Before my dad left, he bought me whatever I wanted. My mom would get pissed and say, “That girl is never going to understand the value of a dollar.” But why did I need to understand the value of a dollar? I was pretty, and my dad always said that was enough. I never thought about what would happen when I turned forty-eight.

I stand up and adjust the dress to cover the tiny wrinkles on the tops of my tits that seem to have developed overnight. Then I take another big swig.

Jen and I wore the same size, so we could share clothes. I had never thought of this benefit of lesbian relationships before: double the closet. Jen had great clothes too, much nicer than mine. But my favorite thing about Jen was how she was with Bo. She treated him like her own. We would go to Castle Park and ride the teacups and drive the bumper cars. Bo was scared of the roller coaster, so Jen would put him in between us and we’d each hold one of his hands. His palms would sweat like crazy, and Jen would rub his hair as we rode up to the top. After the big drop, Bo would be smiling and laughing. Later he’d thank us for encouraging him to go on the ride.

A few years later, when I felt Jen pulling away, it shattered me. She was the first person I dated who felt like home, like the home I had before my dad left. And we had this perfect little family. I knew it was too good to be true. When I looked through her phone and noticed she’d sent a kissy-face emoji to the new lesbian in town, I saw red for the first time. I knew I shouldn’t have set her car on fire, but my feelings don’t know shit. Jen couldn’t understand that I had no control over my actions, there was no decision, it was all instinct. And I did it because I loved her so deeply and intensely that the idea of losing her would keep me up at night. And I did lose her, and not because of another person or a disease or a freak accident, but because of something I did, and that’s what ultimately hurt me the most. I lost Jen, and I had no one to blame but myself.

“Miss,” the shopgirl says, and I jump, spilling a little tequila on the dress. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It doesn’t fit quite right.”

I take off the dress and hang it so that the tequila stain is toward the wall, put back on my cheap Marshalls dress, and head to the Coffee Bean.

I’ve tried every flavor of Ice Blended except black forest. I don’t even know what that means, black forest. You can’t eat a forest.