Writing With Abandon

“You are our emergency contact ❤️” Gi texts me, with a photo of her computer screen.

She and Jason are completing their condo application — they’re moving from their apartment for the first time since I’ve known her — and they need to provide at least two emergency contacts.

I made Gi my emergency contact as soon as I had separated from my ex. I went into every account that could require one and added her name and number.

“Relationship?”

“Friend.”

It was the first time I’d used a friend as an emergency contact, rather than a parent or a partner. But it made sense, given that I was living nowhere near my parents, and if there was anyone that I wanted to be there for me during an emergency, it was her.

Heck, she held my hand during a skin excision surgery I had! Played Taylor Swift music videos for me while watching the doctor work. She didn’t get grossed out at all. She was curious.

“She just cut a circle around it, then picked it up like — plop!” she showed me later with her fingers pinching and plucking up. She has a way of showing, not telling.

Gi has been like home since that dinner we had downtown four years ago: Spanish tapas, getting drunk on wine and sharing vulnerable secrets with each other. That dinner sealed the deal. We were destined to become friends.

“Amy, Amy, Amy,” Jason used to tease her, because we were always talking.

Their apartment has been my second home here in Miami. I’ve spent countless days there, just lazing around on the couch, snuggling Oscar, snacking on food, lounging by the pool, watching TV, talking, talking, and talking. I haven’t gone there as often as I’d like to lately. Last year was a busy and tough one for both of us, and now I’ve moved further away.

But we made plans this evening to spend Sunday together: first SoulCycle, then shower and lunch, then learning how to crochet together with our Woobles amigurumi kits (funnily enough, they make a set of dinosaurs and two of them are named Oscar and Phoebe, after our dogs!).

I’ll make sure to soak up all the bits of her apartment that I love so much while I’m there. All her books. The soft gray sofa. The little notions she’s slowly but surely placed around the home to turn it from a bachelor pad into as close to cottage core as you can get in an apartment with tile floors in Miami.

And I can’t wait to help her decorate her new apartment, just like she helped me in my last few homes.

So yeah, she’s my emergency contact. And I’m proud to be hers!

But sadly, I don’t know the movie you’re thinking of, Gi.