Page 74 of Friend Me

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I’d barely closedmy bedroom door when Alicia asked, “What’s going on with your dad?”

She hadn’t missed his calling me Maggie twice during dinner. Or how he’d been stumped by the coffee maker. The coffee maker he’d used twice a day for at least five years. I’d finally asked him to sit down and made his coffee myself.

I sat on the bed and gestured for her to do the same. Tigger leaped up and curled into her side like he belonged there. “He hasn’t been himself lately.” Leaving out Tigger’s grand adventure the night Dad let him escape, I filled her in on Dad’s trek to the BART station, his diagnosis, and the new health aide.

Alicia’s eyes crinkled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do to help?”

I reached out and flicked her hair over her shoulder. Growling, Tigger glared at me with his yellow eyes. “Jackson’s letting me leave early every day so I can take over from Sylvia, his caregiver. We’ll be fine.”

Alicia searched my face. “Will you?”

I was tempted, so tempted, to spill my guts to my friend, to tell her that, no, I was terrified I was about to lose the only family I had. But then my phone rang, and I glanced at the display. Butterflies with razor-sharp wings shredded my stomach. “It’s Tyler.”

She rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

I bit my lip. “No. I’m—I’m not ready to talk to him yet. We had a fight. About Dad, actually. He brought me some pamphlets about memory-care facilities.”

“Wasn’t he just trying to help?”

“I guess so.” My hand crept to the pendant around my neck and I zipped it along the chain. “But it made me see that we don’t want the same things. That I value family, and he doesn’t. Tyler moved across the country to get away from his family. I’ve never wanted to move out of this house. We’re so different I’m not sure we can even be friends anymore. I mean, I can’t avoid seeing him at work, but that’s it.” The ringing stopped.

“Friends can be different. It’s not like you two…” Her eyes widened.“Didyou?”

“No. No! Though he…he said we should be more than friends. I said no, and we were okay, but now we’re not.”

“That’s too bad. He’s a good guy. A good friend.”

A good friend. I didn’t have enough of those. What if he stopped coming to my desk and going to lunch with me? I’d miss those dimples. And his hugs. Still, every time I remembered those pamphlets, icicles stabbed my heart.

“What’s this?” Alicia reached down to where her boot brushed the floor and tugged the box out from under my bed.

“Wait!” I leaped off the bed and scrambled to stop her. But her ridiculously long arms snatched it out of my reach.

“Oh!” She snapped the lid back on the box. Then she opened it again. “Ohhhh.”

“That’s not—” My face had reached the same temperature as the surface of the sun.

“I like this one.” She pointed at The Tyler.

I collapsed onto the bed, hiding my face. “You can take it out. It’s clean.”

From its silky nest, she pulled the new long, purple, lifelike dildo with its obscenely bulbous head. Then, of course, she found The Cooper shoved underneath. She pulled it out, too. It was smaller, curved and featureless, made of sparkly silicone, a no-nonsense vibrator for getting business done. Until it hadn’t anymore.

She held one in each hand, eyebrows raised.

“What? Can’t a girl have a selection for different…experiences?”

She flicked on The Cooper. I’d left it on its highest setting, and it whined with effort. She winced and turned it off. Then she flicked on The Tyler, and it started a low pulse that made me squirm from three feet away.

“Different experiences.” The problem with having a best friend is that sometimes, she knows your business better than you do.

“The Coo—” I froze. “That one wasn’t meeting my needs.”

“You named your dildo after Cooper?”

I grimaced. “No?”

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