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My message letting them know the parts I had gushed all about them in the Zoom interview were added to the written article sat as the last thing ever exchanged between me and them. Left on read. Not even a thank you for all the effort I put into getting them the proof of my gratefulness for them. Not a single word after I gave them what they so desperately wanted, their name mentioned in an article that was supposed to be about me and my books.
Vi finally talked me into sending the email the coffee company owner had apparently been anxiously waiting for, and the article was immediately edited back to the way it was originally posted—without them in it. Just like my life now—without them in it—since at some point in the last year they had unfriended and unfollowed me on all social media.
Even though the handy-dandy analytics let me know they still quite often checked up on me.
And now, after I turn into a parking spot at the coffee shop and turn the car off, I grab my bag out of the passenger seat and hop out of my car. I grin as I spot my one and only true best friend as she waves excitedly at me through the window, seated on her side of our favorite booth. The only friend I’ll ever need, who was there for me long before all the fangirls, and who I know will be by my side when we eventually get a shared unit in a retirement home for crazy people. Because surely by then, “bitches” will have driven us both mad.
Well… more than we already are now.
Chapter Five
SIENNA
“Okay, I’m done with your mind games, woman. Tell me right now what the heck is going on with you!” Vi orders as soon as I slide into the booth so that I’m facing her. Her closed laptop is on the table along with her reading glasses, and next to those are her coffee and a muffin with a bite taken out of it. On the table in my spot is my pumpkin spice latte, the lid pulled off so it could be cooling for me.
There’s something to be said for being best friends with a fellow people-pleasing submissive. We remember damn near every detail and quirk the other has and make one another’s life a little easier and a lot sweeter just by being thoughtful.
Just like how I reach across and snag her glasses case off her laptop, pull the cleaning cloth out of my bag, and start wiping the fingerprints and smudges off her lenses. She can never, ever, ever find her own wipes, constantly setting hers down in random places after using them, then forgetting where she left them. Then she just says fuck it and tries to squint and see through her dirty glasses, defeating their entire purpose. So a long time ago, my OCD—actual diagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, not some “omg, I’m so OCD because I like my closet to be sorted by color” exaggeration—took control of the situation and made it a ritual.
My version of the mental illness thankfully doesn’t take the path of Contamination OCD, or what people like to call germaphobes. But my mind is completely saturated in intrusive thoughts, including the ones that make someone believe something bad will happen if they don’t perform a certain task—also known as a ritual. In some people, this is way more obvious to others, because they’ll have visible tics, repetitive behaviors, sounds they have to verbalize in order to make what I personally call “my voices” quiet down.
Mine shows up in the way I nurture people, so it doesn’t stand out as much to an untrained eye. So no, cleaning my best friend’s glasses has nothing to do with wanting to wipe the germs off. But it has everything to do with the fear of her not being able to see through the smudges and then some wild Final Destination type shit happening, like her coffee suddenly taking full effect, to the point she can’t hold it, so she jumps up from the booth without taking her dirty glasses off to run to the bathroom at the very same time Austin—our favorite barista—is coming up behind her with a glass carafe of boiling-hot coffee that Vi collides with, not only causing the scalding liquid to pour all over her, but the glass breaks and—
Yeah.
My brain is a dumpster fire.
But hey, at least I’m not a germaphobe, right? Otherwise, dumpster diving would’ve never become my favorite pastime.
And then I would’ve never met—
“Dumpster Daddy,” I finish my thought out loud, forgetting I was supposed to be answering Vi’s question. But unlike the nameless, faceless, pretty much everything-less man who got me out of the trash safely, she doesn’t seem to possess the ability to read my mind and know what the hell I’m referring to.
