“That’s Summer Silva, from She Talk Live. How do you not know that?”

“Summer Silva?” I sounded slow; I wasn’t used to being with Holly yet. You couldn’t be halfway with Holly; she required 100 percent, 1,000 percent of the time. “I used to watch that show. But are you sure? She was sitting next to me in economy,” I finally managed to say.

“She’s not on the show anymore. She got superweird, talked about tarot cards and being a Wiccan, then lost her money in that famous Ponzi scheme. God, Sammie. Get with the program.”

“I am with the program, Holly. I’m with Maddie’s program. That’s the only program I watch. You’ll see what it’s like soon enough.”

Holly snapped her luggage handle into the extended position and turned. “I guess people are always unloading on celebrities. They’re in living rooms, and so people think they’re friends.”

“I do not think Summer Silva is my friend.” I heard the annoyance in my voice, and I thought, I’m not a moron.

“Right now, Summer Silva appears to know more about your husband than I do. I’m going to the restroom. Get yourself a cup of coffee. You need one.”

Rude as it was, she was right about my needing caffeine even as the rest of what she said was unfair. I schlepped my backpack and the carry-on bag I didn’t remember collecting and stood in the caffeine line. I’d get a colossal cup of coffee, a legal, sloppy second to my missed amphetamine dose. Maybe then I’d remember the conversation I’d had with a D-list celebrity about my dead husband.

I wiggled my jaw, tight from clenching my teeth, and worried that my enamel was never going to make it cross-country.

Holly hadn’t always been so difficult. We’d met at freshman orientation and had been paired off to play a mixer that involved the alphabet and our names. “I’m Sam and I’m Sappy. I’m Holly and I’m Happy.” Everything Holly said was funny and sometimes a bit mean. Not mean like a bully, just sharp commentary about the students and the world around us.

“That boy there,” she said as she pointed to an athletic guy with a neck the size of a ham, “hopes his high school football stats translate into college credit.” She laughed. “Later we’ll take a shot of tequila every time he says running back. We’ll be drunk and asleep in under fifteen minutes at the rate he’s going. But, that’s perfect for our orientation games tomorrow; we’ll be well rested and ready to rhyme.” She said in a funny, irreverent way what I was thinking and feeling bad about. She put people in their places, which helped me to stop putting myself beneath others.

We were inseparable, except for classes; we met for dinner, studied in the library, shared clothes. When Holly’s parents died in a snowmobiling crash sophomore year, her sharp tongue became a razor, and her theoretical drinking became real. I spent the spring semester taking J?germeister shots away from her and driving her home while she swore at people and cried. I explained situations to professors, sometimes did her homework as well as mine, fed her when she got too thin. It was the only time in her life when she looked as disheveled as I felt. That was when things had started to change with Holly. Her tongue got sharper, and often she’d say, “What’s the use of any of this. What’s the point?”

To which I’d reply, “You’re the point. I’m the point. We are the point.” And sometimes that would help.

Meeting Katie at an off-campus housing seminar that put potential roommates together was pure luck. A transfer from another college, she helped both of us. Katie was a fresh squirt of friendship Febreze, and I needed the help. My grades were slipping, I couldn’t get enough sleep, and I felt like staying in the library longer than I needed to avoid going home. Katie came, and her sunny disposition blew some of the dust off Holly’s old happy personality. Helped Holly find her way to the other side of her grief.

I never worried that Katie would take my place with Holly. She was the kind of person who wanted her own place in a friendship, not someone else’s. She moved in when we needed a third person to share the rent, and she did things Holly and I were terrible at. She cooked, cleaned, changed light bulbs, bought toilet paper, paid bills on time, and made us giggle with her kindness.

Another dimension of Holly’s and my friendship was that we thoroughly entertained each other with our antics. We were each other’s biggest fans, and when Katie joined our friendship, she became our audience. We did everything to entertain Katie, which only made Holly and me closer. That’s why our party of three had worked.

In the airport, I took a hard look around me while I waited for other people’s complicated coffee orders. Tall, decaf, soy latte at 120 degrees with cream. This specified by a man in flip-flops whose only luggage was a paper grocery bag. There were so many colors and sizes of people swarming between the large white walls and windows of LAX, so much variety. A thousand blondes. Double that number in tanned limbs. In Wisconsin I was an acceptable hazel-eyed girl. Occasionally someone would remark that I looked like a brown-haired sister of Jennifer Aniston before she’d had her nose done. Jeff used to say, “Jennifer wishes she looked like you,” which I might have believed if he hadn’t always said it after a night of apologies for his temper, tears, and okay makeup sex.

I checked my phone while I waited. I’d missed a text from Beautiful Drew. I was alarmed at first, thinking it was potentially bad news from Katie, but this quickly changed to delight when I saw it was not.

BDREW: Hey when you come back bring some Cali Sun. It’s gloomy here.

Me: Will do. I’ll bring some Botox too, I think it’s in the bubblers.

BDREW: Water fountain, WI-girl. It’s water fountain in California.

Me: Noted. I’ll try to get it right.

BDREW: No. Never change.

The inscription on every high school yearbook sent me into a sweet, romantic nostalgia. I wanted to send him an emoji that relayed the cautious pleasure his texts brought me without turning it weird for both of us. I settled on the unicorn head thinking it the best, meaningless whimsy for the situation, but my shaky overexcited fingers slipped and sent the snail emoji instead.

BDREW: I love a good gastropod.

ME: Who doesn’t.

I took a deep breath, calmed myself. My unsubstantiated romantic notions aside, it was fun to text a conversation with an adult. For one thing, he punctuated. Maddie barely used words, and our texts were janitorial. You forgot your lunch. Where are you? Do you need tampons? This texting with Drew was the kind of back-and-forth wordplay that I could manage. Even though texting was fast, it wasn’t as fast as face-to-face. The added seconds to respond via text allowed for my sometimes syrupy brain to process faster. I liked exciting as long as it had a firm seat belt.

I placed my order, and the man blinked at its simplicity. I had to repeat it twice. “A large coffee, please. Whatever you have brewed.”

Holly showed up at my shoulder and said, “You’re like a white rhino sighting. Nobody just gets a coffee. I’m surprised they didn’t make you pose for a photo.”

“Just say it, Holly. I’m a relic. Then I don’t have to endure a week of your jabs.”

She put her arm around my shoulder, hugged me, and kissed me on the head. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get this party started.”

In that half a second I grew an inch, but when I saw her wink at the barista, I sagged back. She was playing off Summer Silva’s mistake, that we were lovers, with a mean edge to her smile. I shrugged her arm off, and she said, “What’s the matter, honey?”

Our first year together in college, Holly was approached by a smooth-haired beauty, one of the members of a campus sorority. She wanted Holly to rush. It was a big house with lots of perks, but Holly, with a beer in her hand, said, “Nope. Not interested.” Out of the side of her mouth she said to me, “I have a strategy. Reject before rejected.” I hadn’t thought of that in years.

Today I pushed her away. I didn’t want her to know how briefly wonderful it felt to have her, however artificially, be kind to me.

Finally we were outside in the kind of sun that felt like someone had slathered butter over everything. Reds were redder, greens were varied and succulent, yellows were the color God had intended to save the world from all malaise. I turned my head to the blue sky, and just holding the blistering hot coffee cup made me feel good.

“Let’s do this,” I said out loud.

“I think we should rent a van and go get the dog.”

“Peanut. The dog, as you say, won’t get into a van. He will only get into and out of the camper.”

“We’re in charge.”