It was embarrassing for Ayanna how eagerly she wanted to know how her friend perceived her. She balled her own toes into fists, held them, even though they cracked, as a slight punishment.

“I like you because when I do something really bad, you call me back in, but most of the time, I feel like you want me to be myself.”

“I like knowing you,” Ayanna said. “When I’m friends with someone, I want to know all of them. Not just the cute parts.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I’m glad you’re still in my life. You have the gift of making me feel liked.”

They talked for ten more minutes, about a show Stephen had seen where an artist had made cakes out of metal and assault rifles out of cake and while it seemed very stupid at the time, well, here he was telling her about it, how when his mother had FaceTimed him to say his father was gone, she was wearing one of those Korean face masks, and he could tell she had forgotten that she was wearing it, how she was so upset he couldn’t say anything about it, but how disturbing it was to see only her eyes, and how big and frightening they looked against the white papery substance, how she was crying, but the tears were disappearing into the skin-care slime of the mask. “It seemed like a weird prank at first,” Stephen said.

Sometimes, when they spoke like this, Ayanna would remember the first time she had met him, he had been wearing a velvet blazer with no shirt on beneath it and would be tempted to laugh that somehow this person had become family.

Ayanna told him about how when her grandmother died, one of the last things she had said to Ayanna was, “You have to make a cake on my birthday every year and have a slice for me, but if it’s one of those dumb vegetable cakes, chocolate zucchini, carrot, I will come back with a belt.” She had never joked like that ever before with Ayanna, and because her grandmother had always been gentle and kind, they had laughed so hard that both felt it in their stomachs and throats, and then her grandmother had rolled over, said she was very tired, that she loved Ayanna, then died in her sleep five hours later.

“I know I’m going to be thinking about my mom in that sheet mask, telling me about my dad, for the rest of my life.”

“I mean, me too, now.”

They said good night and Stephen promised to text details after he had slept.

Ayanna got out of bed, walked down the hall without turning on the lights, and poked her head into the office. The lights were still on, Felix had fallen asleep on the couch, a book on his chest and papers and pen on the ground.