"I'm Not Crazy"

Epilogue

"He's kind of a loser," Riley said.

"Why do you hate this guy so much?" I demanded almost facetiously.

We were walking down the sidewalk of a Los Angeles street. Cars were whizzing by us, and Riley's long legs were moving so fast that every few steps I had to jog to keep up. He'd insisted on walking; forcing our uber to let us out several blocks early. He said it was because he didn't like their driving, but sometimes Riley just liked walking to prolong the journey a bit. It helped when he was anxious.

"I don't hate him!" Riley defended, passionately, despite having spent the previous several days slinging insults towards his supposed friend. He appeared almost genuinely offended at my inquiry, which did not surprise me. "He's just a total show off, okay? And he wears turtle necks and buttoned shirts. Who wears fucking turtle necks anymore? Also he's kind of a whore. You can't ever trust man whores."

"You told me not to say that word," I said, because Riley had passionately defended whores to me whilst providing unprompted sex education a few months prior. "Not to insult someone anyways."

"I said not to say it about women," he argued. "You can call men whores. We deserve it. He deserves it. You should see what he's like, seriously. You can't trust men like that."

Riley seemed to have a personal vendetta against this man, which surprised me considering how committed he was to this reunion. He'd practically begged me to come with him, and it wasn't until after I'd agreed that he'd begun his crusade to convince me we were going to meet the most annoyingly cunning idiot on the planet. I remembered this morning when he'd skirted around who we were going to meet when Bryn asked.

"It's none of your business, and also you're overbearing," Riley had said to her.

She'd had pursed lips about it for the rest of the morning.

"I thought I couldn't trust men at all? That's what you told me," I said, almost taunting.

"And it's the truth," he enthusiastically agreed. "But you especially can't trust men like him, trying to fuck and marry every person that smiles in his direction. He's actually really sweet, but Jesus."

"Person?" I asked, because it always seemed pertinent to ask.

"Women," Riley clarified. "He's aggressively straight. I've checked. He loves pretty girls, so you have to keep your guard up."

I smiled slightly. Riley called me pretty often. I appreciated it. I'd come to realize he said it very genuinely. He wasn't even interested in women. There was no motive. That meant I could trust it.

"Also his girlfriend Poppy just broke up with him for like the fifth time, and this time she seemed serious, so he's going to be extra insufferable."

"Are you sure you consider him a friend?" I pressed again.

"He is really nice," Riley clarified, smiling slightly. He paused his steps and looked off into an invisible distance in his brain, and I imagined he was imagining something pleasant. "He's practically a saint, actually. Oh! And he's a really good dad. Like insanely good. My dad was weird, so what do I know? But he's different. He's like a professional at parenting. Trust me."

I nodded.

Riley was taking me to meet his friend from back when he worked on the sitcom. I'd watched it now. Riley and I had actually watched it together over the course of several months. We'd watched every single episode while Basil and Bryn were working, in every prepubescent excruciating detail. It had seemed cathartic for him.

Riley had told me that this friend was the blonde one. The one that had played his older brother on the show. I had looked him up previously just for some context, but he lived a somewhat quiet life. Between the internet and Riley I had a decent understanding of who he was. He went to college, and now worked with children in a theatre that had traveling shows. He was a father. He had a tremulous love life. He lived in Portland, and Riley had lived there with him for a few years before moving back to LA to go to rehab and to be with Bryn. He reached out to Riley often, and he was lucky when Riley bothered to respond. He was visiting because he liked the sun and also because he had a meeting for work. Riley said he thought maybe the visit also had to do with how passionately Riley often ignored him.