In her car, Robin and I wail around town all afternoon looking for something to do, because designated fun days are usually the most boring. We are single and therefore our presence is not yet required by our families at every legal holiday. Our woman-talk is spent, our springs wound down by the time we peruse 7-Eleven for fancy health food chips and now we ride along going nowhere listening to Robin's fuzzy Grateful Dead bootlegs so she can pretend she's still like that.

        I turn thirty-one in two weeks.

Sometimes I like the stickiness of my chest when it's very hot out and I can press a quarter there and have it stay. I made a bad clothing decision this morning by tying a long red and blue silk scarf around my breasts instead of a real shirt, and I will be forever tugging it up unless I happen on a place to go topless. We bought the jug of white zinfandel because we thought you would be with us. It was supposed to be a big group day like always. You're one of the old crowd. We both love you dearly but we just can't talk to each other about that.

        Four years ago you were with us, same car of Robin's but we all hollered out the window like college kids at the fat families who came to gobble Firemen's' barbecue and watch the biggest-ever display get drizzled out. The girlfriend who would later be your wife failed to convince you that a day with her parents at their rental cottage would be more fun than us, so she went sourly without you, handing you back to us in her huff. Don't forget, we invited her along, too. Everyone's partners have always been invited -- we're not the ones who make you choose.

        What things do you miss about twenty-two?

        Robin spots some people she knows from work and they walk with us for a while. I don't think they've ever seen her in a bikini top before. Up the hill, we find a man I was once very briefly engaged to lying face down in the dry grass of Highland Park with a big blue Foster's can draining a puddle for his forehead. Everyone wants to help but I tell them no, let him be, that' s just the way Tommy celebrates things.

        Your wife has insisted that the family is not going again this year; it's too hard to park and Brittany is simply terrified of fireworks. This was at the Outlet Plaza. I joked that Brittany was part dog but it didn't go over well at all. Your daughter the Brittany spaniel, hiding in her mother's armpit from marching bands and lightning. Absolutely not doing the fireworks this year, yet here it is getting dark and I see you ambling up the hill by yourself with a blue glow lace and three beers hanging from their plastic loops. Now I don't care about the mosquitoes.

        Once upon a time you and I didn't know each other, then one day we were friends in a wild pack of crazies and I thought it wrong to tell you that I kissed my own palms thinking of you. I stared at you openly when we skinny dipped, not caring that my own date hid an erection below the brown water. I was afraid, and here is where my fear has led me, on a hill with Robin and her WASP-ish coworkers, saluting you with my plastic travel mug of white zinfandel as you sit in the midst of us. A bottle rocket zips skyward from the woods behind you -- someone wants the show to start.

        You've been drinking a little. You didn't want to pick up Aladdin from the video store. Robin is engrossed in shop talk with her work friends; she's going to hate me, but I'm taking you over for the evening. I twist your glow lace into a ring and crown myself with it, scooting back beside you when the first red and gold sprays go up. You press a cold beer between my shoulder blades and raise bumps on my skin. We should move closer to the woods. Soon it will be dark enough for me to take off this horrible top. At precisely the right moments, there will be brightness enough for you to see me, first in one color, then the next...