It had to be Jamie and Brian. While my straitlaced employer did not seem the type, four months of careful observation over the course of my friendship with Freya had convinced me that she had no other friends. She was friendly with a few people, like the seniors who took her pottery classes, but they weren’t friends. Definitely not friends who did ’shrooms together. Max didn’t seem to have any pals, probably because he spent most of his time alone in a kayak, or on a motorcycle, or exercising.

But disappointing Freya was not an option, so I drove to the taxi company where a former classmate worked in the office and sold drugs out the back door. I bought five grams of magic mushshrooms for fifty bucks. Freya was thrilled when I delivered the packet to her.

“You’re a doll,” she said, handing me a bill. And then: “Umm . . . Were you still planning to glaze your pieces tonight?”

“I was.”

“It’s just . . . Jamie doesn’t want you to know she’s doing ’shrooms.”

So, it was Jamie. I liked that Freya was betraying her confidence for me. “Why would I care? I’ve done ’shrooms plenty of times.” This was an outright lie—I had done ’shrooms only once, and I’d thought my lamp was laughing at me—but I hoped it might prompt an invitation.

“You know how Jamie is,” Freya said. “She’s kind of uptight.”

Her disparaging comments about Jamie made me feel deliciously warm. “Just a bit,” I joked.

“I don’t want her to be paranoid and have a bad trip. Come back tomorrow.”

The glow of satisfaction evaporated. Freya was dismissing me, like a delivery person. Like a mule.

“Sure.”

“Thanks for being so cool,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes then and kissed my cheek. It was an odd thing to do, but she must have sensed my feelings of betrayal and rejection, must have thought she could assuage her guilt with this pathetic show of affection.

“No big deal.”

But it was. A big fucking deal.

15

brian vincent

I was supposed to be working on my novel, but at some point that afternoon, I’d fallen down a social media rabbit hole. When Jamie walked through the front door at six fifteen, I was startled to realize I’d squandered hours of writing time. Feeling guilty, I jumped out of my seat.

“Hey, babe.” I hurried over and kissed her cheek. “You surprised me. I was in the zone.”

“Were you?” She gave me a wry smile. “Or were you on Facebook?”

“Twitter,” I admitted. “But there’s a plagiarism scandal going on with this huge YA author. Technically, it was research.”

“Or schadenfreude.”

I held up two fingers about an inch a part. A bit.

We moved into the kitchen, where lunch dishes and coffee cups still littered the counters. I began stuffing them into the dishwasher, as I asked, “Are you hungry? I bought a piece of fish at the docks. I could make some risotto to go with it.”