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Aubrey’s dreams of being an influencer had replaced Sullivan’s life with a fake, glittering facade.

Everything staged. Everything filmed a dozen times until Sullivan’s smile was sexy enough, her shoulders were straight enough, and any finger cots she’d incurred in the process of chopping through the hard skins of butternut squash were hidden.

“I hated social media, even before Aubrey.”

“Just because you fumbled at the line-out doesn’t mean you can’t get back on the pitch,” Opal said gently.

Nina fluttered her fingers in Opal’s direction in affectionate dismissal. “No one knows what that means.”

“I mean go out. Have fun. Maybe meet someone at a bar,” Opal said. “Skip that HOA meeting and come to the Tennis Skort tonight.”

“The Oakwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting is a nice way to connect with people.” Sullivan regretted the statement the moment it left her mouth.

Opal wanted her to meet someone, but Sullivan didn’t need that.

She just needed to get out, see a few people, make small talk.

That was as close to dating as she needed to get, even if sometimes her body ached for a person’s touch and the house echoed with emptiness.

She was lonely at night, but that meant there was no one filming a carefully constructed version of her life, a life where Sullivan and Aubrey had always been happier than other couples.

And if Sullivan did tear up, it was carefully edited for maximum pathos.

After all, one of Aubrey’s biggest influencer rivals got ten thousand comments when their parakeet died.

You could sell sadness but only in small doses in the right lighting.

“Connect with people,” Nina groaned. “The Oakwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting is where your sexuality goes to die. Remember you took me once? Said we just had to stop by . It was two hours before they got to your agenda item. What was it? Moss abatement?”

“Do you know how many species of beneficial insects die if they use Moss Out!?”

“If you think the neighborhood meeting is where you meet people,” Nina said, “your vagina will suck back into your body, close its doors, and die.”

“I have to go tonight. They’re reconfirming the Bois as green space for another two years.”

The Bois (French for forest) was the undeveloped land at the center of the Oakwood Heights Neighborhood and directly between Sullivan’s house and her restaurant.

Every morning and every evening she followed a narrow path through the woods.

As a child, she’d explored the Bois under her grandfather’s loving eye.

Did you know that a newborn opossum is the size of a jellybean?

Doesn’t the stairstep moss look like a tree in a Japanese painting?

An epiphyte is a plant that grows on another plant without hurting it.

That’s how we should all be, Alice. (Only her grandfather called her by her first name.)

“Is something going on?” Nina got that gleam in her eye that said, Can we sue someone?

“It’s just a formality. They’ll confirm its status for two years.

By then the Oakwood Greenbelt Land Trust will have enough money to buy it and make it green space permanently.

” That was Sullivan’s promise to her grandfather.

He had protected the land for fifty years.

She would protect it forever. “It’s slow, but we’re getting there. ”

“Your grandpa would be so proud of you,” Opal said.

“But you’re not thinking of this formality as your social life.” Nina wasn’t asking. She was commanding.

“You two are my social life.”

“Dating life,” Opal amended for Nina. “Hey, I know! My cousin’s coming in from Savanah. She’s queer. Why don’t you take her out.” Seeing Sullivan’s look, Opal added, “Just as friends. Or that nice guy who comes into the restaurant and eats alone. He likes you.”

“No cousins. Definitely no customers.” Sullivan laughed. “If you keep it up, I’m going to make you go to the neighborhood association meeting. After they approve the green space, we’re talking about on-street parking and storm drains.”

Nina put her arm out in front of Opal as though protecting her from an attack.

“Opal’s our girl. You can’t do that to her.”

And the three of them were off, bantering back and forth about Sullivan’s bread dough and the trays of microgreens in her windowsills, Opal’s rugby team, and Nina’s latest divorce case in her life as attorney to the rich and dysfunctional.

An hour into their banter, Sullivan’s phone rang with a Miriam Makeba song, “Pata Pata.”

“Miss Brenda,” Opal said, recognizing the familiar ringtone.

Miss Brenda was Sullivan’s grandfather’s friend.

The two of them swore they’d never been anything other than friends and fellow activists fighting for the earth and running their respective restaurants.

They were still so perfect for each other, everyone put “friendship” in quotation marks when they talked about them.

Or they had. When her grandfather was still alive.

Sullivan took the call on the porch. A moment later she returned.

“Speaking of storm drains, Miss Brenda’s green roof is leaking again.”

“It’s a roof made out of lawn. Of course it’s going to leak every time it rains,” Nina said.

“Green roofs are rarely planted with grass.” Sullivan noted the first drops of rain on her window.

You couldn’t hope for too much sunlight in Oregon in the spring.

Sullivan’s mind jumped from broken pipes to clogged gutters to errant nieces and nephews climbing the fire escape to water the roof (which did not need watering).

“But yes. The thing leaks every time it rains.

“I’m going to go scope it out for her. Otherwise she’ll get up there herself. Can you wait until the bread comes out before you head to the Tennis Skort?” Sullivan nodded toward the oven. “It’s got another ten minutes on four hundred and then drop it down to about—”

“Would I be your sous-chef if I couldn’t smell when the bread is done?” Opal asked.

“How long will you be?” Nina asked. “Do you need us to go to the association meeting for you? I know we could sue someone.”

“I will be back in an hour, and no one is suing anyone. There’s more tea and a decent Rapaura Springs sauvignon blanc in the fridge. Stay as long as you like.”

“We’re going to the Tennis Skort after this,” Opal said. “Go to your meeting, get them to sign whatever they’re signing, and come out with us.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Sullivan would think about it. She’d go to the meeting and then sit on her porch, listening to the night creatures emerge from burrows, sniffing the air with little twinkling noses.

Hopefully it’d have stopped raining by then.

She’d think about how lucky she was to have friends who loved her even if she didn’t want to drink Pickle Balls and 30 Loves surrounded by screens showing every sport known to womankind.

She was lucky to live in a city that valued green space.

She was lucky to have her restaurant and her home a mossy stroll from each other so she never had to drive to work.

And she was lucky to have once known Kia Jackson, who was now basking in the glory of deep-frying candy inside raw chicken.

If someone was going to win an award for that culinary abomination, it might as well be Kia.