India will add, "Whyyyyyy does she have to live in Texas? Why can't she live here?"
We would like everyone we adore to live right next door.
So before I tell you about Nicole, I feel like I need to tell you about Nicole.
After I got diagnosed, Nicole offered to come and take care of me. She reiterated this offer the weekend of my mom's memorial service, 10 days before my surgery.
She'd nursed her own mother through this, and Nick had to be away for five days for work not long after my surgery.
I took her up on the very kind offer.
Nicole and I met in high school in New Delhi.
We both arrived shortly before school started. She was two grades ahead, and she was gorgeous and fabulous and so charismatic.
Really, really smart, but could came across as a party girl. And did. Not. Care. What people thought.
This kind of confidence is so attractive.
She wore a bandanna around her head (this was the 80s, friends) and I started copying her. Because she was so fucking cool.
What I didn't know was that she'd been in a terrible car accident, and among other traumas, had had a head injury. She was covering up surgery.
Anyway, we sat together in French, and we lived near each other, and would often walk the 2.5 miles home from school together.
My sophomore year, we were both cheerleaders. I still miss those pom-poms.
Nicole graduated and went back to Texas, and we lost touch. Until a school reunion a couple decades later, where we picked up exactly where we left off.
If no longer able to form a cheer pyramid.
She still has a southern accent, and both of us speak really quickly. Which doesn't have anything to do with anything.
Until it does.
Nicole has this flawless, enviable skin, and dark hair and eyes, and she's always had eyelashes that a camel would kill for.
If she were in a Disney movie, she'd be an Angelina Jolie-type Maleficent, but also little birds would be sewing her clothing and bunnies would do her dishes. Children would follow her joyfully down the cobbled path.
India and Maude's daughter absolutely adore her. She's a celebrity to them.
Because she's cool and she's FUN.
After our reconnection, Nicole started visiting annually. She'd come for a week, and we'd all have such a good time together.
When Jordan was in Kindergarten, he would sit on the floor of her room very quietly until she woke up, and then he'd ask her to play LEGO with him.
That year, she volunteered to come with us on his class field trip to the zoo.
It was unseasonably hot, and chaperoning small children at the zoo is stressy (what if I lose someone else's child?), tedious (yes, yay, you can count to 500! Overandoverandover!), and exhausting. Exactly the kind of activity that makes me want to throw gin, ibuprofen, and coffee in a blender as soon as I get home and collapse on the sofa.
Nicole maintained a Very Good Attitude, whereas I...did not.
Anyway, one summer after a reunion party, a friend offered to give several of us a ride home. Nicole and another friend and I were lined up to get into the back of the car.
The way we were positioned, Nicole would be in the middle.
She turned to me and asked if I'd mind sitting in the middle. She said—or rather, what I heard her say was—"I can't sit in the middle because of my crotch scent."
And I was all, well, July in DC is really hot. And Nicole is wearing a short dress. This kind of thing happens.
Naturally, I was happy to sit in the middle. Probably best for all involved.
Somehow, a year or more later, we figured out that what she actually said was, "I can't sit in the middle because of my CAR ACCIDENT."
Truly, I have no idea how the subject arose. But I was all, car accident! CAR ACCIDENT!
And she was all, "You thought I was talking about vaginal odor, and you didn't even blink!"
Listen.
If you're my ride or die and you call me to tell me you've just killed your husband or some such, I won't ask why. I'll just remind you that I'm strong and my car is large enough to hold a body.
And that, my friends, is Nicole.
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