Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 2

“Sorry about bringing Byron. He asked if he could come over, and I thought you’d be home much later.” Amelia met me at the door as soon as I was inside the apartment, holding out a glass of water. “Anyway, sorry.”

Accepting the glass, I shrugged and walked past her. “It’s fine.” Still out of breath from my run, I paced the short distance between the kitchen peninsula and the couch, needing to cool down. I should’ve walked around the block again, but the rain had gone from a drizzle to something more aggressive.

“It’s not fine. I know he irritates you.” She moved to the couch and sat, pulling a fuzzy blanket over her legs. What looked like a new mug of tea and a plate of my ginger cookies sat on the coffee table to her left.

“Only because he doesn’t laugh at my witty anecdotes. Him pretending to replace me funny would go a long way,” I joked . . . kinda not joking.

Then again when had I last tried to tell Byron a joke? It must’ve been years since I made any kind of effort.

“It’s more than that, I know it is.” She picked up her mug and blew on the surface. “I need polite Winnie to take a smoke break so I can talk to honest Winnie. You don’t like him. Does he make you uncomfortable?”

“He doesn’t make me uncomfortable,” I denied reflexively despite her permission to be honest, not wanting to upset my friend.

But then I rolled my eyes at this irritating, deep-rooted need within me to avoid conflict and make everyone else happy all the time, something about myself I’d sincerely been trying to change.

“Okay, fine. He isn’t my favorite person,” I admitted with reluctance. “But he doesn’t make me uncomfortable. Besides, it doesn’t matter. You two are good friends. Period.” Are we really talking about this now? What’s the point? I drank the entire glass of water and then twisted around to inspect the kitchen. “Is there any tea left?”

“There’s still hot water. I wish you would tell me if you don’t want me to bring him by.” She nodded toward the kettle. “Are you sure he doesn’t make you uncomfortable?” Her voice raised an octave with the question. “You grit your teeth and act like you have a hernia whenever he’s around.”

“Well, he does, kinda.” Flustered, I quickly washed out the dirty water glass and placed it on the rack to dry.

I wasn’t prepared to have this conversation, yet I knew we should. It felt overdue. Nevertheless, I was determined to measure my words carefully. The last thing I wanted was to cause trouble between Amelia and her childhood friend.

“Byron doesn’t. . . make me. . . feel. . . uncomfortable,” I said haltingly. “But I feel discomfort around him.”

I turned to replace that Amelia had scrunched her face. “You feel discomfort around him, but he doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable?”

“I know, it doesn’t make any sense.” I laughed, pouring hot water into a mug while my shoulders shivered in the damp running jacket.

“What can I do to help you feel less discomfort around him?”

“Nothing.” Peeling off my outer layer and slinging it over a kitchen chair, I carried my mug to the couch and sat crisscross on the cushion, facing her. “He’s so—”

“Quiet?”

“Perfect.”

She made a face. “Perfect?”

“Yeah. He’s absolutely brilliant, self-made, hugely talented and creative. He donates all that money to charity every year and seems to know everything about everything. I guess I feel like an uninformed child whenever we’re in a room together and I don’t know how to—you know—not be intimidated. That’s on me.” This was the conclusion I’d come to years ago.

To borrow the phrase my second-grade teacher often used, being around people “filled my bucket.” This seemed to be unilaterally true. Except with Byron Visser.

Even when we first met—before he was this famous wunderkind author, before he’d earned his double PhDs, before he’d bulked out after joining a rugby club a few years ago and people started tripping all over themselves when he walked in a room, back when he was an awkwardly adorable, tall, lanky undergrad with no degrees, wearing all black, whose head seemed too big for his body and he’d hide his face behind thick, wavy black hair that fell past his shoulder blades—something about him set me off-kilter and made my skin buzz. In my entire life, only he had this effect on me.

Actually, that’s not true. The closest I’d experienced this disconcerting biological anarchy had been during an extremely difficult time two weeks into my freshman year of high school—I won’t bore you with a long story involving white shorts, the boys’ varsity soccer team, my period, and Instagram—after which I’d felt shaky, hyperaware, and embarrassed for weeks.

Sudden hot flashes, inability to form coherent sentences, tightness in my chest, pounding heart, trembling hands—being around or near Byron had always made me feel this way. The moment our eyes had first met, I’d felt it. I couldn’t breathe. It was like being sucker punched in the stomach. I’d worked hard to ignore the inexplicable discomfort. I liked people, and Byron was, after all, just a person.

But during our first meeting, I’d said something about rollerblading over the summer at Alki Beach. I’d pronounced it Al-key instead of Al-kye. He’d immediately corrected me.

He hadn’t done it rudely. It had been very matter-of-fact, lacking in emotion. Even so, I’d withdrawn completely, and his offhanded correction had permanently flipped a switch. No matter what and how I tried, I couldn’t seem to unflip it. Almost everything out of his mouth since that moment had struck me as condescending and judgmental, even when I knew objectively that it wasn’t.

Therefore, I was the problem and avoided him.

“He makes you feel like a child?” Amelia eyes seemed to widen and narrow at the same time, it was a look of outrage. “What did he say? I’ve told him—”

“No, no. It’s not him. It’s me.” I covered her hand, trying not to worry too much about what she’d told Byron. I shouldn’t care what he thought about me, so why should I be embarrassed if Amelia talked to him about it? I shouldn’t be embarrassed. I shouldn’t be anything where Byron was concerned. I doubted I even registered on his radar. He probably called me Fred because he didn’t know or care to remember my real name. “I guess super smart people make me nervous? But, like I said, that’s my problem, not his.”

“What are you talking about? You’re super smart.”

“You know what I mean. There’s smart and then there’s smart.” I didn’t feel like this was a controversial statement. Even though Byron had existed only on the fringes of our college friend group, we all marveled at his encyclopedic knowledge during the very few times he’d shown up to a party or get-together. And when his first book had released, it had left us all breathless with effusive admiration. To put it a different way, I was very smart, but I was no Toni Morrison, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, or Byron Visser.

“And you think Byron is the latter?”

“Come on, Amelia. He graduated early with a degree in physics and holds PhDs in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He’s written two fiction best sellers and he’s been nominated for every major literary award for his debut novel. And he’s what, twenty-six? He’s amazing.”

“Twenty-seven. But that doesn’t—I mean—yes. His mother is some kind of genius professor who will probably invent bionic spines and win the Nobel Prize or something, but he’s Byron. And you’ve known him forever, before he published those books, before he was anyone.”

I didn’t know that about his mother, but it made sense. “Right, but we’ve barely interacted. He’s spoken less than one hundred words—total—to me in six years. Probably closer to fifty. Even in undergrad, he never came out with us. And I’ve always felt weird around him. Perhaps I sensed his brilliance early on. But I don’t—don’t dislike him.”

“You don’t dislike him?”

I grimaced. “Okay, actually, yes.” Even though this was me being honest, a jolt of worry made my heart accelerate.

“Finally! She admits it.” Amelia lifted her hand along the back of the couch and then let it fall, teasing, “Your ability to tap dance around the truth or ask for what you want is Olympic-level impressive.”

I gave her a wry smile. Amelia knew about my upbringing. I didn’t need to explain to her why I was so reluctant to speak uncomfortable truths. “I do dislike him. Happy now?”

“Yes!” She patted my leg. “So happy to learn you dislike my oldest friend. Yay!”

I laughed. “But it’s when he brings up how teachers aren’t paid enough, or anything at all related to my job. Or when he corrects my terrible pronunciation of common words. Or like today, when he criticized my houseplant. Or when he glares at me, saying nothing.”

“So basically every time you see him?”

We both laughed, and I shook my head at myself. Dislike wasn’t quite the right word. His general simmering disdain reminded me of my uncle. I’d been raised by my aunt and uncle after my mom passed and, suffice it to say, the best part of my childhood had been acting as a second mother to my six cousins.

Comparing Byron to Uncle Jacob likely wasn’t fair since they didn’t look at all alike, my uncle had been gregarious with everyone but a select few. Whereas Byron was gregarious with no one. And Byron had never screamed at me for making what I considered small mistakes. But they both had a habit of rarely opening their mouths in my presence unless to correct or criticize. They also glared openly, their gazes heavy with judgment.

“So you—who never dislikes anyone—dislike Byron, and you feel discomfort around him, but you think it’s you and not him?” Amelia narrowed her eyes. “Again, be honest, does he creep you out?”

“No. Like I said, he makes me nervous because of me and my hang-ups. I’m the problem.”

“It’s the staring, isn’t it? The staring makes you nervous.”

“He does stare, doesn’t he?” I deflected, even though his staring obviously wasn’t the only cause of my discomfort.

Amelia studied me thoughtfully. “He’s always stared, you know. He’s a big people watcher. He observes rather than interacts. But that’s a byproduct of him being a writer. Even when we were kids, he’d stare at people with those creepy green eyes.”

“His eyes aren’t creepy. They’re—”

“What?”

I didn’t want to say they were beautiful. I didn’t want Amelia to read too much into the comment. His eyes were beautiful, a grayish hazel around his pupil, followed by a ring of green and an outer ring of blue at the edge of his iris.

“They’re unusual,” I said slowly, as though I’d just now given the matter some consideration. “But that doesn’t make them creepy.”

“But unusual eyes plus staring does make him creepy. I’ll have to talk to him about it. I’m like his conscience, his cricket in a top hat, but for social situations.”

“Well don’t talk to him on my account.” I felt a pressing urge to change the subject. “By the way, what are you doing home so early?”

“Oh!” She clapped once and leaned forward, her eyes growing excited. “Actually, I came home to talk to you, hoping you’d be here after your meeting. You know that girls in STEM grant my company applied for? The really big one?”

Amelia had been premed in college but had changed her mind in her fourth year. She ended up dual majoring in biology and marketing with a focus on technical writing. She was set to graduate this May with her master’s degree in education and currently worked for a huge, fancy nonprofit that created STEM curricula and related content—like videos, learning games and apps—for schools.

“Yes, I remember.” I also leaned forward, on the figurative edge of my seat. If she was about to say what I thought she might be about to say, then—

“Well, we got it!”

I set my tea down so I could reach forward and give her a hug, not caring that I likely smelled like sweat and rain. “You’re a rock star! This is so exciting!”

“It is, and that’s why I rushed home. They gave everyone the afternoon off, and I wanted to talk to you as soon as possible. They’re going to be listing the community manager positions on the website the month after we receive the funds, and I want you to apply.”

“Are you kidding?” Anticipation and hope had my head buzzing. “Yes. Absolutely, you know I will.”

While the grant had been in the early planning stages, Amelia told me about the community manager positions. They were contract positions that paid influencers who already had STEM-focused social media accounts. The influencers would be expected to target girls and women with their marketing efforts, advertise women in STEM events hosted by Amelia’s company, scholarship opportunities, and receive materials and resources for encouraging women to consider careers in STEM.

Other than the advertising and scholarship part, it was a job I already did with my live videos and lessons but didn’t receive resources or get paid for. The perfect side-hustle that would help me pay off my student loans, doing what I already loved while not taking up more of my limited free time.

“Good. Excellent.” She beamed. “Glad to hear it. But we also need to strategize, beef up your resumé, and work on your numbers. I talked to my boss, and she gave me the metrics and requirements.” Amelia paired her last sentence with a grimace, twisting her fingers in front of her.

My heart sank. “How many followers do I need in order to be competitive?”

“The good news is that your followers to following ratio is fine, well within the metrics. But—and don’t despair or freak out—you need at a minimum one hundred thousand followers.”

“What?!” I gasped as hard as I’d ever gasped in the entirety of my life.

“In order to be truly competitive, a follower count of five hundred thousand or more would be ideal. And an engagement per video or post of at least six percent.”

My shoulders drooped. Darn. “Well, I have the engagement at least. But where am I going to replace seventy-five thousand followers in one month? Never mind four hundred and seventy-five thousand.”

“It’ll be more than a month. We’ll get the funding in six weeks, and we’ll post the community manager positions the month after.” She said this like the paltry reprieve changed everything.

It changed nothing. I’d been building my social media accounts for years. Ten weeks was a blink of an eye. “Okay, how am I going to get four hundred and seventy-five thousand followers in two and a half months?”

She steepled her hands and tapped her fingertips together, peering at me. “I have some ideas.”

My burst of a laugh sounded like a scoff. “Really? You got some college-aged, chemistry-curious women in your trench coat? Are they waiting for us outside in the hall?”

“Have some faith. We can do this. We need to think outside the box.” Amelia tapped my knee.

“What box? The box of reality?”

She made a face. “The box of your current content and social media accounts.”

I sighed. Loudly. “You want me to spend more time on TikTok.”

“Would that be so bad? TikTok is where it’s at.”

“No. But—” I struggled to define my objections, finally settling on, “—I feel like my content, the videos I do, don’t translate well to bite-sized clips. I’m a long format person, not a thirty-second or three-minute engineering and technology person.”

“But you could be. You made that list last year of thirty-second STEM facts, and those have done well on TikTok. I still think that list has great potential. And if anyone can make these concepts entertaining and engaging in thirty seconds, it’s you.”

“Okay.” I sighed again. “Okay, I’ll resurrect it.”

“And there’s something else.”

I peeked at her, bracing myself. “What?”

She also seemed to be bracing herself. “You should branch out.”

“Meaning?”

“Don’t say no until you hear me out.”

“Okay . . .”

“You should expand the kind of content you’re offering on TikTok and elsewhere, switch things up, do some popular challenges that aren’t necessarily related to STEM.”

I waited a beat, searching my brain for a clue as to what she meant, and finally asked, “Like what?”

“Like makeup, fashion, and romance challenges.”

I reared back. “You want me to do what?”

“Do the girly and romantic TikTok challenges.” She’d lifted her fingers and made air quotes around the word girly.

“What?” I shot up from the couch. “Makeup and fashion? Romance challenges? With who?” Before she could answer, I lifted my hand to cut her off. “And besides, I thought the influencers, the community manager accounts, were supposed to be STEM focused?”

“Yes—obviously, they should have a STEM focus—and no. They shouldn’t be just STEM videos. At least I don’t think they should. Think about it, you need to connect with your audience, make them see you as a real person they can relate to. Everyone who knows you loves you. That’s what you need to leverage.”

“By doing makeup and fashion TikTok challenges?” For some reason, the idea filled me with a heavy, deep sense of disappointment.

“And romance challenges! You’re cute, friendly, engaging. I’d watch you kiss someone.” Amelia nodded at her own assertion, picking up her tea and taking a sip.

I waited for her to either expand on her statement further or bust out with a Just kidding! She did neither.

So I moved my finger in a circle in front of my face. “You see this? This is my confused face because I am confused.”

“Look, lots of women—in college and older, girls in high school, and even younger—are interested in how to apply makeup. Obviously, not all women. I’m just saying, you are a makeup applying master. I didn’t know the first thing about eye shadow until you taught me.”

“Yes, but—”

“And many women—not all, but many—love romance and romantic stories. It’s not a mystery that if someone wants to build their following faster, they do so by posting live videos as well as challenges that are trending and sticking in the algorithms, and a lot of those sticky trends are fashion or romance-related challenges.”

“But. . . I’m a scientist. I’m a teacher.”

“So?” She shrugged, picking up a ginger cookie. “What part of being a scientist or a teacher says you can’t also enjoy makeup, fashion, and love stories?”

“Who is going to listen to me talk about magnetic fields if I’m making googly eyes at some random person in the very next video? Which, again, is still a problem.”

“What’s a problem?”

“Who would I do these so-called romantic challenges with? You? And what would Elijah say about it?”

“Tempting, but no. Besides, it would be best if you paired off with someone already on TikTok, someone who has a following.”

“Then who? You know I don’t date, I don’t have the time.” I’d gone on so many dates during the first two years after I’d broken up with my high school boyfriend, I’d lost track of the number. A few had made it to date three, but I hadn’t liked anyone enough to continue past date three.

Amelia, Serena, and I had made a pact our senior year to take twelve months off from dating. Now Serena was engaged to a great guy, Amelia had a super cool boyfriend named Elijah, and I was happily—and perpetually—single, not missing the emotional roller coaster of romance one bit. But even if I wanted to date, I didn’t have the time. Being a full-time teacher and managing my social media accounts and lessons, I barely had time to hang out with my friends unless it was virtually.

“Okay, first and foremost,” Amelia set down her ginger cookie and dusted her fingers of crumbs, “your audience will listen with rapt interest to your magnetic field videos because magnetic fields are fascinating, but you have to get the audience there in the first place. So pick someone. You have a ton of guy friends, many of whom you know would jump at the chance to—oh! Wait!” Eyes widening abruptly, she leaned forward and gave the coffee table three quick pats. “What about Jeff?”

I opened my mouth to protest the insanity of her suggestion, but as soon as Jeff’s name crossed her lips, my brain stalled.

. . . Oh.

Jeff.

Jeff Choi.

I’d met Jeff the second month of my sophomore year. Like me, Jeff had decided to be a high school STEM teacher and spend his life kindling the fire of curiosity in young people for the very same reason I had, because a STEM teacher had kindled that same kind of curiosity in him. We loved the same movies and books and art and artists and music and basically everything. He was kind and smart and so darn cute. From his thick, unruly brown hair to his smiling brown eyes to his square jaw to his corny jokes, I adored him.

But—and I swear—I’d never let myself actually think about being with Jeff because of one very huge issue. The fire of curiosity hadn’t been the only thing kindled during his freshman year of high school. Up until recently, Jeff had been with the same person—with a few on-again, off-again breakups in between—for over eleven years.

They’d gone to different colleges for undergrad, and she’d finished law school last year on the East Coast while he’d stayed in Seattle to teach. I’d only met her a few times as she’d rarely traveled to see him, and when she did visit, she never seemed interested in getting to know his friends.

However, two months ago, just six months after she’d returned from the East Coast and they’d been making plans to finally move in together, they’d broken up. He’d been in a bad mood—well, bad mood for Jeff—ever since. I’d been waiting for him to start acting more like himself before contemplating the possibility that maybe, perhaps, this time he and I might make a connection.

To be clear, I hadn’t been contemplating it yet. Every time the thought entered my brain, I shut it down.

“Lucy was the one to break up with Jeff.” Amelia cut into my thoughts, reminding me of Jeff’s singlehood even though she definitely didn’t need to.

“I know that. I was there when Serena told us.” I suddenly felt fidgety and too hot.

Amelia was the only one among our friends who knew I sometimes struggled where Jeff was concerned, but even she didn’t know that my feelings had been growing roots for six long years. I wasn’t in love with him or obsessed or anything like that. Our friendship had always been excessively platonic. And whenever I’d found myself thinking about Jeff a little too often, I’d avoid him for a few weeks, until I had a better handle on my inconvenient thoughts.

But now he was single.

And so was I.

Scrutinizing me, Amelia wagged her eyebrows. “Oh yeah, do it with Jeff. That’s perfect. Tell him it’s for a job—which it technically is—but then you are bound to get closer if you’re kissing each other for a few TikTok challenges.”

I scratched my neck, my heart doing erratic things. “I don’t know . . .”

“What don’t you know?”

“He’s rebounding. He and Lucy were together for years. And this feels sneaky.”

“Sneaky how?” She leaned back, her right eyebrow rising a scant millimeter. “Lucy broke up with him. We’ve met her—briefly—two times in six years, and she was standoffish both times. It’s been two months. Now it’s your chance. I know you like him. And I know for a fact he’s into you.”

I did like him. But even assuming he was at all interested in me, did I want to be the first person he was with after an eleven-year relationship? And did I want my first potentially serious relationship as an adult to be with Jeff Choi? And would he care that I was a twenty-six-year-old virgin? And what if—

STAAAAHP! You are getting so far ahead of yourself, you’re practically at the edge of the solar system. Chill.

“Forget it.” I waved away the idea. “There’s no use talking about this. I’m not asking Jeff for help with the romantic challenges because I’m not doing them. Nor am I doing makeup tutorials or fashion challenges because having those kinds of things on my account would undermine my credibility as a scientist.”

“But that’s my point! It wouldn’t—or shouldn’t.” Amelia leaned forward again, her eyes moving between mine as her voice adopted an earnest tone. “Yes, not all teenage girls and college-aged women care about fashion and romance. Fine. But many do, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. They have crushes, they want to fall in love, they want to have healthy and satisfying sex. Connect with them as a person who wants those same things, has their same fears, while also doing chemistry experiments, going to science centers, visiting NASA, doing badass STEM shit.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want—”

“What?”

To be rejected. To be laughed at. “I don’t want to get in trouble with my school. You know that, as a teacher, I have to be super careful about what I post on social media.” I didn’t use my real name for any of my social media handles, but I did show my face. If students wanted to track me down, they could. “Nor do I want to undermine what I’ve built.”

“I’m not suggesting you post porn, Winnie. How would making fun videos about eye shadow application or romantic challenges undermine you or get you in trouble with your school?”

“Come on, Amelia. You were premed. Bio had more women than chemistry, but it still wasn’t anywhere near fifty-fifty. If you want to be taken seriously in STEM, you have to be emotionless. You have to . . .”

“What?”

“Act like a guy,” I blurted unthinkingly and then cringed, regretting the words. “Wait. That’s not—”

“Act like a guy? What does that even mean? You think guys don’t have crushes? You think guys don’t want to fall in love and have satisfying sex or care about what they look like? Just as many men marry women as women marry men. Have you seen Harry Styles in a dress? I hate to break it to you, but somatic nuclear transfer is a relatively new method for human procreation. Prior to—oh—twenty or thirty years ago, penis insertion into a—”

“Ha ha ha. Stop. You know what I’m talking about. As a woman, and maybe even as a man, you can’t be taken seriously in the scientific community if you express any interest in—in—”

“Compassion? Romance? Emotion? Beauty and fashion as a form of expression? Interpersonal dynamics and relationships? All the things many women—again, not all, but many—seem to intrinsically value and replace interesting?”

“Fine.” I surrendered. “Yes, that.”

“But don’t you think that’s part of the problem for girls and anyone else with these interests?” Now her tone was beseeching. “Don’t you think that’s part of the barrier women consider as an entry into STEM fields? It’s like science, engineering, mathematics, and technology careers have been roped off from them. It’s not even an option because they’ve been told they can’t be themselves and be a scientist. They’ve been told their interests are frivolous. You can’t adore pop music and be taken seriously. You can’t openly read romance novels for enjoyment and have articles published in a major peer review publication. You can’t wear clothes you enjoy and not get side-eyed. That’s a problem! Why should anyone have to bury who they are, what they look like, what they want, what they value, what they enjoy in order to get a seat at the table? They shouldn’t—girls and women shouldn’t. And you could show them that they don’t have to.”

I huffed loudly because she had a really, really great point. Darn it.

Amelia must’ve sensed her near victory because she went in for the kill. “Be yourself as a fully realized, three-dimensional woman, do the things I know you enjoy and also be a scientist. It doesn’t have to be fashion and makeup, it can be video games and running, or dancing challenges and DIY projects. You can be a person and a woman and a scientist, you can show all sides. And in doing so, you can reach an audience that never would’ve considered the fact that being both—being yourself and being a scientist—is actually possible.”

She was so good at persuasive arguments. Again, darn it.

“Okay. Fine.” I threw my hands up, sitting back down. “You win. You are one hundred percent right. I will do smoky-eye tutorials and everything else.”

She turned her head as though to look at me from a new angle. “And do the romance challenges?”

“They can’t be at all risqué. They have to be completely wholesome otherwise I might get in trouble with my school. But yes. Fine. I’ll—”

“Goooood, gooood.” She dropped her voice an octave and added a creepy British accent. “Yesss . . . Embrace your destiny.”

“Stop it. I hate it when you do your Palpatine impression.”

“Prefer Yoda, you do?” She wasn’t as good at Yoda and instead sounded like Kermit the Frog.

“Why are you this way?”

She snickered, snatching her tea from the table again and taking a big sip before asking, “When will you ask him?”

“Who?”

“Jeff-rey,” she sing-songed.

“Oh.” My heart squeezed.

“Ask. Him.” Amelia pointed at me. “He’s already on TikTok. He’s adorable. Your follower count will go through the roof, and that’s what you need.”

“I’d be using him.”

She shrugged. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

“Let me—let me think about it.”

“Hmm. . .” She continued to inspect me, and I could see her mind working. Which was why the next words out of her mouth struck me as suspicious. “Hey, so, are we playing Stardew Valley this week?”

Stardew Valley was an awesome throwback farming game reminiscent of 1990s RPGs in the tradition of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. With its pixelated, rudimentary 2-D graphics and wide-open gameplay, it had become a refuge for my soul during the last few years when I could’ve easily been crushed by my lingering student debt and the overwhelming nature of being a new teacher.

“Uh, yeah. I still play every Friday, so we’ll be playing tonight. But next week we’re not playing because of the camping trip. They’re leaving Wednesday.” I wished I could’ve gotten together with my friends, met somewhere face-to-face to see them in person, enjoy their company. But everyone was so busy these days with life changes and new relationships, or wedding planning and baby showers, or business trips and career advancement.

We used to be such a tight-knit group, but now we were drifting apart. I was determined to be the touchstone for everyone, the organizer of quarterly in-person events so that we didn’t drift too far. Likewise, I’d arranged the shared game server for anyone available on Fridays.

If an hour or two on Fridays was all they could fit into their busy schedules—even if some could only join our group chat for a half hour once a month or so—then it was better than nothing.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. Byron mentioned that. Jeff and them are going camping for spring break.” Amelia looked thoughtful.

“Yeah, they are. And by the way, your farm is a mess.” Initially, almost everyone would play together on Fridays. But after a few months, most people couldn’t make it consistently and it ended up being me, Jeff, and Laura (another friend from college, computer science major who currently worked for “The Zon.”) Others would stop by randomly and play, and that was always great.

Amelia’s mouth fell open. “You haven’t been clearing away the debris? Watering my plants?”

“No. You haven’t played since last month. That’s like, two years in Stardew Valley time. Your fields are fallow, like the effs you do not give about them.”

She made a grunting sound. “Fine. I’m joining tonight.”

“Good. Looking forward to it.” My heart gave a little leap of happiness. It would be good to have her there.

Amelia narrowed her eyes, chewing on another cookie while openly inspecting me. “Will you help me plow and water my land? Fertilize my soil?”

“You supply the seeds and fertilizer, and I’ll need ten percent of your crop yield, but sure.”

Her mouth opened in a display of outrage. “That’s highway robbery.”

“I’ll throw in an iridium sprinkler.”

Giving me a hard stare, she held out her hand. “Fine. Deal.”

We shook on it. Little did she know I had a glut of iridium.

But at least that was settled. Now all I had to do was figure out literally everything else about my life, starting with whether or not I would ask Jeff to be my PG TikTok romantic challenge partner, and how to do so without becoming his rebound lady.