I mentally graded the rows of arses while I sucked on my strawberry banana smoothie with a double shot of energy boost enhancer. It was like the Olympics, only a fuck of a lot better than synchronized swimming. I liked a full derriere. From the right, I started my grading in the back row. There was a skinny seven with a nice shape, followed by a buxom eight in a pair of pink trainers, and a five who definitely needed to eat a little more pizza. When I got to the fourth rear end, I gave myself a brain freeze sucking on the straw while staring—now that’s a nice plump ten. Damn. I was in the wrong line of work.

Calliope finished up her class, hit some stupid gong, and walked to me wiping her forehead. “You’re such a pig, you know that?”

“What? I came to visit my BFF.”

“You looked like you were judging an ass contest the way you were staring.”

I smirked. “Number four, purple Nike leggings. She won. I’m going to give her the gold medal when she comes out from the locker room.”

Calliope elbowed me in the ribs. “Help me clean up while we talk. I have another class in fifteen minutes and need to collect all the balance blocks.”

I picked up a total of three of the silly styrofoam blocks and used those to juggle while she cleaned up the rest.

“So, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Tell me about this woman, Bridget, I’m living with.”

She held up her hands. “Oh no. You can’t do that to Bridget.”

“Do what?”

“Remember what happened with Suzie McInerney, when we were fifteen? I don’t have a lot of friends here in the states yet. Bridget’s a good friend. You can’t screw her over.”

Suzie McInerney. Now that was a name I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. She’d been our mutual friend before the incident. Suzie was a year older and had the most fantastic set of tits I’d ever seen. One night when we were all hanging out in my parents’ basement, Calliope fell asleep early. Suzie let me feel her up. It was my first time copping a boob.

The following week, the same thing happened. Only it was Hazel Larson who let me feel hers while Calliope was snoring. Hers weren’t half as nice as Suzie’s, but Hazel let me feel them under the shirt, unlike Suzie. So, when Hazel told me that if I was her boyfriend, she might consider letting me touch her in other places, I didn’t think twice about asking her out. But apparently I should have. Because Suzie assumed I was already her boyfriend just because she let me play with her boobs over her shirt for twenty seconds. Needless to say, when Suzie found out I was going out with Hazel, she never spoke to me or Calliope again. They’d blamed Calliope since I was the BFF she’d always have hanging around whenever she hung out with her girlfriends. Women. I still didn’t understand them.

“I’m not planning on copping a feel. Bridget’s cute and all, but she’s got a kid—you know me and kids.” I wasn’t planning on having my own, so dating someone with a rugrat was definitely not on my agenda, either.

She looked at me suspect. “That’s true…I guess. What did you want to know about Bridget, anyway?”

“I don’t know. For starters, what happened to her husband?”

Sadness crossed over Calliope’s face. “She hadn’t started coming to yoga yet, so we weren’t friends when it happened. But she told me about it. Sounded horrible. She was down in Florida with her son visiting her mother when she got a call that he’d been in a terrible car accident. He died before she even landed back in Providence.” Calliope shook her head. “He was only thirty. They were college sweethearts.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Awful.”

I scratched my chin. “I wonder if that was the trip she got the knickers on.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Other than that. There’s not much to tell. She’s devoted to her son, Brendan. He’s a sweet, little kid who’s really good at baseball. Works at the hospital, and picks up as much overtime as she can, but money’s tight living on only one salary. Her husband didn’t have much life insurance.”

When her next class started to trickle in, it was time for me to get back to the hospital anyway. I leaned down and kissed my friend’s cheek. “I’ll be back next week—same time, same ass. I mean class.”The ER was busier than usual for a Wednesday afternoon. I hadn’t seen much of Simon in the hours before he snuck up behind me.

“Hey, Roomie. I hear you have a chart for me to look at.”

Handing him the clipboard, I said, “Yes, this is Eileen McDonough in Room 3. Suspected appendicitis. And can you not say that too loudly?”