“Hey, what’s the rush?” Bea says, matching my pace.

I shake off the weirdness and look at her, at all the nuances that make her Bea. The tiny dot on her nose where the ring gets replaced. Dyed-black hair, just so, in a deep V over her left eye. A pity, if you ask me, because her eyes are startling.

“God, this heat wave,” she says, tugging a button loose. “It’s September.”

“Bea…do you think we’ll always be friends?”

She stops, looks at me. “Are you literally crazy? What brought that on?”

“Nothing. It’s just—”

“Put it this way, Moon. You’ll be the one walking me down the aisle for weddings number one, two and three.”

“Only three?”

She walks on. “The fourth, fifth and sixth will be in Vegas, baby. And if I’m in the mood, the seventh might even be you.”

“Right. Good to know.”

“Point is, of course we’ll always be friends, you idiot. In what world could you desert someone as charismatic and amazing as me?”

She looks at the path ahead. “But you want the truth?”

“Always.”

She turns to me. Smiles. “Truth is, I’d go to the ends of the earth for you, Moon. Wanna know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you’d do it for me too. If I was mad and lost, you’d pull me back from the brink, you would. That’s who you are.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Make what sound easy?”

“Knowing who you are. I never know who I’m supposed to be.”

“All that back-and-forth between Frankie and your Old Man getting to you?”

She’s got one of those minds, Bea—quick-fire, straight to the point.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m lost in the middle, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And Zig makes the whole thing harder. I mean, I thought it’d get easier. That at some point, it would just…make sense. I’d forget everything before.”

“But you don’t,” Bea says. “You never forget. It changes you.”

“I’m one person with her,” I say. “Someone else with him.”

Bea looks away. Shadows filigree her skin. Eventually, she nods, and I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with me or just acknowledging my point of view, until she says, “Hey, at least you get the option.” And the air punches out of me.

“I’m sorry, Bea…I didn’t—”

“Forget it, Moon. Bygones.”

—