Vivian taps her fingers against her phone, thinking. When she holds a finger in the air, I stop her.
“If you’re going to suggest that Mexican restaurant down the street Theo likes, don’t. If they put that sombrero on his head, I guarantee he won’t like it. He’ll want to know who else wore it and if it was cleaned before they put it on his head, too.”
“So wise.” Snickering, Vivian shakes her head. “All right. What if we keep it simple? Maybe you take him to a Dominion game, just the two of you. They could put something on the jumbotron for his birthday—” She stops herself mid-sentence, her cheeks flushing bright pink. “Or not.”
I don’t respond. I don’t even move. I’m frozen to the spot where I stand, wooden spoon in my hand, pasta steaming on the stove, my body reacting before my brain can catch up. My shoulders go tight. My stomach drops. My pulse skids like it’s hit the ice while driving ninety miles an hour without warning.
It’s not normal to have a physical reaction to the wordjumbotron.
Yet, I do.
I swallow, set the spoon down carefully, like if I move too fast something might break. “That’s not really an option.”
Vivian’s expression softens immediately. She knows that tone. The one I use when I’m closing a door I don’t want reopened.
“Okay,” she says gently. “Scratch that.”
I nod, even though my chest still feels too tight. “Sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”
“I am,” she says. “And we will figure this out. He’s not asking for something unreasonable. He just wants what he wants.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
Vivian tilts her head, studying me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “I am. Or…I will be.”
Her eyes flick toward the window, toward the city beyond it. Toward the shop. Toward Monday. “You know you have done, and are doing, everything right, don’t you?”
I turn my body at a slight angle so Vivan can’t see the tears welling up involuntarily. I know what she’s saying, and what she’s trying to do. She’s a great friend for her loyalty and love. But she knows my scar, the wound inside of me that is cut so deep I’m actually scared it’ll never heal.
“Hey,” Vivan says as she walks over to me and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t go there. Don’t think about it.”
“I hear you saying these things, but you need to understand that when you get humiliated by a jumbotron, well, it seems you never really recover from it.” This I know from first-hand experience, because I keep waiting for the sting to cease and desist. I know it will one day, it’s just not here yet.
“There are a lot of ways for people to find out a spouse is cheating on them, but to have it happen so publicly…” Vivian doesn’t finish her sentence, she simply shakes her head.
Three years ago, after we picked up our lives and moved to Virginia, my peaceful, calm, “happy” world blew up. We’d moved so David could take a position he’d been promoted to. It was a job he’d always wanted, and even though I was about to start my own landscape design business back in Chicago, he begged me to put those plans on hold. Move for him, for us. He would be in a better position to take care of us as a family, he said. Theo could go to a better school, and I would love Virginia.
We had been living here barely six months when The Moment happened.
"I still can’t believe it was aKiss Cam,” Vivian says, reading my mind the way she’s learned to do. “Of all the ways to blow up a marriage?—”
“A Kiss Cam,” I repeat, stirring the pasta with more force than necessary. “Capital K, capital C. Like some kind of perverse proper noun that will follow me forever.”
“At aCaps game,” she adds, because apparently, we’re doing the full recap tonight.
“Section 112,” I say flatly, since we’re going there. “Not that I’ve memorized it or anything.”
Vivian winces. “Babe?—”
“No, it’s fine.” I set the spoon down again, gripping the edge of the counter. “It’s actually kind of impressive when you think about it. The sheer statistical improbability. What are the odds? You move your family across the country for a promotion, you’re home with your six-year-old building LEGO sets, and your husband is at a hockey game—forwork, he said—and then boom. Kiss Cam. Blonde in a Capitals jersey. Tongue. Viral by the end of the night.”
“Ten million views,” Vivian says quietly.
“Twelve,” I correct. “But who's counting?”
She looks at me with those eyes that sayI’m so sorry this happened to you, and I have to look away because if I hold her gaze for one more second, I’m going to fall apart over marinara sauce, and that feels too on-the-nose even for my life.
