that.” Sarah took another sip of wine, looking at me over the rim.