Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eyre Ward

Victoria wrote about the way winter in Venice was as gray as heartbreak . She wrote that she loved pistachio gelato so much she wished she could mail Sylvia a package full. She said she’d seen someone with the same color hair as Sylvia in Paris:
    I almost ran after her. I would have been so happy if she had been you, and we could have sat on a bench in Luxembourg Gardens and talked all afternoon! Wouldn’t that have been amazing, if you’d just surprised me like that? ( Why not, Sylvie? This place would be heaven if I weren’t lonely. Can’t you see it? You and me in gay Paree? )
    But Sylvia never visited. She didn’t have the money, but she also dreaded the way things could get dark around Victoria. Sylvia felt secure communicating through letters. From across the ocean, Sylvia could have the good parts of Victoria—her loyalty, her adventurous spirit—and avoid the messy late nights and regretful mornings. Though, of course, Sylvia had regrets of her own.
    During school vacations, Sylvia claimed the second twin bed in Victoria’s room. The Brights welcomed her with open arms, even driving up to Cambridge when Sylvia played Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls . After college, Sylvia worked in the accounting department at the Museum of Natural History and rented a windowless apartment a few blocks north of the Brights, visiting often and spending every single holiday seated at Mae’s giant mahogany table, the linen napkins rolled just so and slipped into silver rings. During those years, Sylvia still wrote to Victoria regularly, but she stopped writing back. Every few weeks, Victoria would call instead, and her messages were slurred and frightening. She began to make threats—“I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t call me back, Sylvia.”
    Sylvia always called back. In her terry-cloth robe, flipping through channels with her television volume on low, she listened to Victoria’s complaints (they were rants, really, fueled by booze and anger and who knew what else). Victoria was often betrayed, abandoned, bereft. It seemed that no one could handle her impossibly high standards, her volatility. No one else understood; no one else was honest, always there for Victoria; no one else was a true friend who always called back.
    Only Sylvia.
    When Victoria eloped with Uli, they settled down in Greece, and for a time, the late-night calls stopped. Sylvia was relieved, but she found she missed Victoria, too. Sylvia felt less important somehow—she didn’t matter as much to anyone else. Life with Victoria was scary, but it was fierce and hot. Sylvia was lonely, her days a little colorless without her best friend in the background.
    One March, Sylvia had taken a spring ski trip to Aspen with some colleagues. Sipping a glass of wine in the Caribou Club, she met Ray. Sylvia had never found a calling (being an assistant to an accountant suited her fine—she had no desire to go to accounting school) or a boyfriend; when Ray asked her (after four passionate days) to move in to his house on West Hopkins Avenue, she accepted. It turned out that Sylvia was scared of skiing; she was the only person in Aspen who would rather just read.
    As the years went by, Sylvia and Victoria gradually lost touch. When Victoria’s father, Preston—a tall, regal man with a distracted but loving demeanor—died, Sylvia sent an enormous bouquet. It had taken her a while to decide what flowers best honored the man. Calla lilies, she had decided: elegant, assured, a little snobby.
    Sylvia’s heart beat fast at the thought of being near Victoria and her family again. Life was so luxurious and exciting around the Brights. In the end, Victoria, despite her flaws, had been a loyal friend.
    Sylvia waited for a ring, then two, and finally, Mae answered the phone sleepily and accepted the charges.
    “Mae?” said Sylvia.
    “Sylvia, dear? Is that you?”
    “It’s me! I’m coming home. I mean to New York. Which will be home from now on. Again. Anyway,