“Do whatever you want, Kristi, I’m done here,” I angrily texted after being removed as my friend’s maid of honour for speaking up over what I felt were unreasonable demands. But friends fight, and I was sure we’d laugh about this in a couple weeks over penis flutes.That was the last time Kristi and I would speak for five years. The wedding came and went, and I never even received an invite. I reached out, attempting to mend fences a couple months after our initial argument, but I received radio silence. The experience was so painful and disorienting that I flew home to my dad’s house in Florida and cried for a week into my cat’s fur. I’d heard about best-friend breakups, but I never envisioned it happening to us. I first met Kristi freshman year at Northwestern University after we’d each bombed a mainstage audition and decided to get drunk together. Where I was the introverted and observant type with an outward stoicism and a rotating collection of combat boots, she was an extroverted, social butterfly who enjoyed humming along to “Mary Poppins” while stencilling turquoise owls onto her bedroom walls. We were kind of like if Daria and Quinn actually liked each other and went and swigged cheap-ass vodka together on a dorm-room floor. We were perfect complements.From that crummy audition on, Kristi was the sister I never had. We shared apartments in Chicago, took vacations to New York together to see Broadway shows, and even moved to California in unison after graduation. We may have even swapped hookup buddies a time or two (after granting each other explicit permission).But as we approached 30 and our lives began moving in different directions, we struggled to connect. I was transitioning into a writing career in Los Angeles while she was settling down in Sacramento with her fiancé. I’d run script ideas by h