“Misty is allergic.”

“How did that conversation go?” With a whiny voice, Holly mimicked Misty. “I’m sorry we racked up tons of lawyer bills fighting you, and I got both your dog and husband, but boo-hoo, he makes my eyes itchy.”

Katie had a way of looking at you when she was truly taxed, like the cartoon Belle from Beauty and the Beast come alive, but weary, oh so weary of the falling rose petals in the bell jar. Holly and I both knew that tears were coming from the girl who rarely cried. In college we would go into a comedy routine and make Katie laugh while we aggressively hugged her so we didn’t have to see the weird smile before she sobbed. We always protected Katie, not because she was weak, but because she was so strong. If she was crying, something terrible was happening.

An urgent feeling flooded my chest. I was at an auction with a paddle, and I was competing against Holly and death. So I raised my hand and said, “I’ll drive him back. No problem. I’ll do it.”

Holly laughed at me. “You can’t drive that dog back. It would take you a year. You’ll have to stop and nap at every McDonald’s, rest stop, and national monument along the way. There isn’t enough caffeine in the world to keep you awake, driving, and monitoring that dog.”

I opened my mouth to object, but it hurt so much to know how well she knew me, and we weren’t even friends anymore. Besides, I was conflict avoidant, not a liar. She was right.

After her closing argument, Holly turned to Katie and said, “Why doesn’t Misty take an allergy pill if she’s so sorry?”

Katie closed her eyes. “It messed with her sex drive.”

“That’s not true. Is that even true? I’m going to google that.” Holly picked up her phone, and with her flawless gel-manicured nails, her blown-out bob swinging forward, she typed ferociously onto her screen.

“I can do it. I can,” I insisted. I needed to do something to show everyone in the room that I was the kind of friend that could go the distance. That if you weren’t my friend it was your own damn fault.

“Can Maddie go with you?” Katie looked hopeful.

“No, she’s leaving for Colorado for her internship.”

Katie touched my arm, knowing how the words she’s leaving filled me with dismay. To Holly she said, “Maddie has a prestigious internship in Boulder and is going to live with my cousin and watch her kids at night.”

“It’s perfect timing. I’ll need something to do this summer. You guys can keep me updated. It’ll be an adventure,” I said instead of saying, I can’t bear to be in my home, accidently wandering into my daughter’s empty room while waiting to visit my sick best friend all summer long.

To everyone’s credit and my shame, no one fought me on that one. When your nest was emptying and you were a widow, no one needed you at home. I stifled a yawn. The stress was getting to me, snuffing out my lit-up neurons like candles after a Catholic Christmas Mass. That was how I always thought about it. Stress ignited my hypersomnia, and the call to sleep was irresistible. But not like the people on YouTube who had the kind of narcolepsy where they flopped to the ground like discarded dolls. I felt it coming on.

I knew if I was going to persuade them that I could drive across country, I couldn’t take a speed nap on the corner of Katie’s bed. I made a show of looking at my phone and said, “Hang on. I have to take this. It’s Maddie.”

I knocked my way out of the room, bumping against the bed and the metal doorframe, and felt slightly better in the hall. A man with a gauzy hairnet pushed a large silver cabinet past me; it rattled with discarded dishes. A woman in a lab coat rushed in the opposite direction, and I followed her with my eyes. I didn’t need to lie down for a nap. If I could sit and sleep for ten minutes, I could give my brain what it needed and return to make my case.

I ran my hand against the cool wall and ducked into the room next to Katie’s. A stripped hospital bed with an exposed mattress took up a large portion of the room. I dropped into a small cushioned chair and felt the grip of sleep envelop me at the same time as I heard a man’s voice, confusingly close: “Don’t even think about it.”

CHAPTER THREE

NEVER TOGETHER AGAIN

I felt something on my forearm. A shake. A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

A piercing beep sounded somewhere above me, and I opened my eyes. Tried to focus. I was used to this, if you could be used to something as jarring as waking up to a stranger standing too close. I pushed back in my chair and said, in a voice that I knew sounded very, very sleepy, “I’m fine. I’m okay. I was resting.” And then ridiculously, “I don’t live here.”

A scratchy voice with radio-like feedback came from over my shoulder. A woman. “Can I help you?”

The man’s voice, too loudly, as if I might be hard of hearing, repeated, “Can we help you?”

I shook my head and focused on the person crouching in front of me. The thing about a hypersomnia-reset nap was that when I—as much as I hated to use the phrase—came to, my first impressions were the most honest ones in my day. I “saw” everything without bias or censure. All the guilt, chronic niceness, and fear of conflict that made me second-guess everything woke up a minute or two after I did.

Say I was taking a snooze in a friend’s bathroom, one with tiny glitter pineapple wallpaper I was unsure about before the nap. Postnap, I would see it as truly terrible. The shirt I wondered about earlier in the day was as dumpy as I’d feared. And this man in front of me, I thought, with his full lips, flawless complexion, and long, lush eyelashes, would make a lovely girl.

But he made a beautiful, stunning man.

I touched my hair, the universal sign for You’re cute; I hope I don’t look like I usually do, and sat up.

“I’m fine,” I said loudly. “I don’t need help.”

The voice on the speaker said, “Oka—” and logged off so quickly it sounded like the speaker had the hiccups.

The man stood. He was taller and older than I had first thought. He slipped on a pair of glasses. “I was on the phone in the bathroom,” he said, looking sheepish.

“In the bathroom?”

“It’s private.”

“That’s why I was napping in here.”

He nodded and said, “Aren’t we a pair.”

“Are we? A pair of what?”

“Weirdos, maybe? Introverts? I fight on the phone in empty bathrooms, and you sleep in deserted rooms.”

“If I’m honest, it doesn’t have to be a room. I can sleep anywhere. When I’m stressed, I get sleepy.” The sun cut an angle off the foot of the bed, and the roar of a hectic hospital increased as my sleepiness dissipated. “Do you fight on the phone everywhere?”

“I have to think about that.” He paused, dropped his phone into his lab coat pocket, and said, “Lately, I guess I do.”

“Who are you fighting?”

“My wife.”

The champagne bubble of interest that had floated into my chest popped and dropped into my tummy. This was how it went for women like me, those who didn’t get out much, those who’d already had something like love once. The only men I garnered any interest from were thirty-five years my senior, had one unfocused eyeball, and weighed a solid three hundred pounds. At least that described my mailman, who seemed legitimately in love with me, even though he knew I ordered way too many things from Amazon. The men with the full lower lip and Cupid’s bow, the men with hair and tight laugh lines when they smiled kindly down at you while you tried to straighten your sweater over your soft belly, they were taken.

“What are you guys fighting about?” I asked.

“What are you napping about?” he asked.

The biggest surprise about this chance encounter was that I noticed him in that way. The sight of his undeniable good looks must have elbowed some long-dormant lobe in my brain and said, “Eh? Eh? Check him out.” My brain sat right up and did some assertive checking, as if it hadn’t been sleeping for twenty years. I felt myself smile but quickly remembered why I was in the hospital in the first place, and my smile dissolved.

“My friend’s cancer might be back, and her other best friend is in charge this time around.”

“You want to be in charge of the cancer?”

“No. It’s just, my friend called my other friend first. My other friend is fierce and good at everything, and I’m not as”—I cleared my throat and gestured at myself—“as alert as I’d like to be. I know it’s not a competition, but if it was, my other friend would win.”

I was certain he was going to say something that made me sound pathetic, like Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. Instead, he said, “My wife said I didn’t call her when I said I would. I don’t remember saying I would. It’s stupid.”

“But that’s not what you’re fighting about.”