“Summer, we can’t do that to Holly.”

“Her negativity is too much. I can’t be around it. It’s like secondhand smoke. It’ll kill you faster than vaping.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Why are you two friends anyway? You’re such an odd couple.”

“Earlier, you called us two peas in a pod. Which is it?”

“Stop changing the subject and answer the question.”

“I think we’re on the same subject.” I was getting used to the flip-flop of conversing with Summer, so I said, “We’ve been friends forever. Since college. Our friend Katie—Peanut’s mom—and Holly and I were roommates. Holly was the funny one, Katie the beautiful, nice one, and I was, I don’t know, like their pet. I went along, did a lot of the driving. Made sure everyone got home at the end of the night.” I could paint us in any way I wanted with Summer, and I found I wanted to get it right for this stranger, as if she were setting it down in a ledger for historical purposes. I could see Holly at twenty-one, grinning, so sure, and then underneath that satisfied smirk where there was a shiver of Thank God you’re my friend. I couldn’t be me without thee.

“Holly partied?”

“Yeah. God, she was a lot of fun. Maybe she still is; she’s just not that fun around me.” I had been able to mute the sorrow I’d felt after our friendship had collapsed, but this excursion revitalized everything. It was as if that time in my life had been stored as a flat, dry sponge in my memory banks. These days of togetherness were rehydrating each memory and emotion one drop at a time. Like when we’d found each other after the graduation ceremony, tossing our mortarboards in the air and shouting, “We did it!” And hugged so hard and I cried tears into Holly’s graduation-gown shoulder. Or after, at dinner, when we tearfully shared a strawberry shortcake for dessert, and I experienced the salty and sweet mixture of happy and sad. I was right back there at this moment replaying that ache.

Summer watched me as she wound her braids into bundles and clipped them on top of her head. She was the most irritating and enchanting mix of teen girl and wise elder.

“What happened between the two of you?”

What could I say to that? A gnat flew into my hair, and I heard it buzz-struggle to get out. Summer plucked the bug free and let it somersault away. “We.” I stopped. “We didn’t have a huge falling out.” That was true. We didn’t. It was more like a slipping out. Every time I thought about Holly, I cringed at the memory of my naive self, my immaturity and lack of life experience all those years ago. If I’d realized what was happening at the time, I could have grabbed the tail end of our friendship before it slid through my grasp. I could have yanked it back and set it right. Now, the only way to fix it was time travel. If I could go back, I’d put off my internship for a month. Drive after Holly, call her aunt. Show up at her internship.

But all that action was for movies, not twenty-one-year-old girls who had no idea what years without their best friend might be like—thinking for sure they would reconnect—the youth’s ability to believe that they had all the time in the world to fix things.

Frankly, there were other things I might fix if given the chance to zoom backward on the calendar. I thought about Jeff, how I didn’t know him. About our marriage, but that wasn’t an easy daydream because I wouldn’t change even half a second with Maddie. I wiped all those change thoughts from my mind.

“Well, I can see you know more than you’re saying. Someday you’re going to have to talk about it.” Summer narrowed her eyes at me like she did when she was reading some unseeable story over my head. This time there wasn’t anything to read.

“I’m not being coy. I don’t know, Summer.”

“Oh, I think you do, my grasshopper. I think you do.”

I shook my head. “Summer.”

“You’re going to have to push away from the edge of the swimming pool and get into the deep end. If you don’t, you’ll always be hanging on with your fingertips, afraid.” With that, Summer pointed toward a path that presumably led to the cabins. I grabbed my luggage and followed her. Somehow Summer made me feel like a child, like I owed her an explanation for my dirty hands, for my playground disagreements. I hustled to her side. I wanted to show her I could swim in the deep end.

“If you had told me then that after graduation Holly and I wouldn’t be friends, I would have laughed at you. Laughed and told Holly, and we would have pooh-poohed it together. As if we’d ever let anything get between. It was not possible.”

“And yet,” Summer said over her shoulder.

“Katie was the warmest of us all. And brilliant. Anything she read she remembered. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have passed my astronomy elective. Holly and I studied, but Katie, she could sit in lectures and ace the exam.”

“I never went to college.”

“No?”

“Nah, my mom got me into commercials right away. There’s a lot of money in commercials. Especially if they run a long time. I was the girl sniffing coffee in the Folger’s commercial.”

“You were in a Folger’s commercial?”

“And Juicy Fruit gum, Johnson Wax, and Taco Bell. I had to eat so many tacos, I won’t go near them now.”

We took a few more steps. It was a relief to talk about her history instead of mine. I felt like I was getting close to something, but I couldn’t reach it, like a popcorn hull caught in a tooth crevice, and I was fishing around and making everything else sore.

“The show, though. That must have been fantastic.”

“Yeah,” she said without enthusiasm. “Fantastic.”

I waited, thinking she would elaborate. The ruddy dust on the road kicked up a cloud as we stepped into the sagebrush. I was just about to fill the lull when she said, “You don’t have friends when you’re in show business. Just connections. People who can connect and people who can’t. Once you become someone who lacks connections, all your so-called friends disappear.”

“What about your cohost? Matt what’s his name? Isn’t he in those comic book movies now?” She trudged ahead of me on the path, switched her bag from one shoulder to the other. “You guys seemed like the best of friends.”

Summer stopped walking. “I was in love with him.” The sun was behind her, so I couldn’t read her expression, but I didn’t have to. Her voice dropped, not in volume, but as if the next words were a burden. “Best friends are hard. You, of all people, know that.”

Summer’s vulnerability, the ease with which she dropped this painful piece of history, made me admire her openness while feeling so very sad for her. The night held us in this moment, and I heard her sigh.

We approached the cottage, which was four cement walls and a tile roof, where we would spend the night. The camper sat, slightly off kilter, on the rock driveway.

“She found us,” Summer said out of the side of her mouth. “The jig is up.” And boom, Summer the jokester was back.

“The jig?”

“There’s no way we can exclude Holly from sleeping with us. It was a good idea, Sam, but not well executed.”

“It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even know about these cottages.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

Holly lounged, phone to her ear, in the only chair outside cottage number four. A scattering of moths bombed the light over her head, but Holly didn’t seem to notice. Nor did she see us. I stopped, unsure of what to do with my awkward apprehension. Summer, a few steps in front of me, swung her arm back and drew me along.

Holly said, “I love you, Rosie. I’ll be home soon. Yes.” She nodded, hung up, and wiped her eyes.

Something akin to love washed over me at hearing Holly’s gentle voice, a voice I used to know so well. I resisted Summer just enough to postpone what would inevitably be another difficult moment with Holly, a moment that would squash this warmth I was feeling.

We grabbed the rest of our stuff from the bus, and Summer stepped onto the narrow porch and put her hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Let’s get you out of the heat. The people at the welcome center said the door is unlocked.”

I tried to make eye contact, but Holly averted her eyes from mine, and once again my fatigue whispered, Why bother?

In the cottage, Holly dropped onto one of the double beds and lay flat on her back like a starfish. Summer began unpacking on the other bed. I sank into an upholstered chair and rested my head against the painted concrete wall.

“Okay,” said Holly, staring pointedly at the ceiling. “We’ll push the vet to give us an itemized rehabilitation plan for Peanut. Then we’ll insist we leave sooner. I’ll check the statutes. I don’t think they can keep him.” Holly frowned, and one deep wrinkle between her eyes appeared. Her complexion was otherwise so smooth that a wrinkle stood out in high relief.