“So,” Noelle said as she drove, mostly to stop herself from daydreaming about Things a Person Could Do to Another Person in the Bench Seat of a Truck, “you’re the only gay girl I’ve ever met who only hangs out with a straight guy and a bunch of old people who own antique stores. Don’t you get lonely for fellowship?”

“Let me tell you a secret about the kind of confirmed bachelors and spinster aunts who own antique shops,” Miriam said with a wink. “And I have friends in Charleston, although admittedly many of them are Tara’s friends. I don’t know, my childhood was somewhat lacking in examples of normal affection, you know, except from Cass, so I sort of gravitate toward people who remind me of her. Besides, I often feel unwelcome in queer spaces as a bisexual, so sometimes I avoid them, so I won’t have to feel like I’m not gay enough.”

“You need friends your own age,” Noelle grumbled, “who do not worship you on social media.” She was grouchy, because she wanted to go back and make the last ten years—hell, the last thirty years—of Miriam’s life less lonely.

“Well, Ms. Judgmental, I’m so glad you’ve volunteered,” Miriam said dryly.

“I was volunteering you for Elijah’s trivia team. Is friends what we’re going for?” Noelle asked, raising an eyebrow in Miriam’s direction. “I’m going to be very disappointed, if so.”

Miriam put her hand on Noelle’s thigh, and Noelle felt the sensation all the way through her body. “I’ll have to be friends with someone else then.”

“Good,” Noelle growled before pausing. She glanced at the little clown music box Miriam had bought at the antique store and was now fiddling with. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure?” Miriam sounded wary.

“Well, you may have noticed that I’m interested in unwrapping the mystery of Miriam Blum,” Noelle began, “and one of the many questions I have is, why the Bloomer Face? You put this weird as fuck art into the world, but then you sell it with this fake version of you.”

“Part of it is that my fans are strangers I have a parasocial relationship with,” Miriam explained, shifting in her seat to look at Noelle, “and there’s only so close I want to be to them, for safety reasons. I am a queer Jew on the internet, so that requires some careful boundaries. But I’m also not convinced they would want to know the real, messy, fucked-up person who makes that weird art.”

Noelle shook her head. “If they don’t want to, they’re missing out. You have a deeply strange soul, and it’s pretty incredible.”