She laughs as she goes up the stone steps of our new building.

  "It's as cold as the dark side of the moon," she says, one-upping my last it's as cold as joke. "I think your brain is freezing. Let's go inside." The look she gives me suggests this isn't a joke. When the heater over the door adequately blasts us she says, "Navy, he looked like a kicked puppy when you ran off, and I know you'd never kick a puppy."

  "Carrick Kennely is neither sexy nor a puppy. But yes, you could say that he is a beast," I huff.

  Chapter 3

  The Boyfriend Book

  The realization that this building, with an elevator (!) is my new home floors me. The tile and woodwork is classic and clean. The decorative plants are green and alive. There's no boiled cabbage smell permeating the air or crying baby echoing from the hall. A fresh pine scent and lemon-scented polish covers nearly all of the surfaces. I can even see my reflection in the gleam of the elevator door.

  "Welcome home," Kat says. "There's no doorman, but there is this," she says, stepping inside the carriage and pressing the seven button.

  When we reach our floor she says, "While you shower, I'm going to get us breakfast, but first, you have to see this place."

  I follow her down a carpeted hall, passing three other apartments, and around the corner. While she fumbles with a key, the door behind us opens. A woman, wearing a little black dress—with walk of shame written all of over it—, scuttles toward the elevator and slips inside before the doors close.

  "The hottie in 7G," Katya sighs.

  "Huh?" I ask, as she opens the door to our new residence.

  I lose her answer as I pass the wall of boxes to enormous windows spilling generous amounts of soft winter light into the living room.

  Katya gently knocks into me with her shoulder. "What do you think?"

  I spin in a circle. My mouth hangs open at the full-size kitchen open to the main living room, the rustic brick wall, the polished wood floors with wide planks, and the windows. Have I mentioned the windows? Lost in a Manhattanite's dream apartment haze, I drift down the hall. The bathroom hosts a restored claw foot tub. At the end of the hall are two doors nearly opposite each other. Katya opens one with a grand, sweeping gesture.

  My bed rests in the middle and I leap onto it, squealing with joy. I spread my arms and legs wide like a starfish and say, "I'm in love!"

  "It's about time. I knew he was a sexy beast, but glad to know he's dating material."

  I bolt to sitting and make a gagging face before shaking my head. "Carrick? No. Never. Katya, I'm in love with our apartment. Is this for real?"

  "Of course it is. It's almost a duplicate of my last apartment except I had a loft and this one has two rooms."

  This is true.

  "I want to stay forever. I'm never moving." As soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize that Kat has never stayed in the same apartment for more than a year, a year and a half tops. The uncertainty crashes down on me. I want my closet back, poorly calibrated heating system and all. "Kat, what's going to happen when you're ready to move again?"

  She inhales, sits down next to me, folds her elbows onto her lap, and leans forward, bracing her head in her hands. She's quiet until she says, "For all my glitz and glamour, I didn't start practicing yoga for nothing. I know what you're thinking. It hasn't escaped my notice either."

  "Kat, I can't afford this on my own," I whisper. "When you leave—"

  "I'm working on commitment, Navy. Promise."

  If I have to move in a year, it might mean back to my parents' house. Unlike the other properties in their neighborhood, they don't have a guesthouse and since my mother plans on converting my bedroom into a sewing room, I'll be in the basement. "I can't go back to my parents' house."

  "I don't intend to move."

  "You've said that before, every time. I should have stayed in my apartment." Tears inch their way to my eyes. This was a mistake. A beautiful, airy, spacious mistake.

  "Have you ever heard the saying, fortune favors the bold?"

  I nod.

  "Or nothing ventured nothing gained?"

  "Of course."

  "I wanted you to move in with me because you're my best friend and Mew's favorite auntie, but also because it's time for you to stretch."

  "Kat, I've tried your yoga classes; I'm not very flexible."

  She cocks the severest of eyebrows in my direction. "Yes, I know."

  "Remember the time I fell onto that lady when I was trying to do tree pose? Or when I passed out during Savasana and was snoring? Or when I farted?!" I say, humiliated anew by the memory.

  "Yes, and that nice lady is one of the partners at your old agency—she deserved getting knocked down a peg. You fell asleep because you were working sixty hour weeks and needed the rest, and the time you farted, well, everyone does it. You laughed it off and what is life without levity?"

  "You don't fart."

  She inclines her head. "My life coach has ingrained a strict practice of chewing my food to liquid and avoiding cruciferous vegetables and beans so no, I don't generally fart, but give me full fat dairy and I am a methane making machine."

  I giggle despite myself.

  She leans back, bracing her hands behind her on the bed and crossing her legs elegantly. "I've never told you this before, but when I was at teacher training in Bali, I was eating all kinds of mushy foods I'd never had before."

  "You've definitely told me about the salads, coleslaws, and sauces…"

  "Yes, I raved about what an amazing culinary experience it was, but that wasn't the whole story. At first, let's just say I experienced some gastrointestinal discomfort during an important spiritual lecture with a highly esteemed monk."

  I resist the smile cracking across my lips. "Your delicate toots have nothing on my mega farts. Sorry, Kat, but it's true."

  She shakes her head and laughs. "The earth shook, Navy. They started calling me Angi."

  "What's wrong with that? We know an Angie from that creative writing course we took."

  "You took. I hooked up with the guy across the aisle. Not Angie, like Angela, Angi like the Balinese Angin, short for wind. As in passing gas, farting, breaking wind..."

  "Oh."

  "Yep." She goes on, "Every now and then I get emails from my classmates or someone pops into one of the studios where I teach and they're all like, 'Angi, how's it going?'" Her cheeks tint a faint rose.

  "I've never known you to be embarrassed."

  "I wasn't embarrassed. I owned it. Katya Angi Kalonje. Actually, if you say my initials with a high enough pitch, that's what it sounded like. Kak! Kak!" she shouts, imitating her fart.

  We both burst into snorting laughter and I only stop to say, "Your middle name is Aphrodite."

  "Kak! Kak!" she repeats.

  We both flop on my bare mattress.

  "So, this is home now," I say when I catch my breath.

  "For as long as you need it to be."

  "And you?"

  "Whether my middle name is Aphrodite or Agni, I'm committed to our friendship and seeing you out of this funk."

  "Funk?" I ask, sitting up. "I should shower."

  "You've been Navy-blue for too long. You need love in your life. And not the fictional kind." She sashays through the door and down the hall, calling, "You took a chance on this apartment, sight unseen. Take a chance on love," she pauses, and I hear a few boxes shuffling, "or at least sex."

  I hope that the walls are thick and the neighbors didn't hear. Though I don't imagine she'd mind if the guy in 7G overheard.

  "Do you mean like a blind date?" I ask, following her.

  From behind the wall of boxes she says, "I mean like any kind of interaction with someone you find attractive and has the potential for passion. I saw you smile last night on the street. The big dimpled one."

  "Carrick?" I freeze, wrapping my arms around my chest. My heart feels colder than the inside of the dark side of the moon.

  She nods. "Navy, I just want to see you," she sighs, "I want to see my best friend happy."

  "I'm—"

  She shakes her head.

  "You're not happy, not even close, but you could be."

  She's right, but I can't bring myself to agree.

  *

  Two vanilla spice lattes, a pair of bagels with cream cheese, phone calls from both of our parents, a bag of popcorn, several broken nails—both the painted kind and the metal ones that do not want to be hammered into a brick wall—and let me not forget several broken pieces of Balinese sculpture later, phew! The boxes are in their respective rooms or unpacked and broken down, leaning against the wall in the hallway by the door.

  Most of my clothing is in my closet. My closet! Having a closet again is such a novelty and having Kat's closet in close proximity is thrilling, even though I swim in half of her stuff. Some of my books are on the shelves, though I'm in deep debate whether to arrange them by color to create a rainbow like I've seen on Pinterest in lieu of the hodgepodge they were in my old place.

  There's a semblance of order, at least, when I come across a box I haven't opened since I moved out of my parents' house and into the dorm.

  I pull up on the flaps to find my high school yearbook, a few framed photos, my Track & Field jersey, my diploma, tassel, a few keepsakes, and old journals and diaries. I don't dare look at the yearbook or photos and there's no chance I want to read my naïve and old broken-hearted musings.

  I'm about to close the box and toss it down the garbage chute when Kat enters.

  "I want it to be known—you can write this down if you want—I hate unpacking. No, I take that back. I hate packing, but I really, strongly, extremely dislike unpacking. It's such a chore," she agonizes, sitting down next to me and then looking around my room. "Whoa."

  "What?" I ask, tempted to kick the box away so she doesn't glimpse the contents.

  "You're almost done."

  "Just in here. I'll help in the kitchen and stuff," I say.

  "I've only emptied three boxes, Navy. They contained dirty laundry. I'm hopeless."

  I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. It's been hours and the feeble winter sun dips ever lower behind the buildings.

  "I'm so indecisive. I want everything to be just right. I can't decide if I should hang my sweaters or fold them. If I should get a new comforter—the one I have now camouflages with the floor. I was also thinking maybe we should get plants and then I was looking up which ones don't need a lot of water because you know I'll forget to feed them. Oh, and I'm worried about Mew and the heating grates. What if he gets a paw stuck?"

  "I thought I was the over thinker."

  She puffs an exhale.

  "What did you do with your sweaters before?"

  "That's not the point."

  "No, it's not." I inhale a deep breath. "You have commitment issues."

  "Yeah," she says sadly.

  "Takes one to know one."

  "That may be my problem, but I don't think that's yours." She taps her foot against the box containing my past.

  My phone beeps from across the room. I ignore it. It beeps again. I'm more than happy to delve back into her commitment issues and not leave her alone with the box, but she says, "Are you going to check that?"

  "Nah."

  It beeps again.

  "Someone really needs to get ahold of you," Kat urges, rising to her feet and making toward my phone.

  I scoot past her.

  "Sheesh," she says, sitting back down.

  "It's my mom."

  "Checking in?"

  "Of course. It's only been three hours. She needs to make sure I haven't run off and eloped."

  She laughs. "She'd probably be okay with that." Kat is well versed in my mother's intense desire on marrying me off to someone wealthy. We're what my mother calls very comfortable, but my father who still hasn't retired from the Navy (yes, like my name) isn't what you'd call rich.

  I grew up among the Cape Cod and Boston elite, though always on the edges. Like a D-list celebrity. My mother made it her job to be the perfect wife and hostess to keep up appearances, but they never quite reached zenith she aimed for. While I don't intend to marry for money and if things continue as they have, probably won't marry at all, she doesn't see that it's not up to a man to give me a better life. In fact, if I break it down, men are the source of my problems and not the solution.

  I glance over and Kat holds a spiral notebook from the box. She turns it over and reads the cover, printed in the faded bubble letters of a seventh grader, "The Boyfriend Book. Ooh. I've never seen this before."

  I swipe for it, but she holds it over her head with her long arms.

  "What do we have here?" She flips through the pages. "When we first met I thought you were a lesbian, but then I took note of all the books you read. Gay erotica is plentiful nowadays, so I ruled out homosexuality. You hooked up with a couple of guys in college, so I knew you weren't asexual. But all joking aside with the man-hate, I've never been completely sure if you liked guys, but this this changes things." She waves the notebook.

  She's teasing, but I don't want her to read it. I try to grab it again, but she's too tall and nimble. She dashes out of my room and down the hall, sequestering herself behind her bedroom door.

  I chase after her, calling, "Kat, come on. That thing is stupid. And old. I was in seventh grade. And eighth, ninth, tenth..."

  She's quiet when I lean against her bedroom door, my palms sweaty over what she'll read in there. Theories, couplings, ratings, private musings. I stumble when the door opens. The last golden light of day spills onto the wooden slats on the floor.

  She points at a line in the book and I know, with certainty, the name her eyes have landed on. "Wait a minute. Navy Carrington, what aren't you telling me?

  Chapter 4

  Party Animals

  An unpleasant knot twists in my belly as Katya reads the entry. "Is this the Carrick? As in the Sexy Beast? As in the guy who swept you off your feet yesterday? The guy I just met? Well, I didn't meet him formally, because you didn't introduce me, instead running off like a scared rabbit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Carrick is an unusual name, am I mistaken here or is he a member of the—"

  I cut off her lengthy line of interrogation. "Yes. The same. Carrick Kennely."

  "As in The Kennelys or a Kennely?" she follows up.

  I sigh. "The, capital T Kennelys."

  "I suddenly regret never taking you up on those invites to your house for Thanksgiving and Christmas."

  "Those were my mother's invitations."

  "Ouch," she says, feigning insult.

  "I'm kidding. I would have loved if you came home with me and experienced the complete and utter dysfunction, but you had exciting and exotic locales to visit."

  "But this development is juicier than the private island in the Pacific, the boating adventure off Antarctica, and the numerous tours through Europe."

  "The difference is your mother isn't a crazy, bossy pants," I tell Katya, recalling the stunning, yet sweet woman I've met several times over the years.

  "Oh, but she is. Trust me." Kat shivers.

  "Touché."

  Kat pauses and then says, "Tell me everything."

  I waver, reaching for the incriminating notebook.

  "Did you have a thing for him? For Carrick?"

  I make a non-committal shake/nod/turn/twist of the head because I cannot lie.

  "Was this, like, an arranged thing between the Carringtons and the Kennelys?" Before I can do the weird bobble headshake again, she says, "Or was it like the Montagues and Capulets? Forbidden love because of a longstanding family feud?"

  "Nothing like that," I say, backing her toward my room.

  Kat taps her finger against her chin. "High school sweethearts?"

  "Hardly."

  "I'm dying here. What was it?"

  "Nothing. I was friends with his sister."

  "And under penalty of breaking up the friendship she cock blocked you. Er, him?" Katya guesses, stepping through my doorway.

  "No, there was no blockage of any sort."

  Cock block, she mouths, teasing me with her eyebrow, elevated to as until now unforeseen heights.

  I make a swipe for the notebook again, but she grips it to her chest, rushing to the far side of my room.

  "You know the details of every single one of my romantic endeavors, ever. Well, almost," she says.

  I give a very distinct shake of my head.

  "Please, pretty please tell me." She bounces excitedly on her toes.

  "It's over. In the past."

  I expect her to continue begging, speculating about the connection I have to Carrick, but her almond eyes soften around the edges and she lowers her voice. "Navy, I'll agree with you that it's in the past, but I think we both know that it's not over and done with."

  I swallow back anger and hurt and humiliation and other unnamed emotions.

  "Sometimes talking helps," she adds.

  I recline on the bed, clutching a pillow to my chest. I take a deep breath. This is going to suck. "I was best friends with Claire Kennely since we were in Kindergarten. She had five brothers. Two younger—the twins Kellen and Keagan. Three older: Colby, then Conner, and the one closest in age to us, Carrick."

  "Sounds like that family had a thing for C-names."

  "And K. Kellen and Keagan. The dad's name was Calvin and they started with C so the sons would have the same initials C.K. and then the twins were a surprise so they got K like Mrs. Kennely, Kathryn. Like you."

  "Gotcha."

  "Claire was the only girl and we were like sisters. You can imagine how thrilled my mother was that I became such good friends with a Kennely."

  "The Kennelys."

  "Yes, the Kennelys," I repeat, too young to have grasped the meaning when I met the family and later I was too familiar with them and their delightful dysfunction to care. "Anyway, as we got older, Claire would always tease me about which one of her brothers I had a crush on."

  "Did you?" Katya asks, eating this up.

  I look away.

  "You did," Katya whispers.