When she’s asleep, I can let down my guard a little. I feel myself crumbling slowly as I sink into a chair at the kitchen table. How many times have I sat here over the years? Same table too. Birthday cakes, Christmas cookies, and late-night heart-to-hearts. Saturday morning pancakes.

I miss those days.

I miss being a little girl, of not having to worry about where the money is coming from, or how fast Mom’s body is deteriorating. She’s fading before my very eyes and all I want to do is hold onto her, clutch her to me, order her to stay around and get better.

I can’t imagine losing her. Not yet. She’s too young. She ought to be out there, enjoying life. She hasn’t even seen her forty-fifth birthday. There’s still so much for her to explore and do, then maybe, finally, find the true love she’s always dreamed about and never found.

Instead, she’s lying in a bed in the living room day after day, watching reruns of game shows.

A gentle tap on the back door shakes me out of my depressed thoughts. I barely have time to raise my head from my palms before Jenny steps into the kitchen. She knows by now that she doesn’t have to wait for permission to come in.

“Oh, no,” she says, sitting across from me with a look of anguish. “I guess it didn’t go well.”

“Actually, it went more than well. I got on the show.”

“You did?” Her face lights up. “That’s fantastic!”

“Yeah. I guess.” I sit back in my chair, chewing on my lip. “Now I just have to win. But what if I don’t? This is my last chance to get the money together. I mean, sitting here like this, thinking about it… How did I ever think this was a solid idea? It’s a total shot in the dark.”

“Listen.” She leans over the table. “You’ve got a real shot at this. As good a shot as anybody else they chose.”

“But what if the audience gives me something I just can’t bring myself to do?”

“They’re not allowed to ask you to do anything that’ll get you into serious trouble.” She pauses. “Are they?”

“I have no idea. I mean, they can’t make it too easy, or else nobody would win. The game would just go on and on without anybody dropping out.”

“Hmm. That’s true.”

“And there are twenty teams, so they’re going to need to weed out the duds pretty quickly.”

“Wait. Teams? You’re on a team? I thought it was just one person working alone.”

My blood starts to simmer at the thought of him. The smug bastard. “No. Unfortunately, I have a teammate, and he’s the worst.” I give her the brief rundown of our meeting, if it can even be called that. More like a showdown.

She sits back, arms folded, a smirk touching her lips. “Lemme get this straight. He’s hotter than chili flavored Cheetos, probably has, at least, a little money, and the two of you have to spend time doing crazy things together. Am I hitting all the main points of this story?”

“Yes.” I roll my eyes with a sigh. We’ve been friends our entire lives, so I know where she’s going with this.

Her gray eyes narrow. “Tell me again what the big problem is?”

“The big problem is, he’s a total jerk.”

She makes a disbelieving face.

“No, really,” I whisper, glancing over my shoulder into the living room to make sure I don’t wake Mom. “The man is a male version of a bimbo. I could carve a better personality out of a potato.”

She giggles.

“It’s all right for you. You don’t have to deal with his arrogant ass. The only consolation will be seeing his face when I beat him somehow, once we’re the only team left standing. I pray I can do it.”

“You’ll find a way. I know you will. Hell, if you learn enough about him and the way he thinks while you’re working together, you might be able to figure out how to beat him in the end.”

“Hmm. That’s a good point.” I smile at her. “This is why I keep you around. You’re smarter than I am.”

“Nah. Just more devious.” We both giggle softly for fear of disturbing Mom.

“Thanks for looking in on her today,” I add as I get up to fix a glass of iced tea for both of us.

“You thank me everyday, and I always tell you not to worry about it.”

“But I’m still going to thank you. I mean, you have other things to do.”

“Like what? Sleeping? Because that’s usually what I do if I’m not working.” She takes the iced tea and sips it with a thoughtful look on her face. “And you’re changing the subject, by the way.”

Damn it. She knows me too well. “What do you mean?” I ask as I sit back down with what I hope is an innocent look on my face, but she sees straight through me.

“We were talking about Mr. Hottie and you totally took a left turn. Why are you avoiding talking about him? He’s gonna be your teammate. You’d better get used to him.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever taken such an instant dislike to anyone before,” I mutter, shaking my head. “He’s an awful human being. I might have to really watch him. He may be one of those charming psychopaths. The heartless way he kicked my purse of out of that elevator.”

“Did you just call him charming?”

I jerk my head. “I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You said he may be one of those charming psychopaths.”

I frown. “I didn’t mean to say that. It was slip of the tongue. He is not charming at all. Every time he opens his mouth, I want to toss a Xanax into it.”

“He was only reacting,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Quite frankly, I don’t think anybody’s gonna be kind and sweet when they just got dinged by another driver. And he was probably stressed over the audition, just like you were.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“I didn’t know I had to pick a side,” she murmurs with a grin.

I widen my eyes at her.

“Oh well, yours, I guess.”

“Then maybe you should stop making me feel bad about hating him.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad…and I don’t think you hate him.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Believe me, if you had been there, you would understand. I can’t put it into words, but he made me feel awful. I wanted to strangle him or at least kick him in the balls.”

“Oh, a kick in the balls? It sounds like the beginning of a delicious love affair to me.”

I roll my eyes. “You tend bar for a living. Don’t measure this by the random hookups you see every night.”

She laughs. “Which reminds me, I wanted to tell you about the two I served last night. They were obviously on a first date, and it was clearly through a dating app because neither of them recognized the other one from their profile pics. The girl actually kept mentioning how different the guy looked and kept asking him questions to make sure he was the same guy she had been talking to.”

I smile and she launches into one of her stories of the sad, bizarre encounters she watches during every shift. I let her story take me out of my head for a little while. The first text comes in tomorrow, and I’ll have more than enough time to worry about what’s coming to me when it arrives. Until then, a glass of iced tea and a little girl talk with my best friend is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Even so, I can’t keep from hearing the sound of Mom’s light, shallow breathing coming from behind me.