Chapter 1
My best friend, Melissa Young, hit me up for a ride to the seafood market, and I said yes without thinking about it.
As soon as we got there, she made a beeline for the king crab section and grabbed three big baskets full.
I glanced at the price tag, and my stomach dropped when I saw three thousand dollars.
When we got to the checkout, she flashed me a smile and said, "Hey, babe, can you cover this for me? I'll send you the money later."
That was already the seventeenth time she had said that.
I smiled, held my car keys in my hand, and said, "Here, take these for a second while I go move the car."
*****
I glanced at my phone. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
Saturday was supposed to be my day to stay home and relax. But Melissa called me at nine in the morning.
"Hey, Emily, you home? Come with me to the seafood market," she said, her voice sweet and familiar.
We had been friends for seven years, ever since we were college roommates.
I hesitated for a second, but then I said yes.
That made three times this month she had asked me for a ride.
Last time it was to a furniture store, and before that, it was some farm way out in the suburbs.
She always said it was on my way, but it never actually was. I ended up driving two hours each time.
Still, I always thought that was what friends did.
At ten, I pulled up outside her place.
She came downstairs in a white sundress, carrying her Hermès bag.
"Emily, you're the best," she said as she got into the passenger seat and adjusted it the way she liked.
Then she changed the music to her favorite pop songs.
"Let's go to the market on Lakeside Avenue. I heard they got fresh king crabs in," she added, scrolling through her phone.
I nodded and started driving.
Lakeside Avenue was on the other side of the city, a good forty minutes each way.
She spent the whole trip telling me office gossip, like who was flirting with whom or who got yelled at by the boss.
I nodded along, but most of my attention was on the road.
*****
We got to the market around noon.
The place was packed and smelled like fish.
Melissa knew exactly where she was going and pulled me straight to a shop that sold imported seafood.
"This is the place. I saw it on someone's feed," she said.
The owner, a guy in his forties, welcomed us with a big smile. "Ladies, check out our king crabs. Just flew in from Alasville."
Melissa's eyes lit up. She walked over to the tank and started picking carefully. "This one looks good. And that one. Oh, and the one in the corner," she said, pointing at three extra-large crabs.
The owner grabbed the crabs with practiced ease and set them on the scale. "Great choice, ladies. These three are absolutely top-quality."
I stood off to the side, feeling uneasy.
Last time at the furniture store, she picked out a set of sofa covers and asked me to put them on my card.
She promised to pay me back, but that was three months ago, and I still hadn't seen a single dollar.
The time before that at the farm, she bought two boxes of organic vegetables. Again, I was the one who paid while she gave me the same promise.
I opened up the notes app on my phone, where I kept a running list of everything she owed me.
It started two years ago with a dinner, and last month, it was a gift card for a beauty salon.
Added up, the total had already reached twelve thousand dollars.
Every single time, she said it naturally, like it was nothing at all. "Babe, can you cover this for me?" And then came the same old line about sending the money later.
At first, I thought friends shouldn't keep such a close track of every little expense. A few hundred dollars here or a thousand there didn't seem like a big deal back then.
But over the past two years, the numbers kept climbing, and she had never once brought up paying me back on her own.
"That comes to three thousand dollars. You ladies want them?" the owner asked.
His voice snapped me back to reality. That number made my heart race all of a sudden.
Melissa turned around and gave me a big, bright smile. "Hey, babe, can you cover this for me? I'll send you the money later."
Her tone made it sound like she was commenting on how nice the weather was today.
The way she said it sounded like she was talking about the weather.
My fingers gripped my phone tightly. Those numbers in my notes were practically jumping out at me.
Twelve thousand plus another three thousand made it fifteen thousand dollars. That was three months of my salary.
And there she was, carrying a seven-thousand-dollar bag and wearing a limited edition designer dress.
Last month, she had posted pictures all over her social media from a vacation in Maledasia.
A whole week in one of those fancy overwater bungalows, which must have cost her at least ten thousand dollars.
She could afford luxury brands and tropical getaways, but somehow, whenever it came time to pay, she always needed me to cover it first.