Page 8 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Ali, in a nutshell. After the beer, they christened the IKEA bed he’d just assembled.

The sex wasn’t earth shattering, and Ali’s conversation topics were limited to (a) crystals and (b) conspiracy theories (like the one suggesting that Ted Cruz was, in fact, Rob Kardashian). But he was kind. And an artist! He’d painted a few portraits of Ricki, and they were lovely.

She didn’t know much else about him, which was what she thought she wanted.

But deep down, Ms. Della’s words reverberated through her.He was music I could listen to forever.She wondered how it would feel to intensely connect with someone. A man who was custom-made to be yours. But then she caught herself. It sounded too rare, the kind of thing that happened to a lucky few. And so she buried the thought and snoozed through another “Moon Landing—World’s Greatest Hoax!!!” video with Ali.

The second miracle came in the form of a disgraced former child star. One afternoon, Ricki was rolling out wallpaper when her shop door flew open.

“Hide me!” yelped a lightly freckled woman with a sleek, low bun. Intentionally anonymous looking in clean makeup, a yoga set, and a puffer, she could’ve been any Harlem Hot Girl. Except that she wasn’t.

“Holy shit, you’re…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Help me!”

“Bathroom!” Ricki blurted out, pointing toward the hallway.

Tuesday Rowe raced past her, down the hall.TheTuesday Rowe. The TV star who would’ve been a movie star—if her career hadn’t been cut short when she was twenty and she accused her Hollywood agent of sexual harassment. Instead, the biracial beauty was fired from theTGIFsitcom she’d starred in since she was seven.Ready Freddywas about a hunky white widower who grief-adopts five multicultural kids, all of whom possess tremendous vocal range and form a pop group. When the show began, Tuesday’s character was the Feisty Black Girl with the One-Liners. But as she grew into a gorgeous teen, it morphed into the Flirty Black Girl with the Pregnancy Scares. Today, the twenty-nine-year-oldwas living anonymously and comfortably off syndication residuals while struggling to write her memoir,See You Next Tuesday.

Ricki rushed to the window and spotted three middle-aged men ambling down 137th Street, waving their phones.

“They’re gone,” Ricki called out, her heart thundering with adrenaline. In a flash, Tuesday joined her at the window to see for herself.

“You saved me.” Tuesday was out of breath, but she sounded exactly like the sitcom version of herself that Ricki had grown up hearing. “Whew! Good looking out, sis.”

“Of course. Anytime.”

Tuesday flashed Ricki her megawatt smile. Ricki smiled back, and the two gave each other a pound. A conspiratorial energy sparked between them.

“I’m Ricki. Um, Ricki Wilde.”

“Fuck yeah, you are. Iconic name.” Tuesday smoothed her hair and sighed grandly. “Ugh. Those mouth-breathing dorks chased me all the way from Sexy Taco.”

Ricki’s eyebrows rose. Sexy Taco might bring her foot traffic, after all.

“Such an invasion of privacy,” she said. “And creepy. Does that happen a lot?”

“With guys, yeah. I gave them their first hard-on, so they think I belong to them. But who really knows why? The male psyche is too twisted to be any of my business.”

Ricki remembered when nineteen-year-old Tuesday famously told reporters that she didn’t “really believe in men, as a concept or genre.” That was after her brief marriage to an allegedly closeted NBA star, a union that gossip bloggers swore was orchestrated by her crooked manager.

Tuesday took a cursory glance around the space, spotted theemerald throne, and gasped. She walked to the center of the room and did a slow spin. “This place is dope.” She looked Ricki up and down. “You’redope. Cute jumpsuit.”

“You like it?” Ricki beamed. The encounter had happened so fast, her signature social anxiety hadn’t had a chance to show itself. “I made it from a secondhand muumuu. Thrifting and sewing are my self-care.”

“Mmm. A sustainable queen.” She squinted at her. “Where’d you come from?”

Tuesday asked this question imperiously, even though she’d been the one to burst into Ricki’s shop. Ricki gave her the abridged version of her life story while Tuesday explored the shop’s jungly decor. Finally, she stopped at a bowl of tiny crystals.

“Pretty, right? Take one,” offered Ricki. “My boyfriend, well, my not-boyfriend… myhandymangave them to me. Supposedly, they restore calm.”

“We’ve all had a handyman, girl.” Tuesday plucked one out of the bowl, popped it into her mouth, and gulped. Ricki screamed.

“They’re crystals, not pills! You’re supposed to put them in your bra or whatever!”

Tuesday, who’d thought it was an oddly shaped Xanax, said, “I don’t wear bras.”

Stunned, Ricki burst into laughter. Tuesday giggled even harder. And from that moment on, they were partners in crime. The absurdity of Tuesday’s crystal snafu made Ricki feel safe enough to be herself. And for Tuesday, the fact that Ricki never sold the crystal story to gossip blogs meant she was a “real one” (badly burned by former friends, the actress had a low bar for relationships). Nothing seals tighter than best friends who’ve never had one.

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