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Almost there. Order me a piña colada daiquiri. Pls and ty.

Maye:

How do you know I’m here already? I could be running late.

Tracy:

Add a splash of raz!

Maye signaled to the bartender and placed an order for two piña colada daiquiris with a splash of raspberry. A few moments later Tracy arrived, as did their drinks.

“Hey, hey, hey, road trip buddy,” Tracy said as she sat. “Perfect timing.” She reached for her drink and took a sip.

“Hey, I have even more fun news. I saw Todd earlier this week at Town Hall,” Maye said. She expected Tracy to be excited to hear about a Todd sighting. Instead, Tracy scrunched her face and puckered her lips. “I thought you liked Todd?” Maye said.

“No, it’s not that,” Tracy said. “It’s this drink. Something’s not right.”

“I ordered a Piña colada daiquiri with a splash of raspberry, just like you texted.”

“Raspberry?” Tracy frowned. “No, not raspberry. I meant a splash of Crush Electric Blue Razz soda. They keep a few on-hand for me.”

“Tracy, that sounds disgusting.”

“I’ll admit,” Tracy said. “The first one’s tough. You just need to push through. Speaking of pushing through, how are you? I’ve hardly seen you lately.”

Before Maye had a chance to respond, the bartender dropped a to-go order on the bar in front of her. “Here you go, ma’am. Your chicken parm and ziti alfredo,” he winked.

“Oh,” Maye was confused. “I think something got mixed up in the kitchen. I didn’t order any food to-go.”

“I know. I just know it’s your regular so…here you go!” he smiled.

After the bartender walked away, Tracy leaned in towards Maye. “I think he likes you.”

But Maye couldn’t bear to look up. The two take-out boxes instantly took her back to memories of the dozens of times she had picked them up before. She let her hair fall in front of her face. Her cheeks felt warm and her eyes welled with tears. She had been checking all of the boxes. She had allowed herself to grieve. She had introduced new routines. She had been journaling. She had been social. But she had not been faced with an unexpected reminder in, what felt like, weeks. Not like this, anyway. Maye pushed the food to the side.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Tracy must have noticed that she had shut down. “Are you crying?”

“It’s stupid. I don’t know why I’m crying,” Maye said as she wiped her eyes, but of course she did. “It’s just that, this was our regular meal to-go that I used to order all the time with Randall. I didn’t even ask for it. They just brought it. And it just makes me sad because it was one of those small traditions we had that was just part of us. And that’s just gone now.”

“I see,” Tracy said. She was quiet for a moment before she continued. “It looks like you have two options. Option one is you stop eating Mangia. Now I know this chicken parm is too good to just stop eating it. So that leaves us with option two. We reprogram those synopsis or whatever it is you have in your brain—”

“Synapses,” Maye chuckled. “Synopsis is a summary. Synapses are in my brain. Yours, too. Allegedly.”

“Well, I think that’s debatable.” Tracy tapped Maye’s glass with hers. “Let’s chug these drinks and take that food home to enjoy the heck out of it.”

- 13 -

At Home

Back at Maye’s condo, she and Tracy set up shop on the couch and turned on the TV just in time to see the new movie-of-the-week preview.

“Ooh, a new movie tonight,” Maye said before she realized what she had done.

“Excuse me?” Tracy said. “What was that? Are you actually excited for a TV rom-com? Maye Daniels, do you have something you’d like to share with the class?”

“Well…” Maye wanted to tread lightly in order to avoid the ‘I told you so’ landmines and Tracy’s signature ‘mmmhm,’ which was the same as ‘I told you so,’ but worse. This would be more complicated that avoiding detection by the heat sensors and LiDAR that protected van Gogh’s The Starry Night. “So, what happened was…”

“Mmmhm,” Tracy nodded rigidly. “Go on. Let’s hear it.”