“Uh, thank you.”

“And Bette would get all vague and stoic-I’m sure you know how she gets.”

I nodded lamely. I did know.

“And I’d say, ‘Did you two have a fight? Are you not friends? I mean, what is going on here,’ you know?” She laughed. I sort of wished she’d let go of me. She didn’t, though; she just sort of got this ridiculous pouty look on her face and said in this grave tone, “I heard about you and Bette. I am sorry.”

Ugh. I hate this neighborhood. I am moving to Arizona.

I shrugged.

“I mean,” Sunny went on, “I’d see you and Bette together every so often and I’d think ‘Something’s off. Something’s not right’. I just knew it wasn’t built to last because I know Bette so well, I mean, I dated her off-and-on for three months, you know, I just know how she is.”

I stared at her, hoping that I didn’t look like I was contemplating cutting her arms off so that she’d let go of me. ‘Cause that’s what I was thinking.

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“So, how is she?” She finally let go. I sighed in relief, moving a safe distance away and taking my seat at the counter again.

“Uh, what do you mean?” I asked. “I thought you said you know how she is.”

Sunny looked at me blankly for a moment and then broke into a loud burst of laughter. “Oh, honey! I meant how is she, how is she now?”

“She’s good,” I said, shrugging. “She’s, uh, been busy with work-uh…” Sunny had taken a seat on the stool next to me and pulled it up very close. I signaled to Marina for another espresso.

“Always working,” Sunny said sagely, as though she were discussing some mysterious disease Bette had contracted. “It’s just how she is. You know how she is. And I know how she is.”

“We both know how she is,” I agreed. I picked up my pen and bent over my notepad, figuring that if I looked like I really needed to get back to work…

Sunny wasn’t deterred, though. “I knew, I just knew,” she said, “the minute I met her father-’Oh, there it is,’ I said to myself. ‘The reason she feels so much pressure to perform.’”