“I’m not kidding, Tiff,” the other woman was saying. “He said, ‘I’m the pitcher, he’s the catcher, and there’s nothing gay about that.’ On a blind date! Who says that?”

“Oh, Bebe,” Tiffany sighed, wiping her eyes. “That stuff only happens to you.”

“Well, I’m super lucky then, aren’t I?” Bebe took a swig of some unnaturally green concoction in a plastic Spider-Man cup.

I was actively and positively envious. Of the whole thing. The laughter. The green drink. The fact that Tiffany looked…relaxed. I wanted to look relaxed.

Had I ever looked that way?

Shit. I needed a friend who was not a potential murderer or a stripper with a chip on her shoulder or a man I have phone sex with but know nothing about.

And frankly, not a one of them could I really consider a friend. A friendly acquaintance, a begrudging neighbor, and a man who turned me on like a blowtorch, but to whom I only lied.

Tiffany looked up and caught me staring. I smiled and tried not to look like some kind of weird friendship stalker.

“Hey, Annie,” she said, still relaxed. Still smiling.

“Hey, Tiffany.”

“This is my sister Beatrice.”

Bebe rolled her eyes and kind of half stood up, reaching out her hand. I stepped farther into the backyard to shake it. “Please, call me Bebe.”

“Nice to meet you, Bebe.”

“Come over and have a drink,” Bebe said. “I brought over like ten Buckets-o-Margarita—”

“Buckets-o-Margarita?” Tiffany asked.

“It says that on the label, Tiffany. I’m not making it up. Anyway, I took them from work. So it’s free and there’s lots of it.”

“I…I don’t want to impose…” I stammered, when I really did. I really wanted to impose.

“You’re not,” Tiffany said. “Honestly, we’ve got to drink all this green booze before my kids come home and think they’re slushies.”

“Well…” I smiled. “As long as I’m doing you a favor.”

“Oh,” Bebe said, nodding, her face all serious, “you are.”

“Let me just put my laundry in and I’ll come back.”

I practically threw my laundry into the machine with the soap and the coins and then walked back out to the picnic table. Tiffany was coming out of her trailer with one Spider-Man and two Barbie cups filled to the brim with icy green booze. She was licking the top of one like an ice-cream cone.

“You’re right,” she said. “It says Bucket-o-Margarita.”

“I told you,” Bebe said. “Who’d make that shit up?”

Tiffany handed out the cups and we all took a half-sip, half-bite from our drinks. It was shockingly sweet and really boozy and very cold.

Perfect.

“Where are your kids?” I asked.

“My dad’s away on business for the week, so my mom took them for two whole nights,” Tiffany said. She put her hands up in the air and did a little swaying dance move. “I’m gonna get drunk. And sleep in late. And then I’m going to mop the floors and go to the grocery store without anyone—”

“No,” Bebe cut in. “We’re going to get drunk, yes. Sleep in, yes. And then we’re going to flop out on that couch and watch bad TV all day.”

“I vote with Bebe,” I said and took another swig/bite of my drink. It was melting fast in the heat. “Bad TV, no mopping.”

Tiffany smiled affectionately at her sister. “Bebe does have all the good ideas.” She clapped her hands like she’d had a suddenly great idea. “Hey, I have chips.” She stood up, wobbled slightly, and then made a beeline for her trailer.

“Bring out a bucket!” Bebe yelled.

Without Tiffany, we both took another drink and the silence was thick. I’d never been good with small talk, especially with other women. “You don’t live here, do you?” I asked when the silence went on way too long. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I live with my folks in Asheville.”

“Wow,” I said. Tiffany had a sister, a mom, and a dad who goes on business meetings, who all live in Asheville—an hour and a bit up the road—and she’s stuck out here in a trailer park with three kids and a fuckwit like Phil? Hardly seemed right. But then I was no great judge of family dynamics.

“When she got pregnant with Danny and married Phil, Dad disowned her,” Bebe said, like she knew what I was thinking. “Mom and I do what we can behind his back—”

“Like take the kids when he’s on business?”

She nodded. “I send her some money when I can. Stuff for the kids.”

“You know Phil hits her?”

Bebe jerked back, her face turned aside.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, putting down the drink. “I should—”

“She says he stopped.”

I shook my head.

“Goddamnit,” she whispered.

Tiffany arrived in the doorway of the trailer, holding a bucket aloft. She looked years younger. Radiant, even. And drunk as a skunk. “This one is Bucket-o-Daiquiri.”

“Bring it on,” Bebe said, waving her forward.

“Forgot the chips,” Tiffany said and darted back in.

Bebe grabbed my hand. “Stay,” she said. “Let’s have fun. A lot of fun. For Tiffany. She needs this.”

“Sure,” I said, because I needed it too. The proverbial rug had been yanked out from beneath me and I didn’t know how to process it. Processing Dylan while drunk seemed like a great idea. I had never in my life gotten drunk with girlfriends. I’d never really had girlfriends. This night seemed paramount to me. A matter, quite frankly, of survival.

The slush was now mostly liquid and I took another big swig. Alcohol burned down my throat.

Tiffany came back out with the bucket and the chips and an ice-cream scoop. “Hey, Annie,” she said, sitting down and pointing the ice-cream scoop in my face. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Yeah?” I asked, leaning out of the way. Bebe cracked open the daiquiri bucket and took the ice-cream scoop out of Tiffany’s hand, using it to dish out giant balls of yellow booze.

“What the fuck happened to your hair?”

—

And that is how I found myself in the kitchen of her trailer (really, those double-wides were so spacious!), a towel around my neck and Tiffany putting peroxide in my hair. She’d already trimmed up my ragged edges and bangs. I felt like I’d had short hair before, but now it seemed…really short. Boy short.

I couldn’t quite work up the sobriety to care.

“It’ll just take some of the black out,” Tiffany said. “So you don’t look so fucking scary.”

“I look scary?” I asked, and tipped my head back so I could get the last bit of Bucket-o-Daiquiri out of the bottom of my Barbie cup.

“Don’t listen to her!” Bebe warned from the couch. “When I was five she said she was only going to give me bangs and I ended up with a weird sideways Mohawk.”

“Shush,” Tiffany said, in her best stern mom voice. “You’re gonna scare her.”

“I’m not scared,” I said. And I wasn’t. This was all too much fun to be scary.

Tiffany applied the peroxide, which stunk, and Bebe refilled my cup, and all was really quite right with the world.

Until Tiffany touched one of the bruises on my neck. I jerked, thinking it was an accident. But then she touched another one. I opened my eyes only to find her looking down at me. All her pain, every time a fist had touched her skin, bruised her, broke her. It was all right there on her young/old face.

I know you, I thought. I know everything about you.

I reached up and grabbed her hand. “I got away,” I breathed. “I left him. He can’t hurt me anymore.” I don’t know why I said any of that, other than it seemed like the answer to the question she was too scared, maybe, to ask.

Her smile was lopsided. “Good.”

“Anyone want to try Bucket-o-Colada?” Bebe asked.

“Me!” Tiffany and I both said.

Bucket-o-Colada was the best one yet, and Bebe started telling the story of her five-year high school reunion, which apparently included the Prom Queen starting a fight, and we all lost track of time.

“Holy shit, your head!” Tiffany shouted, who the hell knows how much later. She jumped out of her seat and bent me backward over the sink. “Isn’t it burning?”