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“Are you angry-writing again?”Mack calls from my front door. Cookie jumps from my lap when she hears Ginger’s signature mew. “You’re going to break that poor typewriter.”
There’s something soothing about the clacking of the typewriter keys as I stab them during my wine-fueled writing sprints. Mom got this typewriter for me last Christmas, and it’s my go-to whenever I need to exorcise my rage out onto paper. Which, admittedly, is nearly every time I write.
“It’s that asshole professor’s fault,” I call, typing frantically.
The slimy feel of his palm sends a bone-chilling shiver down her spine.
Mack drops her keys and purse on my couch with a clatter. Despite having an office upstairs, I tend to write in the cozy corner of my living room, where my calico, Cookie, curls up on my lap and the TV drones in the background.
“Let me guess,” Mack says in her soprano lilt. “You’re on your fourth glass of wine too.”
“If it’s good enough for Hemingway, it’s good enough for me.” I drain the last dreg of my red wine and smack the glass back down on my desk.
I manage to finish typing my sentence about the liver spot on the evil boss’s drooping jowl before Mack drags me from my typewriter and into the kitchen to prepare our snacks for movie night. In the time that I’ve known her, I’ve never seen Mack with makeup on or wearing anything other than her usual beige, frumpy clothes. Like she’s in witness protection. Which, I guess, she sort of is.
But despite her best efforts to go undetected, she has a sort of natural beauty that draws the eye. Beautiful, bleached blonde hair that falls to her elbows and bright blue eyes that are impossible to miss.
Wherever we go, people mistake us for sisters, which makes me smile like an idiot every time because one, Mack is gorgeous, and two, she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister. After seeing photos of her from before she left California and dyed her hair blonde, we look even more alike as brunettes.
In less than two years, we’ve gotten so close, we have keys to each other’s apartments in case one of us gets ax-murdered after a date or goes on a trip and needs the other to feed the cat. We adopted our cats together—Ginger and Cookie—and we bring our respective feline companion over so they can have a playdate whenever we binge-watchThe Bachelorette—Mack’s choice—or spooky, Halloween-should-be-celebrated-year-round horror films—my choice. She’s my first emergency contact, even before my mother because my mother lives three hours away and Mack won’t ask any questions if I need her to help me move a body. Not that it’s ever come to that, but we do have a code word if the situation arises.Radishes. Another one of Mack’s selections.
There are few people in this world I tolerate, let alone love. Mack is one of them.
We settle in on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and M&Ms between us while Ginger and Cookie chase each other around the living room, the occasional crash marking their path of destruction.
When I flick on my latest obsession, another serial killer movie, Mack sighs. “You know I only begrudgingly watch these movies with you, right?”
“I’ll never understand how you want to watch anything other than horror.”
“I’ll never understand how that’s all you want to watch. Next weekend, we’re having aLord of the Ringsmarathon.”
I groan. I love those movies, but Mack has made me watch them so many times now, I can quote them from beginning to end. Through all twelve hours.
“How was your amazing job at the bookstore?” Admittedly, I express my jealousy over Mack’s job at least once a week. If I didn’t have nearly a decade of student loans to pay off, I’d love to sell books to readers all day.
But it’s for the best. If I worked there, I’d spend my entire paycheck on books and coffee, and Cookie and I would subsist on nothing but the stale pastries the bookstore throws out.
Mack pops an M&M in her mouth. “Not so amazing. I think they’re going to fire me.”
“Why the hell would they fire you? They can’t run the place without you. Who else is going to convince the book club grannies to try erotic romance?”
“They’re not doing great right now. They’ve already slashed the budget, and they cut Gunner’s hours back last month.”
“That’s because Gunner sucks. You don’t suck. They won’t fire you, and if they do, I’ll march my ass in there and harass them into rehiring you.”
She smiles. “This is why you’re my best friend.”
Ten minutes into the movie, after two members of the ensemble cast have been brutally and gorily hacked to pieces, Mack turns her attention to her phone. “I’m getting you back on dating apps,” she declares. “It’s about time you found love. You need orgasms to distract you from this unhealthy obsession.” She waves her hand at the television.
I toss a piece of popcorn at her face. “It’s a perfectly healthy obsession. And love isn’t real, so you’re not going to find it for me on a dating app.”
She peers up at me over her phone with a brow raised. “We’re not talking about unicorns and tooth fairies here. Of course love is real.”
I shake my head. “How do you still believe that after your ex?”
Normally, I avoid bringing him up because Mack hates talking about him, but she of all people should understand why I’m not in any hurry to date anyone.
She tucks her legs up under her chin and wraps her arms around them like a nervous teenager. “Yes, James was awful and definitely made me question whether this planet would be better off without men altogether. But my mom and stepdad are still happily married after twenty years. Their honeymoon never ended.” Mack’s mom and stepdad met when she was two, her stepdad stepping into the role her absent father left vacant. “I won’t allow James to take the belief in that kind of love away from me. I’ll never let him take anything else from me.”
