On Rotation

I hardly had to cry out for my girls to come running to my aid, ready to lift me up when I was down. This was what love was supposed to feel like: uplifting, encouraging, renewing. If I had to let go of a love that was not quite that, that was okay. Because I loved myself, and these women had taught me how.

'That’s right baby girl,' Miss Bernice said. 'You don’t need to be nobody’s wife! When the boys come around, you take what you want and move on, ‘cause that’s what they’ll do to you!'

'That finding someone to love you romantically is actually kind of easy,' Nia said. 'There’s a whole cocktail of brain chemicals at work telling you to obsess over this other person. Plus a rulebook for relationships we’ve all been given since infancy. Friendship doesn’t have any of that, and so finding a person who will hold you down for no reason is rare. Shae has so many coworkers who have a partner but not a single close friend, and they’re all desperately lonely because of it.'

'That’s the thing about you, Angie. You just... get it. You care about people, even when they’re kind of shitty to you, but you aren’t a doormat. You don’t lose sight of who you are in the process. You make me actually stop and think about things, you know?' He looked at me unblinkingly, his expression almost grave. 'That… I don’t think you realize how special that is.'