If We Lived Here Read Online Free PDF Page B

my butt isn’t doing anything but planting itself onto your couch. But first I’m raiding the fridge.” In the freezer Emma found a rice-milk coconut bar, probably the closest thing to junk food Eli and Annie had. She tore it open and plunked onto the couch, which afforded her a first-rate view of Annie’s calorie-blasting contortions.
    “Eli would kill you if he saw you eating that there,” Annie said between gasps.
    “Good thing he’s not here then. Who buys a white leather sofa, anyway?”
    “Eli’s boss has the same one, and he was inspired. It’s imported from Italy.”
    “Of course it is. Whatever happened to that futon from your old place, the one we scored on Avenue A after that mile-long bar crawl about a million years ago? Remember we paid those guys ten bucks to haul it up five flights to your apartment?”
    “God, they should’ve insisted on at least twenty. When I moved I put that ratty old thing right back where it came from, down on the curb. Good riddance.”
    “It’s exhausting me just looking at you.” Annie had moved on to burpees, manically launching herself into the air, squatting down, flinging her legs back into a plank, performing a push-up, then catapulting her body back up for more. “Does Eli freak out that you’re sweating on the rug, which he probably had airlifted in from Persia?”
    “Ha ha. You forget, my friend, I don’t sweat.”
    Emma reached out a foot and nudged Annie mid-jump, causing her to stumble. “Hey, clumsy, you don’t sweat, and apparently you don’t have any coordination, either.”
    “Ems, how dare you!” Annie stopped and caught her breath. Her flush overlaid with the blue goop gave her face a green sheen. “If I broke my ankle right then, you’d be responsible for carrying me down the aisle on Sunday.”
    “And I’d do it with pleasure and panache. So, wanna go through your suitcase?”
    “Nah. I know you’ll make me ditch all the fun stuff, like my mood candles and hot rollers.”
    “You’re flying to South Africa with hot rollers?”
    “See? Let’s do something fun instead. Ooh, I know. Wait here.”
    Annie scurried off. Moments later she returned, her face scrubbed clean and a flash drive between her fingers.
    “Eli converted all my old VHS tapes. You are not going to believe what I found.”
    Cozying up next to Emma, Annie opened her laptop, and moments later Emma was staring at moving images of the two of them from half a lifetime ago. There they were in Annie’s childhood basement—Emma recognized the teal wallpaper—both in off-the-shoulder dresses, practicing their pouts. Emma could almost smell the rich rosiness of Heather Moon, the Clinique lipstick they both wore back then. Watching her teenage self make kissy faces to the camera, Emma felt half-convinced that this scene was from just last week; it was as if the last fifteen years had never happened, or had simply whooshed by in a dream, her brain’s invention during a particularly intense bout of REM sleep.
    “This is what I’m going to do all over Doug’s face tonight,” on-camera Annie said, her voice the same as now. She smooched Emma’s cheek, and Emma grimaced at the camera. Emma remembered the lead-up to this night. Though they’d only been freshmen, Annie had strategically scored them invites to Prom. For months she’d been “running into” senior Doug Parker in the halls, at the mall, wherever, and reeling him in with her charm and her well-developed chest. This effort was made partly because Doug was a hot football player and Annie could imagine nothing more incredible than slow dancing with him at Prom, but also because she’d known that his best friend, Joey Puck, would be too shy to get himself a date, and then Emma could come, too.
    “How far are you gonna go with Joey tonight, Ems? First base? Second?” Video Annie tugged fast at the zipper on her friend’s dress, exposing Emma’s suddenly bare top half to the camera.
    She shrieked. “Annie, what