“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Let’s be clear: you came straight here, while I’m working an event for a client, and thought this would be a good time and place to come talk to me? Why didn’t you just call if you wanted to know if I need any help? Which I don’t, by the way.”

“Why didn’t I call? Really?”

Fair enough. I forgot that Brian stopped trying to reach me after about six months of my ignoring his calls and texts. My grief was—is—a complicated thing. And of all the people who I didn’t know how to be my newly widowed self around, Brian, Decker’s best friend and reason for us ever meeting, was at the top of the list. I took away his drinking buddy, his lacrosse teammate, his frat brother. Besides that guilt, how can you be a flailing emotional mess around Mr. Joe Cool? He was going to be over Decker dying long before I’d ever be. It was too painful then to pretend I was fine around him, and I’d never bothered to see if things had changed on that front. Why would I? My life has shaken out pretty okay since paring down my involvement with the Austins and those closest to us as a couple. New home, new roommate, new career, new everything worked out for me.

“Okay, I get it. But, for the last time, I don’t need your help.”

“I never said that you did.” Brian puts his hands up like I’m about to shoot.

“I know. Sorry. I just... I want everyone to understand that I’ll figure this Decker thing out myself...just like I’ll figure out how to get these influencers to stop spelling WeHot with two Ts. Shit!”

At that, my eye jets over to a TV monitor mounted in the locker room area featuring a livestream of Tweets from the influencers. I’m mortified to see that @AvocadoToast1997 is just one of many who haven’t bothered to absorb the spelling of the name of the place they’ve been invited to take free classes at for the next six months.

“Well, this isn’t good,” I mutter to myself as I wedge back open my computer.

“What happened? And what exactly do you do for a living again? Gaga Glow is work for you?”

“I write code,” I say, feverishly typing away.

“Okay, yeah, sure. You write code. How about one more time, but in English, please?”

“I’m a Numbers Queen. I stalk people on the internet who I think would like to go to events like Gaga freaking Glow and then I design custom reports to show the client how much they all talked about how much they loved it. But right now, my metrics are getting shot to hell because apparently no one knows how to spell. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to adjust my code so those cute little typos you see on that giant screen count toward the overall impressions.” Hell if I’m losing credit for curating a successful invite list because these ’90s bitches legitimately think hot has two t’s. “Here. Can you plug in my adapter? My computer’s about to die. The outlet is by your foot.” I hand Brian my computer cord like I’m handing him shock paddles.