She looked at me in horror. “No! No. None of that.” With shaking hands, she put her coffee in the cup holder, and then picked up a napkin and started to fiddle with it, mumbling inaudibly.

“Come on now,” I snapped. “If we’re going to have it out, let’s do it. Speak. Up.”

“Because you were good for her!” she shouted.

I focused on my cup, my fingers squeezing it so hard that the lid popped off. Nadia had been good for me, that was for sure. “I’m sure you were good for her, too.”

She scoffed. “I thought you were all about the absence of bullshit. Now I see you’re full of it.”

I shrugged. “You were friends with her for a lot longer than I was.”

She ripped the napkin down the middle. “Maybe. I thought I was a good friend, too. I never said no to her when she wanted something.”

I took another sip, even though it tasted like tar and ashes. It took me a long time to swallow it. “It was hard to say no to her.”

“You did.” Her unsteady fingers tore the napkin at the edges, creating a brown paper frill. “I was the one who gave her the pills,” she said in a strained voice. “It wasn’t the first time, either. She told me she just needed to relax, and my dad had a bottle of oxys left from his back surgery a year ago. I had no idea she’d take all of them at once … it’s bad, I know.”

I raised my head and stared at her. I knew she wanted me to tell her it was okay, but it wasn’t. Pills. Nadia’d had a problem even before I met her, and it was what had killed her. Hell, even after she died, she was still looking for them. I set my cup in the cup holder and jammed my hands between my knees. “Don’t tell me that, Tegan. Just. Don’t.”

She sniffled and pulled a tissue from her purse. “Fuck you.”

It struck me as so ridiculous, me and Tegan, sitting here, cursing at each other. I started laughing. “Fuck you, too,” I said, and flipped her off for good measure.

She accepted my twisted peace offering for what it was. She raised her prettily manicured middle finger and stuck her tongue out at me. We both needed to step off the hot topic. The ground there was too dangerous, so we could retreat behind this stupidity because it was all we had right now.

We stared out her windshield for a few minutes, watching Malachi walk slowly across the wide sidewalk and up to the looming glass and brick facade of our school. “Laney’s pretty determined to snatch your boy,” Tegan commented. “Just thought you should know.”