“Freya invited us over tonight.”
“Oh.” I stopped. “For dinner?”
“For magic mushrooms.”
“Seriously?”
Jamie went to the cupboard and pulled out a glass. “Apparently Low can hook her up.”
“Are you into it?”
Jamie and I had taken ’shrooms in college. I’d had a decent trip, though I’d spent most of the night rubbing her back while she vomited into a garbage can.
“I don’t know.” Her pretty face looked troubled as she poured water from the Brita. “I had a hard day today.”
“Did something happen at the store?”
“No.” She turned away, grabbed a cloth, and busied herself wiping mustard from the counter. “I got my period, that’s all.”
“Jamie”—my voice was gentle—“you can’t get sad every month.”
“I know that,” she replied, still vigorously cleaning. “I wouldn’t have, but I was late. I got my hopes up a bit.”
“How late?”
She hesitated before answering. “Two days. But my period is like clockwork. I thought . . . maybe . . . I’ve got an assistant, my stress levels are down. . . .”
I moved toward her, tried to draw her into a hug, but she pecked my cheek and stepped away.
“I’m fine now. Really.” She rinsed the cloth under the faucet. “Freya and I had lunch. We talked about how society expects women to become moms. Everyone thinks I’m defective because I can’t have a baby. Freya doesn’t want kids and people think she’s a heartless monster.”
“And then you decided to get high on psychedelics?”
“Basically, yeah.” She smiled as she wrung out the cloth. “She thought a night of friends and music and tripping would make us appreciate our childlessness. I’ll probably just have some wine, but the rest of you can take mushrooms, if you want.”
“Sounds kind of fun.”
“I knew you wouldn’t want to miss a chance to see your boyfriend.”
I rolled up a dish towel and whipped it at her butt as she laughingly skittered from the room.
“My boyfriend,” I muttered to myself as I pulled the fish from the fridge. Of course there was nothing romantic about my feelings toward Max Beausoleil, but I liked the guy. He was a small-town boy who hadn’t let fame and fortune go to his head. Or, maybe it had gone to his head, but then the fallout from the illegal hit, the lawsuit, Ryan Klassen’s overdose, had brought him crashing back down to earth. Like everyone with a TV, I’d watched the replay of Klassen’s incendiary stick in the face, and Beausoleil’s retaliatory check. I saw the anger and aggression on Max’s face in slow motion. I also saw his tears as he apologized to the Klassen family in an emotional press conference outside the courthouse. It was hard to muster pity for the rich, handsome athlete with his sexy blond wife hanging off his arm. He’d pled guilty to assault to “spare them the ugliness of a trial,” but many thought it was a PR move, that he was crying crocodile tears. I’d been one of them.