Corona Gale, nightly build 2.2.2

 Kate stood across from Shawn in this kitchen, an island between them made of some kind of cherry wood, Maple? She didn’t know for wood, only seen the brochures and pamphlets these kinds of things came from, extensions and installations of customizable dream homes, the hands holding them, excited people with plans. Kate had not yet been seduced by the suburban dream home complex, which consisted entirely of people who had already done it and only had wonderful things to say. She was not sure if Shawn was going to say any of these things. She didn’t know what he might remark about his own choices, and if those choices panned out to a happiness.  The entire seduction community surrounding pseudo-customizable suburban houses started well before Kate moved to Calgary and would likely continue long after she left. It was true for other cities, but perhaps no more true than on the perimeter of her adopted home town, which was so much larger and so much more unrecognizable that was even 10 years before, and would probably swallow her hometown before she was forty. This is where Kate stood, across from Shawn, out where there used to be a farm, in the house he handpicked, purchased with money, and would likely sell within three years. 
 But if there was a sort of suburban sting on a person,  where living out there with so much more space and more commute time presumably actually changed a person’s personality, Kate couldn’t really tell with her old friend. Then again, Kate’s idea of Shawn was put together less by knowing him well and more interrupted his life every few years with her life, her problems, her disasters. In this new room they had no privacy. The kitchen bustled with people getting drinks and food from Shawn’s comically oversized fridge, which was the type could only fit through comically oversized suburban doors, likely requiring three men with back braces. Shawn would have tipped a man to get that fridge in. 
This was a party of sorts, one that Kate likely would not have been invited to under the normal circumstances, as she came without a partner, which was technically against the rules.
Shawn was frowning. 
 “She looks great,” Kate said. She said this of the house, quickly, to break the air. It did not make things less awkward. The fact is, Kate shouldn’t have been at this party. Alice was nowhere to be found, in person or via text. She had not told Shawn, and had not informed Kate of the particulars of this party. Earlier in the afternoon, when Kate realized Alice either gave her a fake number or couldn’t be bothered to check her phone, had to call another old friend who updated her phone with Shawn’s new current alarmingly suburban new address.  
 Her compliment did not break the silence for long.  Shawn looked as if he was going to take the beer in his hand to another room. He looked it if he looked as if he was going to blink at her a few more times, turned  into his pantry,  which had the door  that should have belonged to an old wardrobe, and disappear.  His face was not one that seemed happy to see her.  
 “You look great,” she said, hoping that might help.
 “You’re not funny,” he told her. “And you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be in my life. We shouldn’t know each other. I don’t know why we know each other.”
“We know each other because, well, you remember when we met,” She said.
“I know why we met,” he said. “but that’s not the same thing as knowing why we know one another. Why you keep popping up in my life.  Am I one of your projects? Am I someone you have to keep tabs on? Is there something about my life that’s interesting to you or your employers?”
 “You don’t know anything about my employers,” she said.
 Music played. Kate couldn’t see speakers but she heard music. Maybe all that stuff was just in the walls now, some easy up-charge from the house builders that put the stereo in one room and the speakers everywhere. The stereo equipment might have been mysterious, but the music was pedantic. Fleetwood Mac blared from nowhere. 
“Isn’t it enough that I think you’re worth keeping in touch with every now and then?” 
“I don’t even know what the appropriate response is to this situation. People who have done the kinds of things you’ve done generally don’t keep showing up. Am I an idiot? I must be an idiot. You, Kate middle-name-redacted last-name-redacted, have screwed up my life on two occasions, and I let you do it both times, invited both events in. You’re like a vampire person. You’re of no danger to me until I invite you in, then you make me eat garlic and I explode.” 
Kate said, “I don’t think you know how vampires work. But that’s okay. I don’t care. And I apologized for Scott. Scott was my fault. It was so, so my fault.” 
Kate had a feeling this might happen. She didn’t think it would take place in such a sterile and tall kitchen, or that Shawn wouldn’t at least show a few niceties before getting into their past. But she knew she’d have to talk about Scott. She’d have to talk about Sabin. She’d have to talk about Drumheller.
“Give me some credit,” Shawn said. “We’ve been over our past. But when you show up and ruin my life, disappear for a few years, show up again looking for advice about your crazy situation in 2012 with Sabin, and then disappear again for three years, you are stretching the notion of ‘old friends’ just a little. We are not friends. If anything, I’m your victim.”