My body is breaking. Knees? Jell-O. Thighs? Overcooked noodles. Hockey ass? Quivering in pain.
I’m a badass on the ice, and this hundred-and-twenty-pound teenager is about to take me out with a little pressure on a point in my neck that I didn’t even know I had. “You’re a ninja?” I gasp.
“It’s a hobby. You going?”
Dammit. “I’m going.”
He releases the trigger point, slaps my shoulder, and does a thing with the mop and bucket on wheels that puts him out of reach and would make me have to step in dirty mop water to get to him. “No hard feelings, man. Gotta guard my manager, you know? Kick ass on the ice next game. I’ll be rooting for you.”
No hard feelings.
Jesus.
Nothing’s hard anymore.
I should take my ass home, eat my fish and chips, and forget this ever happened.
Not so sure that’s gonna work for me though.
3
Muffy Periwinkle, aka a woman who has it all together, really, if “has it all together” means “she’s not dead yet.”
It’s not actually hyperventilating if you’re not choking on your oatmeal, right?
Asking for a friend.
Because I’m certainly not hyperventilating or choking on my oatmeal as I check my texts over breakfast.
Definitely not.
This is all fine. Totally fine.
“Muffy, you’ll never snag a man if you make those fish eyes and pretend you’re Rufus harking up a hairball every time you swallow a bite of oats, sweetheart,” my mother says.
She’s sitting across from me, dressed in a pink silk robe four sizes too big that’s gaping in a way that’s nearly showing off her nipples, which is pretty normal.
Normal’s good.
Except for the part where I still live with my mother, who has a Real Housewives of Las Vegas soul in a The Simpsons lifestyle, and she’s currently hosting an octogenarian criminal for breakfast while they plot out how best to introduce her to his great-nephew, who has a fetish for women of a certain age.
Pretty sure the average person wouldn’t consider that normal.
Also not normal?
A request from my med school BFF and silent business partner to go to her father’s funeral.
The average person might consider that normal. People die. People have friends. People go to funerals for friends. But the average person probably hasn’t been disappointing her silent business partner with a failure to turn a profit for three solid years.
Maybe I should change my business name. Who wants to hire a matchmaker who threatens to match your muff?
Although business is up the past few months. I’m possibly finally getting the hang of success, even if I side-eye my own methods sometimes and would absolutely deny them if anyone ever asked.
Won’t jinx it by thinking I might turn a profit this year.
Success on any level is new. I’m still getting used to it.
“Muffy?” Mom repeats. “Do you need the Heimlich?”
Related: Who names their child Muffy? And don’t start with But, honey, it’s short for Muffina.
That’s worse.
“I know the Heimlich!” our breakfast guest announces. “Learned it in the Army. Here, Hilda. Hold my cane. I got her.”
Before I can whimper out a protest that I’m not, in fact, in danger of suffocating on my oatmeal, our friend William has dashed out of his chair like he’s not eighty-three and is grabbing me by the boobs and pumping.
“I’m okay!” I gasp. “I’m okay!”
“You don’t look okay,” Mom says.
“Stomach ain’t supposed to feel like that either,” William says. “You got some lumps in it.”
Neither of us tells William my stomach isn’t lumpy.
I mean, it is, some, but he wouldn’t know, because that’s not where he’s currently pumping me.
Mom winks at me. “At least it’s some action,” she whispers loudly.
I bolt sideways out of my seat so I don’t knock William over, upending my bowl of oatmeal all over the vinyl floor, which Rufus, my so-dumb-you-can’t-help-but-love-him mutt cat, promptly dives into like he’s Scrooge McDuck and it’s a pile of money.
Or like it’s a pile of poo and he’s that kind of a dog.
“Rufus!”
He peers at me like I’m the dumb one, yowls, and then flips over to start bathing himself with his ass still planted firmly in the pile of oatmeal.
Mom and William share a look. They both shake their heads, grab their coffee cups in sync, and force bright smiles at me while William settles back into his own chair.
“It’s an auspicious start to the day when you spill your oatmeal,” Mom declares.
“I spilled my oatmeal the very morning a sniper missed me by two inches when I was fighting the war,” William adds.
Mom grips his gnarled knuckles. “You brave man! And to think if you hadn’t spilled your oatmeal…”
His weathered face takes on more wrinkles as he squints thoughtfully. “Or maybe that was the morning I got married. Getting harder to remember what’s what up in the ol’ ticker.” He taps his head, like that’s his ticker, and I wonder how much I could make if I sit at a light-rail stop downtown and play a kazoo for cash.
Surely enough to take a few dimes off my student loans. Or maybe enough to be able to afford a closet to rent somewhere else.
Do people rent out their closets?
I’d ask some friends, but I’ve already gotten in trouble asking friends for help.
See also: My silent business partner has asked me to attend her father’s funeral.
Back in Richmond. Where I spent almost four years studying at Blackwell College of Medicine.
Yep. I’m gonna puke.
I do stuff like spilling my oatmeal and getting my boobs Heimliched by old men on a regular basis. I’ve been trying to run a matchmaking service called Muff Matchers for a few years now. I hang out with criminals and my mother. I work basically sixteen hours a day, have screened half the men in our lovely city of Copper Valley, which sits to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia, and rejected all but about seven of them as potential suitors for my clientele for reasons that range from being rude to the staff to telling me that a woman who’s larger than a size four doesn’t take care of herself.
Yes, while talking to me.
Related: I am definitely above a size four.
My point? I have a very high tolerance for the unpleasant.
But going back to Blackwell?
Where The Incident happened?
No.
Even my therapist would tell me this is a terrible idea.
But if there’s one person I can’t say no to, it’s Veda. She’s believed in me for years. Our first year of med school, she was the only one with the patience to sit with me and quiz me for hours over the biochemistry class that I struggled with hardcore. When I left school, she was the only person to reach out and check on me, and she’s probably one of the best friends I’ve ever had who isn’t related to me.
We text at least weekly, and every few months we meet for lunch or dinner halfway between here and Richmond. Occasionally she comes all the way over here, and we do drinks and complain about our jobs and our families and our dating lives, and tell each other that we’re fabulous, even though we know we’re not.