“So I did what anyone in my situation would do. I burned the place down when he went to work the next day,” Josie said.

“Wait, what?” I shrieked, pressing the phone closer to my ear.

“Seriously, Ros? What is going on with you? You’ve been so out of it this entire conversation, I just started saying the most ridiculous things to see if you were listening.”

“I’m sorry, Jos, I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.”

I didn’t even know where to begin. I’d pretty much been avoiding all of my friends and hadn’t talked to Dan on more than a superficial level when he was around, which wasn’t often.

He kept saying things would calm down soon, but I was starting to think he was just telling me things to keep me thinking and feeling positive about all the changes and sacrifices we’d made to do this.

“So why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me about it. I know it’s different when we aren’t a ten-minute drive from each other, and I can’t just pop by unannounced to eat your food and drink your booze, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less here for you.”

“I know, I know.” I sighed.

“Actually, bitch, why aren’t we FaceTiming anyway? We can drink wine and bitch about how much you hate it there and how there’s a particular circle of hell for friends who fuck your boyfriends,” she said, obviously joking, but I knew her well enough to recognize the underlying sadness in her voice.

My phone buzzed in my hand. I looked at the screen and saw it was her wanting to connect to FaceTime.

“Did you just use FaceTime as a verb?” I asked as I answered the call.

“Damn straight I did. It’s an action, right? Hell, give it a couple of years, and I bet it will make its way into the dictionary! Anyway, I’ve got my wine.” She held up what might have been one of the biggest glasses I’d ever seen. “Where’s yours? C’mon, grab some, I’ll wait. We both need this girls’ night.”

I knew there was no way I was getting out of drinking something with her and it was feeling like a Jim Beam and Coke kind of night anyway.

“Hey, I’m gonna grab my iPad while I’m getting a drink, I’ll call you back when I get back outside, okay?”

I hung up before she had a chance to respond. I walked back out to the balcony off my bedroom a few minutes later, my iPad and stand tucked under my arm, a mug containing my drink in my hands, along with the bottle and an unopened can of Coke, just in case I wanted a refill. And to convince Josie I was, in fact, drinking something stronger than tea in my mug.

“Thatta girl,” she said when I called her back after setting my iPad up in its stand on the outdoor coffee table. She saw the table beside me with what I was drinking, and raised her glass up in the universal gesture for cheers. I half-heartedly mirrored her gesture.

“Okay, so let’s start with what crawled up your ass, and then I will retell my story of romantic woe, just without the embellishments. And go!” she said, taking a huge gulp.

It looked like she drank a quarter of her half-bottle-sized glass in one huge swig. I sighed and took a sip of my drink. “I don’t know, Jos. Nothing is really wrong, but things just don’t feel right, ya know?”

“Like what?”

“I think I need to get out more, meet more people. I’ve spent too much time alone in this house.” I paused and took another drink, staring off at the water below.

“I know how much you struggle with that, how hard it can be for you to come out of your shell.”

“I’m still in this creative rut. I thought I’d get here and instantly be moved by the environment to create new art.” I stopped and took a drink, trying to collect my thoughts into something coherent. Jos let me do my thing and didn’t try to interrupt. “I let my lack of inspiration keep me from creating a collection at home. So I stayed at the gallery helping Cindy, teaching classes for far longer than I should have. But now I don’t have that excuse and I just feel…”

“Stuck. You feel stuck,” Jos answered for me, seeing through my ramblings and finding the right word when I couldn’t.

“Yeah. And then Dan hasn’t been home much and is mentally wiped when he is. He says it’ll ease up and get better after this phase is done in a week or two.”

“Do you think it will?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” I shrugged, trying to brush off what I was feeling. “I’m just disappointed things aren’t going as I expected. And I miss you guys so much.”

Josie looked at me, sipping her wine, attempting to stare into my soul or something through the screen. It was unnerving. I started to fidget and was about to say something when she started talking.

She always had some weird ability to see through my bullshit and the walls I put up, but I guessed it was one of the benefits of knowing someone almost all your life.

“So, all that shit makes sense. Being surrounded by trees all day every day by myself would probably drive me up a wall. But what else is bothering you? And don’t tell me nothing. I can see it, and you know it’s no use lying to me anyway. Spill.” She gave me her “I’ll cut you, bitch” look.

“Ugh, this is going to sound so stupid and ridiculous. Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean almost all the time when I’m the only one in the house, I get this feeling like someone is watching me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes it feels like someone is standing right behind me, other times it feels like someone is walking by and lightly brushing their fingertips against my arm or my neck or my hand. Sometimes there’s a sudden breeze when there shouldn’t be.”

“Okay, that’s strange, but continue,” she interjected as she took a sip of her wine.

“You wanna know what’s even more strange?”

“There’s something stranger than what you just told me?”

I ignored her sarcasm and pressed on. “Every single time this happens, I smell the best scent ever. It’s masculine, and crisp, and clean. I almost drool a little, it’s that good. I only smell it when I get the feeling that I’m not alone,” I finished, trying to take a sip of my drink, only to realize it was empty.

I refilled my mug while Josie looked at me curiously like she was trying to figure out if I was serious or not.

“Did you talk to Dan about this?”

“Yep.”

“And what did he say? I’m guessing his response was less than satisfactory if you are here reluctantly talking to me about it and all freaked out. I don’t know why you haven’t brought this up before now. We talk about everything, even anal sex!” she exclaimed.

“No, you talked about anal sex, I sat there uncomfortably trying to ignore you, wishing I was somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand what your issue with anal is. You shouldn’t be afraid of the back door. I bet you would love it if you tried it.”

“Okay, first of all, you have no idea whether I’ve tried it or not. Second, just because I don’t want to talk about something doesn’t mean I have an issue with it. Can nothing be sacred? Just because I won’t have detailed conversations about my sex life doesn’t mean I’m not having sex. I’m not a prude, there are just some things I think would be weird to go into detail about.”

“Yeah, yeah. You think I don’t know all this by now? It’s why we work, babe. We’re just different enough and similar enough not to want to kill each other,” she responded sweetly.

I laughed into my drink as she continued to look at me innocently, batting her lashes at me. She was right though. I was definitely the more reserved of the two, always more introverted and introspective, while she was hilarious, often crude, and utterly lovable.

“But really, what did he say?”

“He said it was probably nothing. It was likely an animal nearby, and the smell was probably the ocean, or his body wash. I don’t know, he pretty much brushed it off, and I already feel kind of stupid about the whole thing,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

She didn’t say anything for a while. We each just sat staring at our screens, drinking our drinks, contemplating if I was indeed going as crazy as I felt I was. Well, at least that was what I was contemplating.

“I call bullshit on that explanation,” she finally said. “You would know if it were an animal watching you. You would hear them, or see their eyes or something. He was probably trying to calm you down.” Jos took another drink and tapped her finger on her chin in contemplation. “Or he was being a dick by disregarding you. Could it be a neighbor? Maybe you have a peeping Tom or some creepy teenager watching you through his bedroom window.” Sometimes it was so hard to keep up with her train of thought.

“No, he wasn’t being a dick. You know how oblivious Dan is when he’s in his own headspace. And nope, we don’t have any neighbors within sight. It’s pretty remote up here. Although the idea someone is creeping around and watching me is even scarier than a wild animal watching me or it being all in my head.” I shivered, looking around and rubbing the goose bumps that rose up on my arms.

“Oh, stop. There’s no one there right now, silly. You’d have felt it. You’re just getting weirded out by our conversation,” she scolded, and then went quiet as a look crossed her face.

I recognized that look. It meant an idea was brewing. It was never good when she got it. It usually led to us embarking on “adventures” which ended in me hurt or scared and telling her I was never trusting her harebrained ideas again. “No, no, no. You can stop right there with whatever idea just popped into your twisted little mind, Josephine Mae Davis. The last time you gave me that look, I ended up with a broken foot and nearly got arrested!”

“Hey, it could’ve worked! I didn’t know the rocks were so slippery. Or that your top would come undone as you fell. Or that there was a family with kids within view. Man, will you ever forgive me and let it go?” she asked in a huff, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Nope, never. My foot still hurts on really cold days.”

“Yeah, but it was kind of worth it, right?”

I groaned in response, taking a drink. I knew there was no use in me trying to argue with her. And it had been kind of worth it at the time.

“Anyway, I know exactly what it is!” she nearly shouted, excited by her theory.

“And what would that be? An android or something?” I asked, unable to suppress my snarky retort.

“No, but it actually isn’t a half-bad idea. But it’s really wet where you live, so that doesn’t really make any logical sense. It’s a ghost. You have a ghost following you around.”

“Seriously, Jos? A ghost makes more logical sense to you than an android? Also, I’m pretty sure androids are waterproof. A ghost? This is the last time I confide in you about anything like this. Pfft, a fucking ghost,” I murmured to myself, taking the last sip of my drink.

“What? It’s possible! Just you wait. When you find you are living with a hot ghost, you can let me know, and I’ll make sure a pottery wheel is delivered, and I won’t even say I told you so.”

At this point, she couldn’t contain her laughter. My shoulders began to shake, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer either. Before I knew it, we were both laughing hysterically, tears streaming down my face.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened with Jason? I want the full, honest truth. Not this dramatic retelling you try to pass off as the truth. I’m sure it’s spicy enough without needing embellishment, knowing you.”

“I’ve pretty much just finished off this entire bottle of wine on my own, and your stuff is so much more fun to talk about. Can we just skip my shit for now?”

“Nope, no way. You’ve intrigued me, and I am sick of focusing on myself. Talk.”

“Fine, but you are getting the super-condensed version of it. It’s really not interesting anyway. Remember I had that seminar I needed to teach? Oh, wait, no, you don’t, because you’ve been MIA, bitch!” she began, going off on a tangent.

I was used to reining her back in and leading her back to the conversation we were supposed to be having. “Yeah. I’m sorry, okay? Now, back to the seminar.”

“Oh. So yeah, I was supposed to teach it, and there were probably a good hundred people signed up, which is the biggest group I’ve been scheduled for.”

“Okay,” I said as I gave her the gesture to hurry it along. It was useless, Jos would tell the story at her pace.

She rolled her eyes before continuing, “So I asked Veronica to help me. She agreed, but then texted me a couple of hours before it started saying she was sick, food poisoning or something.”

“Uh-huh. What does this have to do with Jason?”

“I’m getting to it, will you please stop interrupting?” She shook her head at me in exasperation. “I’d tried to make plans with Jason for after the seminar, but he had some important meeting he needed to prep for. So I show up at the studio only to find out there had been a small electrical fire and everything was soaked when the sprinklers went off. We had to cancel the seminar.”

“Holy shit, Jos! Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, no one was injured and the damage to the studio was minor,” she said, waving her hand to brush off my concerns. “Anyway, I figured I’d surprise Jason with some dessert and hang out for a bit since it was still really early.”

She stopped and poured herself the last of the wine, swirling it around in her glass. She normally wasn’t one to stall, but I had an idea where this was going, so I let her.

“Well, he’d given me a key to his place a couple of weeks earlier. I know it was kinda quick, but he assured me he was serious about us. He must have forgotten I had the key. I entered and he wasn’t in the living room, but I heard noises coming from the bedroom. I decided to surprise him, so I stripped down naked in the living room and threw open the bedroom door saying I had dessert and was dessert.”

I laughed out loud at the move that screamed Jos. “What happened?”

“Well, it would’ve been pretty epic if I hadn’t walked in on him and Veronica sixty-nining. Wanna know the worst part of it?” I couldn’t hold in my gasp, but Jos kept right on going.

“There is something worse than walking in on your friend and boyfriend simultaneously rounding third base?”

She sniffle-laughed, and it was heartbreaking to see her so upset over the douche. It took a lot to upset or rattle her.

“The worst part was when they both looked up, he smiled and asked me to join them! And Veronica just looked at me and shrugged, like, why not? I mean seriously, who the fuck does that?”

“Your douchey ex? What did you do? You didn’t call me from jail, so it wasn’t anything too crazy, right?”

“I did what any normal person in my position would do. I dumped my dessert over the custom suit hanging on his closet door and let him know she’d just tested positive for herpes a month ago. It was a lie, as far as I know, but the look on his face was priceless. I don’t know if he was more pissed about the thousands he would have to spend to replace that suit or potential exposure to genital sores.”

“Wow. I don’t think I would’ve had the forethought to do anything more than walk out. And Veronica? That was beyond a cunty thing to do to a friend. I’m sorry, babe, it just fucking sucks. See, it’s times like these where I wish I could just drive over with booze and hugs.”

I hated being so far away while she was going through all this. She deserved to have me there with her to hug her and get her wasted on wine and ice cream and popcorn while watching old movies.

“I’ll be fine. I really liked him, but it wasn’t like I was full-blown in love yet. Anyway, you telling me about your ghostly suitor when he finally makes his appearance will make up for all this drama,” she said as she smiled and brushed a tear away. I shook my head and rolled my eyes at her.

“What if it’s a woman?” I asked, laughing with her at the silliness of the whole thing.