“Let me in!” Steph’s annoyed voice.
“Oh my god.” I put on the safety, shove the gun back in my purse, and blow out long and slow through my mouth. Holy shit. I open the door. Steph is clinging to her giant, heavy comforter and a big duffel bag filled with her stuff—that’s what was dragging across the gravel.
“You freaked the crap out of me,” I say.
“Why?” She marches past me with her comforter train.
“You’re creeping around, dragging something. What do you think?”
She gives me a look like I’m whacked. “Okay, it was a bag?”
“It sounded like a body.” I smirk. “What do you have in that thing? Are you moving in?”
She barks out a laugh. “Maybe.”
“Did you set off that car alarm?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nope. That was going off already.” She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, but then she doesn’t.
I let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, clearly, I’m freaking out here.” I don’t tell her about how I almost shot her through the door.
“I just looked online—people are such dicks. You think I’m going to leave you here by yourself, you cray-cray. You should have called me.”
“I wanted you to get some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep thinking about all the hate you’re getting. Anyway, I have to be here in case anyone eggs your house or something. I am a human shield!” She reaches her arms out and stands in front of me as if she’s blocking bullets.
I smile. I’m grateful for Steph, that’s my first thank-you for the night. Number two: grateful she wasn’t a killer. Number three: grateful for the gun.
Steph glances at the door, like she’s worried now too. The car alarm has beeped off.
“What?”
“Nothing…” Steph gives me her big old smile, showing all her teeth, which means she wants something. “Maybe you could make some cookies?” She blinks her big brown eyes and bats her eyelashes, bunching up the comforter around her waist.
“You came here for cookies?”
“Damn straight. Chocolate chip. And then I’m sleeping here. No arguing. Or I can make the cookies if you don’t want to.”
“No, I got it.” It’s something to do at least. I reach into my plastic box for the ingredients and send you a sugar-powered message: Making your favorite cookies. Think: hot, melted chocolate chips.
I dump the cookie mix into my bowl and reach into the fridge for eggs. “After this, I’m out of eggs.” Sadness twists inside me, ropes around my intestines, squeezes them like a wet towel.
“You gotta go shopping.”
“Chris always drives me. He better get home soon.” I add oil and eggs to the dry ingredients. Don’t tell her how the thought of grocery shopping makes me ill. We’ve been doing it together for the last eight months, like we’re already married.
“You should have considered that before you went on this break.”
“Yep, along with a lot of other things.” Oh gosh. The lump in my throat feels like an orange shoved in there.
Steph winces. “I’m sorry, I keep saying the wrong thing.”
I sniff. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t say the wrong thing around me, who can you say the wrong thing around?”
“You’d never use a guy for his car.”
“Nope,” I say. “Would you?”
She laughs. “Um, yes.”
That’s so true. “It’s nice having him drive me around, but sometimes I like to ride my bike. It’s my only exercise.”
“Cycling hurts my crotch.”
“You need a better seat,” I say.
“It’s boring.”
“Not if you dip in and out of traffic.” I slide the first batch of cookies in the toaster oven and look over at Steph stretched out on the sofa. “Cycling makes me feel alive, you know?”
“Until you’re dead.”
I shrug.
“I like to sit on my ass and have someone else drive.”
After the first batch of cookies are done, I put two on a plate for Steph, and then I think of how you always try to help people who are sad and the only person I know who’s worse off than me is Beth and maybe she’d like some cookies too. So I put the remaining two on a plate.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Steph, and take the cookies outside.
Soon as I’m outside, I think of the whistler. I hurry around the side of the house and open the neighbor’s gate. Sure hope the dogs are inside. I knock on her door.
I don’t hear anything inside. I’m thinking, Oh shit, this is a mistake, I mean, the lights are on, but it’s after midnight. And what about the whistler? Then she calls in her croaky voice: “Hold on.” She’s unlocking the door. Then it’s her head in the crack and the dogs are going crazy behind her.
“I brought you warm cookies.” I feel like a goddamn Girl Scout.
“You brought me cookies?” Her prematurely wrinkled face twists, as if it doesn’t know what to do with this news.
I hold up the plate.
“Thank you.” She reaches a skinny hand through the door and takes the plate. “I can’t—the dogs.”
“No worries,” I say. “Just dropping them off. Bye.”
I hurry out the yard, feel kind of stupid. Don’t know why I did that.
Steph is on the sofa, eating her first cookie. She’s grabbed herself a glass of milk and put the next batch in the toaster oven. “You take them to your neighbor?”
“Yeah.” I make a face. “It was weird.”
“It was nice,” Steph corrects me. She picks up a cookie from the plate and holds it out to me. “You want?”
I drop down next to her and take the cookie. I remember the last time I made them. You were on my sofa, stretched out, your feet over the end, saying you always wanted a woman who could cook, and I was telling you how sexist that was, that I wanted a man who could cook, and you laughed and said, “Done.” It made me happy, you saying that.
I look at Steph and sigh. “I’m worried.”
She nods and sucks her lip. A tear rolls down her face. “Fuck,” she says, wiping it away. “I told myself I’m not crying, not in front of you.”
“You can cry.”
“I care about him too, you know?”
I hug her. “Thanks. All we can do is wait. Maybe he’s okay.”
Steph sniffs and then curls up on her side with her thick comforter and closes her eyes. I do not close my eyes. My brain is spinning. I’m thinking about Dave Johnson and your phone being turned on and those trolls and how I’m going to be a basket case tomorrow and I should sleep so I don’t lose it and also how nice my best friend’s feet feel on my leg. Sometimes what you need isn’t always what you ask for, and it takes a good friend to know that.