Page 100 of Cherry Picking

“That’s weird.” She steps back to let me in. “Did somebody die? I mean, not professionally. Obviously, someone is always dying.”

“Murphy canceled on me.” I set the bottle on her counter next to a pile of unopened mail. “I did eight hours at Sutton’s, and now I’m here, and we are not discussing the details.”

She retreats into the bathroom, and I listen to the water run. When she comes back out, her dark curls are piled into a clip. “So, we’re not discussing what, exactly?”

“Correct,” I say.

“Evie.”

“That’s the deal. I brought a very expensive bottle, and the rule is nonnegotiable.” I open her cabinet and find two mismatched glasses. “You can ask about anything else. Ask me about Phil. He ordered gloves in the wrong size for the fourth time this year.”

“I don’t care about Phil’s gloves.”

“Nobody does. That’s the whole problem. We should pregame and then go out tonight.”

She considers it for maybe four seconds. Then she takes the glass and says, “Fine. But I’m putting on music, and you’re trying on the green thing I bought in December because I haven’t been brave enough to wear it yet.”

“Deal.”

The green thing is a slip dress the color of a lime popsicle. When I try it on, I spend the first thirty seconds looking at my own collarbones like I’ve never met them.

“You know this would fit you way better than me.”

Hazel has hips and tits and knows exactly what to do with both. I’m mostly made of sharp angles, and the dress hangs off me instead of holding on to anything good.

“That is so not the point,” she says, her reflection appearing behind mine in the glass. “This is a revenge dress.”

I spin on my heel, scowling. “I told you already—we’re not discussing that!”

She smiles. “Discussing what?”

By the second drink, she’s excavated half her closet onto the bed. By the third, she’s managed to get me into a leather skirt she bought at Retro Betty’s back in college and usually saves for rare occasions.

“See, this is a crime against humanity,” she says, sitting cross-legged on the rug. “You have the legs of a woman who could ruin a marriage, and you spend your life dressing like a gothic hall monitor.”

“I work with grieving families, honey. It’s a brand.”

“Live a little, will you?”

“In this economy?”

She laughs—that ungraceful, beautiful sound I love so much. Something tight in my chest finally starts to unspool.

While we work through another drink, she tells me about a client who’s fighting for custody of a car he’s never once actually driven.

I tell her about the Okoyes, who spent forty agonizing minutes deciding between two casket liners that were identical in every way except for the price tag. When the daughter finally made the call, she panicked because it was the last decision anyone was ever going to make for her mother.

“That’s grim, babe.”

“You asked.”

“I did.” She reaches up and clinks her glass against mine. “To the liner.”

Around six, she puts on the Robyn album we’ve been playing since we were nineteen and starts dancing while I finish the last of the Jameson. My phone is face-down on the counter. I’ve looked at it exactly once in the last hour.

“Okay, one question,” she says, stopping mid-spin, “and then I’ll shut up for the rest of the night.”

“No.”