Have you ever had a frenemy?

You know, the kind of friend who made you a friendship bracelet but won't invite you to her secret birthday party.

And that's when she said it.

I wish I liked you more. Then she switched on the radio. I'm Meg Wallitzer, and if this

sounds familiar, stay with me for Selected Shorts for fiction about contradictory characters.

You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

So yes, I'm Meg, and I'm the host of shorts, but I'm also a writer and a New Yorker and a mother and a wife and a grandmother and a friend and an ambidextrous person,

and I'm also Jewish and an American and a devotee of Scrabble.

The point is, I'm not just one thing, and I don't think that you are either.

All of us play many different roles in one another's lives and in the world around us.

And sometimes, frankly, it can be hard to keep up with all those different roles in one another's lives and in the world around us. And sometimes, frankly, it can be hard to keep up with all those different roles,

not to mention all of the feelings that go along with playing all these parts.

Some days we do what we know to be right, like becoming the angelic godmother,

following through on a promise to babysit a godson,

and other days we abandon that same

promise and become that self-involved slouch who sits at home and eats a family-sized bag of

corn chips. Like Walt Whitman said, I contain multitudes of Doritos. Well, no, I guess he didn't

exactly say that. On today's selected shorts, stories that slowly

reveal the multifaceted nature of their characters. Not just the overtly good and bad people

who populate many heroes' journeys, but the kind of complex and fascinating people we know

from our own lives. People who crave affection but fear intimacy. People who

honestly love you, but given the right opportunity, just may betray you. There are many

...