“Thank you for coming with me,” she says stiffly.
“What friends do,” I grunt back.
Friends.
I’m friend-zoning myself.
And the weird thing?
Of all the women I’ve fooled around with, I probably like Muffy most. She’s funny. She’s unpredictable. She’s creative.
So are most of the women I hook up with, if I’m being honest.
But there’s something about Muffy that’s different too. In a good way. Fresh. Unexpected. Always something of a puzzle, which is basically irresistible to me. She has this air about her that says I care about people and want them to be happy, but I won’t let you close because you are not yet to be trusted.
Somehow, I don’t think leaving her unsatisfied at the bunny bar is scoring me points on that last bit.
The weird part is how much I care, and not because my dick has been broken ever since.
Fine.
Fine.
We were friends. She’s a woman. I’m a man. And we were friends.
We settle into silence, her clutching her candy but not eating it while she goes back to working on her phone, me driving and pretending I’m listening to the radio, and we hop back on the interstate.
By the time we roll into Richmond, neither of us has said three more words to each other.
But now that she’s looking away from whatever she was doing on her phone, taking in the scenery around us, her face is pasty and sweaty again, and I don’t know if it’s from all those Donettes that I would’ve given my left leg to eat with her, if it’s because staring at her phone makes her nauseous in the car, or if it’s because of whatever happened the last time she was here.
Or maybe she’s coming down with an actual bug.
“Take the next left.” She’s squeaking like a mouse as she studies the map on her phone, which I can see now.
She was hiding the phone from me until we hit the outskirts of Richmond, which makes me wonder if she was playing Candy Crush and didn’t want me to know, or if she was working on top secret Muff Matchers business.
“How much further?” I ask.
“Six blocks.”
Six blocks?
I don’t see anything university-ish anywhere. I thought we’d be near the campus.
Maybe it’s in six blocks.
Or the hotel is.
And maybe I’ve had three hours in the car with her to ask her what I could’ve done better when we hooked up, and I’ve been a complete and total chicken shit.
That’s the whole reason I’m here.
To find out what Mr. Disappointment in my jockey shorts and I need to do better so we can function as one again, but instead, I’ve managed to offend her over her choice of road trip food and she’s basically refusing to speak to me.
We hit a stoplight three blocks down the street.
Muffy’s breathing so heavily that the windows are fogging up.
That’s not normal. “What the fuck happened the last time you were here?”
“Nothing.”
She’s lying. “Muffy—”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Look, if you just got one hotel room, I don’t care.”
“No, that’s not—”
A horn honks behind us, cutting her off. Light’s green. I lift a middle finger to the honker and take my time hitting the gas. “What happened?” I repeat.
She looks down at her lap and scrubs hard at the white spots on her black dress, left over from her Donette binge. “I really don’t think anyone’s going to say anything about it, but if you hear weird stuff—well, one, remember it’s me, and two, sometimes people exaggerate, and three, if you could do that thing where you glare at someone like you’re planning on gnawing their leg bone for dessert, that would be great, and I’ll owe you free services at Muff Matchers, okay?”
“I don’t want free services from Muff Matchers.”
“Right.”
Fuck. Again. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay. I’m a terrible matchmaker. I know. I am getting better, but I get it. You need to see a track record longer than three matches to believe it. Well, four, but I don’t like to count the first one because it was so easy and they basically did it themselves.”
“Muffy—”
“You can find a parking spot anytime now. We’re close enough.”
“The hotel doesn’t have a parking lot?”
“We’re…not going to the hotel first. No time. The reception…thing is starting.”
I pinch my lips together and remind myself I volunteered for this. What difference does it make if we go to the hotel first?
None.
If I were planning to camp out on the bed and binge watch SpongeBob SquarePants, which is always showing on hotel TVs, I would’ve stayed home.
I’m not wiggling out of whatever it is I promised Muffy I’d come here for just because I haven’t gotten up the nerve to ask her if she can have a talk with my dick and promise it that it’s still worthy of performing.
Street parking is full, and I don’t see any parking garages or parking lots immediately. We get stopped at another light where a dozen people all wearing black are waiting to cross the street. “What’s this reception for again?”
She crinkles the bag in her lap. “Veda and her family and this…thing.”
Two people dressed in all black walk past my car.
Four more people in all black are strolling down the sidewalk across the street.
There’s a funeral home two buildings behind us.
My heart doubles down and I get a tinny taste in my mouth. “Oh, fuck, no.”
Weddings and funerals.
Weddings and funerals are the only two things you have to be at to support a friend.
And maybe baptisms or bachelor parties, but Muffy’s definitely not taking me to a bachelor party. And there’s no way we’re here for a wedding.
We’d have a gift.
Even if it was a second-hand gift from Hilda, which is a terrifying thought.
“You’re taking me to a funeral?” I spit out.
“I didn’t think anyone would come with me if they knew why I was really here. And if you don’t want to go in, that’s fine. I’ll—I’ll go in by myself. I’ll man up, okay? I’ll get over myself and everything that’s put me into therapy for the past four years. Maybe I’ll find a few new clients.”
The car is too small. The car’s too small, and my shirt’s too tight, and the tinny taste in my mouth is turning to cotton. I try to swallow while I find my tongue. “Your friend died?”
“No! No. Veda didn’t die. Her dad did. And this really is a celebration. She only went to med school because he made her because he’s—he was the dean, and he wasn’t a very good father. So she’s free of him now, and she can do whatever she wants without judgment, but she still has to get through everyone telling her what an awesome person he was, plus, he was her dad, so there are complicated feelings. Listen, if there’s one thing I know, it’s shitty fathers, and one day, I’m gonna be asking Veda to do this exact same thing for me. If this were anywhere else but right here in Richmond with all the people I used to know at Blackwell, I’d be all over it solo. But it’s here, and—Tyler? Are you okay?”