Michelle Rasmussen and I met in the second week of freshman year at UCSD in 2002, in a laundry room, over a machine that ate her quarters.

We were friends for twenty-two years.

I want to put some weight on that number, because the shape people expect from this story is a beautiful younger woman who turned up in year nine and took what she wanted.

That is not what happened, and the actual thing is much stranger and much sadder.

Michelle was at my wedding.

She gave a speech about the laundry room that made my mother cry.

She was in Newport Beach with me for the second retrieval, in 2022, because Christopher had a board thing.