Holly pulled her head back as if she’d been hit. “I am not made of stone. If any of us are immovable objects, it’s you.”

“Me?” Stone! The unfairness! I wanted to shut up, pull out, stop this fight. I rooted in my memory for Louise’s list of safe phrases. Instead, all my loss and pain shoved my denial aside, and I said, “Why do you hate me?” It came out like a middle schooler on a playground who had stepped to an edge and both wanted to be reined back in and wanted to jump.

Holly’s blue eyes were the color of lightning when she opened her mouth and raised her pointy, pointy finger. “You act like I’m the hardest person in the world, but I would never do what you did. And here you are being so nice to a dog you don’t even know.”

For the thousandth time, I desperately racked my brain. “What? Holly, what did I do? You can’t possibly be talking about that night and Mike!”

“Ha!” Holly’s laugh was like a thunderclap. There was a flicker of old, lovey Holly in that storm behind her eyes. Something like the Sour Patch Kids candy, a sour, sweet flash.

My outrage dissipated. “This isn’t about that, is it?” I didn’t see her expression because we were interrupted. “Holly,” I said at the same time as a fuzzy-headed waif of a woman over Holly’s shoulder said:

“Excuse me. Um. Ladies. You need to quiet down. You’re inciting the girls.” She pointed to a trio of cats, each in their own private metal holding cells. A tabby, a tawny, and a tiger-striped kitty sat alert, their tails twitching. It was like being in a high school hallway, and the crowd was chanting Fight! Fight! Fight! It was the pause we needed.

“Girls?” Holly said when she saw the cats. “Oh.” But she looked alone, vulnerable. She touched her sternum, and there it was again. That dry-eyed catch in her throat. Holly looked dizzy, and I steadied her, my hand on her forearm.

“Nugget,” I said. My old name for her slipped out before I could stop it.

“It’s just. If you guys could step outside. That would be great,” said the animal urchin.

Holly pulled her arm from my touch. “I don’t want to get sucked into your vortex again.” Unsteadily at first but gaining momentum, she moved toward a side door, ignoring the Alarm Will Sound warning. She slammed through; the alarm sounded.

“She’s not supposed to go through that door,” the woman said, and I nodded.

“She does what she wants,” I said, and I noticed I was winded.

“I can see that.” The woman nodded. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said vaguely. My vortex? I was the last woman in America who had a vortex. I had a quagmire. I had a mushy middle. I did not have magnetism of any kind. Unless you considered my attraction to bedding.

The tiny woman and I stared at the glass door as it slid back into place and the alarm hushed. I sighed and the woman pulled a stool over to the room where Peanut and Moose were being held. “You can just watch these two if you want. It’s calming.”

“Thanks so much. And I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You’d be surprised at how much that happens here. Couples come to volunteer, and they fall in love with a parrot or a pig, and the next thing you know, we have to call security.”

“My friend has never had a pet.”

The woman clamped her lips and shook her head. It was like I’d just said, Holly was born without a head.

“I think I will sit here for a while, if that’s all right.” My skin prickling with the electricity of our fight, I rubbed my arms. Who was at fault? Me, Holly, both of us? For years I’d avoided our loss, playing it off in unsatisfying ways: We were kids. I’d read her wrong. Holly was not who I thought she was. We grew apart. These were Band-Aids, and I needed that spray stuff that plugged foundation cracks. One squirt and it expanded to fill all the broken spaces.

I was surprised to see the woman still standing close. “I’m okay,” I said.

“Um. Sure.”

I turned my attention to the confinement area, where Peanut appeared extravagantly comfortable. I watched him reposition from sleeping on his stomach to lying on his back, his belly exposed, his paws lolling to the side. Moose resettled himself onto Peanut’s neck, looking more plush toy than mammal. The diminutive Moose gave me the side-eye, the forever-watchful caretaker assessing my presence.

The stress of confronting Holly had me thick and foggy, but later than usual. I usually shut down in the center of conflict, not respectful moments later.

I rested my temple on the window and watched Peanut’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. It was hypnotic. I knew there was no fighting my sleep disorder, and I didn’t think anyone in the clinic would mind if I closed my eyes for a minute or two.

Instead of falling instantly to sleep, I tried to mine my memories. Holly and I had been the best of friends. It hadn’t just been youth and circumstance. We would not have these strong feelings if we hadn’t started from a place of intensity.

I only had fragments from those years, over a quarter century of them, beginning in that apartment we shared with the hollow doors and thin carpet. My twenty-plus-year-old relics, like still photos, flipped in my mind’s eye. Holly, Katie, and I were drinking coffee from travel mugs on the way to class, singing “I Will Always Love You,” the Whitney Houston version, Katie’s voice earsplittingly out of tune. Holly’s earnest face. Me laughing so hard I couldn’t hold a note. Exam week, eating nothing all day and inhaling salty, oily popcorn at night, falling asleep on our notebooks. All that freedom . . . I sighed and felt myself drift off with the cool window soothing my temple.

I don’t know how long I slept like that, but pins and needles in my arm woke me. I was used to falling asleep in awkward positions and waking having to shake a limb, stretch my neck, even rub feeling back into fingers. This was the price of a sleep disorder. I laughed at people who needed the perfect Sleep Number mattress or their beloved childhood pillow to get a good rest. As long as I had a place to rest my head and an immovable object, I could catch some restorative z’s any day of the week.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Griff, the veterinarian, had returned.

If a sore neck was the price of a sleep disorder, then being discovered sleeping in awkward places by a variety of people was the side salad nobody wanted. I rubbed the numb spot on my head where I’d rested against the glass.

“Sorry,” I said, the automatic apology that rested on my tongue along with my neurons, just waiting for whomever would find me.

“No problem. I take naps in here, too, when there aren’t a ton of animals making a bunch of noise.”

“You do?”

He nodded. With my postsleep, clear-eyed assessment, I imagined him as a boy with a stick on a busy sidewalk moving a woolly bear caterpillar out of the way.

“I usually go to my office, sit in a chair, maybe shut the light off. But I admire a good napper.”

“I have a sleep disorder, and when I get stressed, it takes over. I think it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. It keeps me from getting into fights and saying anything I can’t take back.” I rubbed my eyes and added, “Not today, though. Which is weird.”

“A sleep disorder. That’s interesting.”

I looked at him. “More interesting than watching two friends fight about the value of animals?”

“Kind of. Yes.”

“Fair enough. I’ve had the disorder a long time. I find it very annoying but also sometimes a great escape.”

He took the hint and changed the subject.

“It sounds like you’ve had enough experience with Peanut’s medical needs that you won’t have any trouble. That’s good. Diabetes can be a challenge.”

“Does Moose have any other medical needs?” I said, just to prolong a conversation that wasn’t difficult.

“Not really. His skin is healing.”

Griff the veterinarian was not a looker per se, but he had something very appealing going on. He kept his head shaved in that way men did who knew the fight against balding was lost, but it made him look more masculine, not less. His strong jawline supported good cheekbones and warm eyes behind wire-rim glasses. He didn’t have Drew’s full lips or striking features, but he exuded maleness. I suspected he was an athlete, but I wasn’t sure why.

“I’d like to get on your schedule,” said Griff. “We’ll have to spend some time talking about how much insulin Peanut will need. How much an increase in activity will change his dosage. How to figure that out with a urine sample.”

I laughed. “I don’t have a schedule. We just got here. I’m not even sure where we’re sleeping now that Holly and I are in the middle of a full-fledged brawl instead of the usual cold war we maintain.”

“An odd choice for a traveling companion.”