Holden ripped the bag of rinds wide open, shoving his face in them like a wild animal.

“—BITCH!” Wynonna screamed.

Holden was chomping, scarfing, devouring with voracious force. Wynonna all but assaulted him, ripping the tattered bag from his hands. By that point, there was nothing but deep-fried pork dust and Holden’s smirking chipmunk cheeks, bulging like balloons. He didn’t dare swallow, though. Like any sane human, he knew that pork rinds tasted like salty, deep-fried ass.

Both Holden’s and Wynonna’s heads rotated slowly, homing in on the second—and final—bag of pork rinds.

Wynonna bolted. Holden, however, dove like a baseball player for home plate. And because the vinyl tile floor was as buffed and shiny as the immortal bald head of Bruce Willis, he slid like it was a Slip ’n Slide. Holden snatched the bag and barrel-rolled, and Wynonna tripped over him. He tried to get up, but Wynonna grabbed him by the shirt and muscled him down. They proceeded to roll around on the floor.

The moment Holden was on top, Wynonna went for his throat. Bad idea. Holden’s ballooning cheeks deflated, and he spewed chewed-up pork rinds all over her boho-crochet top.

Wynonna screamed with understandable horror. Holden coughed and gagged.

Imogen, meanwhile, crab-crawled away from the action on long, spindly limbs until she was right next to me. Climbed to her feet. Leaned toward my ear, although she was unable to tear her eyes away from the carnage.

“Why do they always do this?” she said in a hushed tone.

It was a very large question containing layers upon layers to unpack. Here were the facts as I knew them:

1. Wynonna hated me, but…

2. She loved to torment me.

3. Holden always came to my rescue, but…

4. He always did it in an unstable, psychotic, rage-y sort of way.

5. I think Wynonna loved that, too. I think she got a rush out of it.

It was a vicious, never-ending cycle. In fact, one might assume that it was a part of the normal balance of their lives. That if you took this away from them, their states of being might very well spiral into chaos.

Then a thought occurred: I was experiencing a rare, one-on-one conversation with Imogen. If you disregarded our best friends grappling MMA-style on the floor, that is. Which I did. In fact, Wynonna and Holden were inadvertently acting as a kind of strange and horrifying—but nevertheless effective—icebreaker. It was about as perfect an opportunity to ask You Know Who to the You Know What that I could hope for.

However, now that Imogen was standing next to me—clearly not having a 911 emergency—I devolved into my usual state of crippling social ineptitude.