I've said that Kenzie was never a victim, but that line was occasionally blurred when she would spend time with her friend Riley. Riley was a combination of bad luck and clumsiness that I've never come across before or since, and anyone that spent time with her found themselves in the role of innocent bystander.

There was one memorable occasion on Kenzie's last day working at Slurp, the juice bar where the two of them had met and become friends. Kenzie was about to start a new job at a local Credit Union, and to celebrate their last day working together, Riley took Kenzie out to a new restaurant around the corner from my townhouse where you made your own pizza. I had to work late, but we all planned to meet back at my place later in the evening. I was surprised to hear a knock at the patio door earlier than I expected, especially since Kenzie had a key by that point in our relationship. I opened the door to find Kenzie standing there covered in pizza sauce from head to toe! For a brief second I was worried that it could be blood, but the strong tomato smell quickly turned my fear into humor. Riley was off the side looking sheepish and sported a few drops of sauce on her outfit, but nothing like the bright red drenching that covered Kenzie.

"Wha... what...?" I stammered through my shock as I tried not to laugh.

"Don't ask," Kenzie replied as she wiped at the sauce that was still dripping from loose strands of hair to add to the mess on her work shirt and jeans, trying to keep any composure that she still possessed. "Just get the hose."

"Okay, but why didn't you at least call? I would have come to get you."

"Why didn't I call? You want to know why I didn't call!?" Kenzie asked, exasperated. "Because of this!" She reached into her purse, which I hadn't realized was filled to the brim with pizza sauce and when she pulled her hand back out, both it and her inoperable cell phone were covered in marinara.

As I uncurled the hose and began spraying down my literally red faced girlfriend, Riley explained, "There was this guy that worked at the restaurant carrying a huge plastic tub of pizza sauce, and I didn't see him, and well, we bumped into each other"

Kenzie shot her a look, water and wet pizza sauce flying from her previously blond hair as she whipped her head around.

"Okay, it was more like I bumped into him, but I didn't see him and honestly that tub was way too big to be carrying through the dining room!" She got another look from Kenzie. "Well, anyway, I bumped into him and the tub slipped, and he almost got it under control again, but then, well..." She gestured to Kenzie, "Right over the head."

"We were sitting at a high top and I had my purse out looking for my phone and when I saw it coming at me I tried to move, but I couldn't get out of that stupid tall chair in time!"

Kenzie's face and hair were mostly sauce-free by this point, but her white work t-shirt looked like it was stained forever. This had been her last day working at Slurp though, so it probably didn't matter. Her jeans had started the day a faded blue in color and it looked like they also might be too stained to be salvageable. Seeing the watered down pizza sauce running through Kenzie's clothes and over her sneakers into the drain reminded me of something, and as if on cue we heard a car door open and close on the other side of the tall cinderblock wall that surrounded the enclosed patio.

"Here, hold this," I said as I tucked the running hose down the front of Kenzie's jeans and opened the gate for Allie, our favorite delivery driver. "Sorry Kenz, but I knew where you guys were going to eat and it made me hungry for, well - pizza."

Allie took in the scene as she came through the gate and began laughing as she set the pizza on the patio table next to where Kenzie, the running hose still tucked into the front of her jeans, was busy removing pizza sauce soaked items form her purse and said, "Man, I love delivering here! There's always something weird going on."

"Who you calling weird!?" Kenzie asked, tugging the hose from her pants and pretending to spray it in Allie's direction.

"Okay, okay!" Allie shot back, grinning. "How about 'a little bit out of the ordinary and usually surprising and fun?'"

"That's better. Did you ever get your air conditioner fixed? You're always welcome to join in." She playfully flicked the stream of water toward Allie again.

"I can't today, unfortunately," Allie replied as I paid her, "I'm running behind. But let me know next time you all end up in the pool again, now that was fun!" She'd made her way through the gate by this time and once she was safely on the other side she called back to us, "You know you could have just ordered some extra sauce, right!?"

Kenzie shot a stream of hose water over the fence and we heard Allie let out a yelp as she hustled back to her car.

"Maybe we are a little weird," Riley spoke up as Allie drove away.

Kenzie'd had about enough from Riley by this point, and in one quick motion she emptied the remains of the pizza sauce from her purse over her friend's head. "We? This kind of thing seems to happen to me quite a bit when I'm hanging around with you, you know." Riley squeaked as the sauce hit her, but she stood her ground and took both the saucing and the following soaking from the hose in stride, even pointing out a few drops of wayward pizza sauce that Kenzie had missed on her khaki work pants as she hosed down her friend. I figured from her manner that she had known she'd have some retribution coming.

A few minutes later the two soaked and stained girls and I devoured the pizza while they air dried.

That was neither the first nor the last dinner we shared a meal like that, and I often wondered about Kenzie and Riley's friendship. I think Kenzie was the only person in Riley's circle that had the patience and self-confidence to keep subjecting herself to the crazy situations that came along with this particular friendship. I think I referred to her as a victim of Riley's bad luck, but I don't think that's exactly true. Are you a victim if you half expect something might happen? Are you a victim if something happens to you that you have fun with, even if it's mostly unexpected and maybe a bit embarrassing? I've said before that Kenzie loved to be the center of attention, and being friends with Riley certainly assured that, even if that attention oftentimes came from being covered in some sort of goop. I think that on any given day, Kenzie would much rather be a little embarrassed than not noticed, but I don't want to over analyze anything - I'd rather just enjoy the show.

There was another time that Kenzie and I went on a double date with Riley and one of the revolving group of young men that she dated. Kenzie was wearing a loose fitting button down dress with an attached fabric belt at the waist. The collared dress was a kind of gauzy cotton, unbuttoned enough to show some cleavage, and it was all in white. You could almost make out the outlines of her white bra and panties under the material, but not quite. The dress sported wide short sleeves and two breast pockets above the waste, and Kenzie delighted in showing me the two hidden pockets built into the skirt. Instead of her almost constant pair of sneakers, she wore white sandals that strapped not only to her feet but also higher up on her ankles. She often wore her blonde hair in a ponytail, but tonight she wore it parted in the middle and let it hang down past her shoulders. She was gorgeous!

"Oh my god, you look great," I couldn't help but exclaim when I saw her, but a sudden thought occurred to me. "Are you sure you want to wear white when we're going out with Riley?"

"There's going to be a group of us, so I'm risking it tonight. Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Famous last words!" I replied, but who was I to argue?

After a pleasant dinner with Riley and her latest beau, a perfectly nice young man named Jack, we decided to go to SoHoFroYo, a frozen yogurt place with a New York theme, for dessert. They had a bunch of different flavors of frozen yogurt, and you went down the line filling your dish with whatever flavor or flavors you wanted and then took your dish to a different line for the toppings. You could get anything you wanted in any combination, and you paid by weight at the end.

Riley had chosen the place, saying that she'd been here tons of times before. It was new to Kenzie and me and Riley enjoyed showing us how everything worked. Each of the frozen yogurt stations had two flavors so you could get either kind or a twist combining the two flavors together. Kenzie'd had a couple of mango margaritas with dinner, so she decided to continue the theme and went for the mango and mixed berry combination, while I chose the more traditional chocolate and vanilla next to her. Riley and Jack were next in line, but they were still trying to decide on flavors so Kenzie and I moved on ahead.

I filled my dish with the twist combination and was waiting for Kenzie to fill hers before moving over to the toppings when I realized that she was fiddling with the yogurt machine. She pulled the combination lever and nothing came out, so she tried the mango spout and still nothing. Riley had seen what was going on by this time and came over to Kenzie's aide.

"What's the matter, girl?" Riley asked, "all you have to do is pull right here."

Kenzie tried to stop her, but Riley reached over and gave the twist lever a tug and the whole front of the machine came off in her hand! Kenzie had just enough time to glance at Riley in exasperation before two streams of frozen yogurt, one a dazzling yellow mango and the other a shockingly bright red mixed berry shot from the front of the machine and blasted her squarely in the center of the chest. It happened so fast that Kenzie didn't even have time to dodge, and the brightly colored frozen yogurt hit her with such force that it splattered upward covering her entire chest and neck up to her chin, outward to both shoulders, and thanks to gravity, ran straight down her cleavage into her dress! She yelped and dropped her bowl, instinctively raising both arms to protect her from the frozen onslaught, which just caused the yogurt to fly in new directions, covering her arms and blasting her in the face while shooting sideways to where Riley and I stood on either side of her.

All three of us immediately tried to back away, and Riley I got out of the line of fire quickly enough, but Kenzie, who was right in front of the machine took the lion's share of the mess and lost her footing as the frozen yogurt gushed over her sandals and made things slippery. One of her feet actually came all the way out of its sandal, which then only clung to her ankle by the upper strap. This caused her to stumble and she spun around with her arms flailing in the air and trying to keep her balance before her feet finally slid out from under her and she somehow landed on her butt with her back against the wall directly under the malfunctioning fro-yo machine. The initial blast of frozen yogurt which had filled her dress and been forceful enough to splash onto Riley and I had slowed into a steady liquidy trickle, which was now raining directly down onto Kenzie's head, yellow to one side and red to the other. If you didn't count the colors, she had a bit of a Harley Quinn thing going on as the now runny juice turned her blond hair different colors before running down her shoulders with an oddly precise symmetry. The icy juice then filled her shirt pockets until they overflowed and the red and yellow combined into a swirly orange goop that pooled in her lap.

Instead of screaming or shouting, Kenzie sat there with a resigned look on her red and yellow face and slicked her hair back and wiped her eyes. She then calmly looked up and turned her head to one side, sticking her tongue out and taking a mouthful of the mango syrup that was still pouring down on her head. "Yum!" she exclaimed, then turned her head to the other side to try the mixed berry and immediately made a sour face. "Glad I didn't actually buy any of that," she informed us as she spit the red juice into her lap along with the rest of the liquid that had finally slowed to a small trickle flowing from the machine over her head. The top of her dress clung to her nicely, bright yellow on one side and deep red on the other. Her skirt was draped over and between her legs, weighed down by the sticky liquid still collecting there.

As we helped Kenzie to her feet, she started to shiver as the shock wore off and she finally realized just how much of the cold fro-yo was actually down inside her dress. Once standing, she sucked in her tummy and tugged at the fabric around her waist, allowing the frozen concoction to flow down over her hips and between her legs until it fell out of her skirt, plopping down onto her feet. Seeming to just now realize that her breast pockets were heavier than normal, she cupped her own boobs, forcing the half frozen, half sticky syrup out of the pockets. The syrupy juice was forced from her shirt pockets and ran over her hands, and she took the time to reach over and untuck the pink oxford shirt that Riley wore tucked into a denim skirt, and then use the tails of the shirt to wipe off her hands.

I'd seen this scenario play out before Riley would become submissive after being the cause of some sort of accident, almost as if she were accepting punishment for involving Kenzie in whatever weird circumstances had occurred. Kenzie seemed to think of something else then, and reached down into the hidden pockets of her skirt and came out with two handfuls of brightly colored frozen yogurt, which she preceded to smear onto each side of Riley's cute yet shocked face, before continuing downwards to again deposit the brightly colored mess onto Riley's shirt, but this time at the chest level, making sure to drop a bit down inside as she went.

They both started giggling then, and the laughter spread to Jack and I, and then even to the horrified SoHoFroYo employees. Kenzie wasn't quite finished with Riley yet, and through their laughter, she scooped the chocolate and vanilla twist from my bowl with her bare hands and plopped it right onto Riley's head where she massaged it into her friend's hair. She then continued to smear the yogurt downwards and over Riley's face and chest, not running out until she'd pretty well covered the front of her friend's button up shirt, leaving Riley's top half almost as stained and sticky as her own. Then she reached behind her to the line of toppings, quickly found what she was looking for, and squirted a healthy sized dollop of whipped cream onto the top of Riley's head, finishing by expertly placing a cherry in the middle of the cream. Riley took her punishment without interference before responding (even though I thought she was pushing her luck at this point) by grabbing a big scoopful of sprinkles and raining them down over Kenzie's head, shoulders, and chest. She even managed to get Kenzie's sticky top pulled far enough away from her boobs to drop a good amount of the sprinkles down inside her dress. Once the scoop had been emptied, Kenzie again pulled her dress away from her waist and tried to set the sprinkles free with a little shimmy, but the number of tiny candies that cascaded downward and fell through her skirt and dropped onto her sandals was nowhere close to the amount that been poured into her top.

"Well, I think we're done here," Kenzie announced before the approaching manager could say anything. She and Riley could barely contain their giggles as they held their heads high and marched past the manager, Kenzie walking awkwardly because of the slippery yogurt covering her feet as well as having one foot still in its sandal correctly, the other dragging behind her still attached at her ankle. With a straight face, Riley handed him the face plate to the broken fro-yo machine that she somehow still held onto, and we walked through the exit and out into the desert night. Once outside we all lost our composure, and even Jack, who had miraculously remained completely clean, gave in to fits of laughter and giggles.

I tried to keep it from coming out, but I couldn't help saying, "I told you not to wear white!" to Kenzie.

She waggled her eyebrows at me, one yellow and the other red, before informing me, "I don't know, I kind of like this dress better with some color in it." She tried to adjust the lines of her outfit, but it was pretty well glued to her by this point. "I will admit, though, that I don't think I've ever been this sticky before!" We all shared another laugh at this before separating into couples and heading our different ways.

As we walked to the car, Kenzie took my hand in hers and I suddenly understood just how sticky the rest of her body must be. She leaned over to give me a peck on the lips and said, "Remember that do it yourself carwash we went to that time? I think it's time we paid them another visit."