This is my first Hot Pink Underwear story. About this girl who quit her job during a huge recession. Maybe this is a true story. Anyway, this first part’s boring. She starts a grad program then loses a leg to gangrene and adopts a circus monkey named Popo. Maybe that’s fiction.

I should start over.

There’s this girl with secondary infertility–that’s when you can’t get pregnant again after you’ve had your first baby. The girl secretly resents her best friend for having three kids. The girl who can’t have babies anymore’s name is Summer. She has one daughter named Ava.

Summer works full-time in public relations for a boring government agency. Everyone hates government workers. But people mostly like Summer. She has a great work personality and is a snappy dresser.

Nayelli is the best friend. Nayelli can’t stand Summer, but is afraid to say. I mean, Nayelli wouldn’t say, “I hate you, Summer,” or anything like that. Nayelli is just sick of Summer always talking about her fabulous job (which isn’t really fabulous) and her amazing only daughter (who’s pretty average, actually) and all the places they travel, like Italy and Hawaii–both in the last year and it’s only April!

Nayelli would like to travel, but she has three kids and her husband’s a police officer. Cops don’t make squat. Not when you have a mortgage and two car payments and a family of five. Nayelli’s house isn’t even that nice. It’s a ranch-style gray house with white trim in a mediocre neighborhood in Tumwater, Washington.

The house is too small. The carpets are stained–mainly juice stains that seem darker somehow when Summer stops by, which thankfully isn’t that often.

Summer only comes over when she wants something. Like today she wants Nayelli to watch Ava. Ava is three. A little spoiled, but a generally nice kid.

It’s just Nayelli doesn’t need any more kids. Not today. She can feel a migraine coming on. It’s probably PMS-related. But how can she say no without getting into the whole I-don’t-want-us-to-be-friends-anymore conversation?

Summer has texted Nayelli to say she’s on her way. It’s nine a.m. on a Tuesday. Summer’s bringing Ava, who’s running a fever, so daycare won’t take her. Nayelli doesn’t want a sick kid, either.

Nayelli’s husband’s at work. Her oldest is at school, the baby’s down for a nap, and her middle boy, four-year-old Tyler, is having a rare moment of self-play with his Hexbugs. Nayelli wants to take a shower…