It would be good to have her close again, even if she was really the only person I knew here. In New York I had people everywhere. My mom, my siblings, my cousins, my tias. They were around the block or only a few stops away. But if I was honest, in the last few years I hardly saw them. I was so busy all the time that the friends who used to call me on Friday nights had eventually gotten tired of getting shut down. Some of it was family stuff. A lot of it had been work. And though I’d rather cut my tongue off than admit it, I’d miss it. I already missed him, even in the few days I’d been in Dallas. Which only told me how sorry the state of my life was.

The doorbell rang while I brooded and Julia perked up in that way she did when she had something up her sleeve.

“They’re here!”

They’re? Who was they’re?

I didn’t have to wonder for long, because in the next moment Julia opened the door and the entire crew of her Dallas friends walked in the door.

“It’s official: we get Alba for the next two months!”

“Fuck yeah, my new work homie!” Dani, the Cuban-Ghanaian bona fide Instagram celebrity, was the first to say hello. Dani was fancy as fuck and was a full-on Manhattan prep school kid. He leaned in to buss me on the cheek, a bottle of chilled Veuve in each hand.

“Dani always understands the assignment,” Julia said happily as she took the bubbly from him. Next I got tackled by José and Tariq.

“Did you quit on that asshole?” José asked giddily before high-fiving me when I answered with a sharp nod. “I love that journey for you,” he yelled, making the whole room bust up.

“Technically I had already quit.”

“Yeah you had, kicked that dead-end job to the curve, future lifestyle mogul over here!” Tariq called from across the room. Both Tariq and José were Bronx boys but the two could not be more different. While José was short and lean and always dressed in colorful prints, Tariq was tall, very muscular and wore fits I referred to as Uptown Chic. The boy loved a Yankees hat and Air Force Ones combo in matching colors. They were obviously crazy about each other, but as far as anyone knew they were just friends.

“Salome,” I called as the one person I knew from New York came closer.

“Girl, I’ve been wanting you to quit that job since the day you told me about that asshole’s coffee.” Salome and I hadn’t been exactly close, but I’d known her from my time at Columbia and we’d always gotten along. When I heard she’d taken an academic job in Dallas I told her to look up Julia.