“Children,” Joyce says, sensing the bickering that’s about to ensue. Jess takes a breath, composing herself. She sits back down, and when she speaks again, her volume is back to normal. “I’m not going to pretend I’m not angry about this. I’m allowed to be.”
“You are,” I agree.
She goes quiet, staring down at her clasped hands before she looks at me again. “Our marriage was over a long time ago. I know that. I thought maybe if I stayed gone long enough, I would come back and—” she shakes her head. “But while I was gone, you moved on with mybrother.”
“To be fair,” Will interrupts, “He was seeing some woman named Karen first. The one who does the hair.” He gestures at his hair, and this is not the time to find him cute, but I smile anyway.
Until I see Jess’s expression shift. “He was seeing Karen?”
“For a few months, yeah.”
“Karen, who’s been cutting my hair for three years?”
Oh.
I didn’t know that.
“That’s worse,” she says, and she sounds genuinely offended now. “That’s actually worse than Will.”
“It wasn’t—we weren’t—” I pause, both Davis siblings looking at me like I ran over their dog for having the nerve to date a perfectly decent woman. “It didn’t go anywhere.”
“She waxes my eyebrows, Nolan. She dyes my hair.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“She was kind of a bitch,” Will adds, to which his sister agrees.
“That woman has heard me complain about my husband for years and then swooped in the second I was gone. Ugh.The nerve.”
Will nods along with her. “See, I knew there was something off about her.”
I look around for help, but Joyce and Frank are as confused as I am. Will and Jess have barely talked in all the years I’ve known them, but right now, they’re bonding over their hate forKaren.
“Okay, in his defense,” Will says, squeezing my hand, “he was pretty hung up on me that whole time. I don’t think Karen was ever really a serious—”
“Don’t defend him,” Jess starts, and then we’re back to the bickering.
But Frank doesn’t let it go on too long this time. He stands up, and both of his kids stop talking as he looks between Will and me. And our hands, clinging to each other tight.
“You both happy?” he asks, in his gruff way.
“Y-yes?” I say, and Will nods along with me.
“Alright then,” he says, grabbing his empty coffee cup and heading into the kitchen.
Joyce looks back at her husband, pressing her lips into a thin line, something behind her eyes that she doesn’t say.
“Well,” she says, standing up with the composure of a woman who has dealt with a lot from her son in the thirty-something years he’s been alive, and this is only the latest. “I suppose we’ll all need some time with this.”
With that, she follows her husband, leaving us alone with Jess.
Jess and Will glare at each other across the living room, so much between them I couldn’t possibly know what they think when they see each other.
But then, she looks at me, and there’s a lot between us too. Friendship, love, family, even after everything. We may not be in love anymore, but I hope that one day things will be okay between us.
“Karen,” she says one more time before she gets up and goes to the kitchen with her parents, ignoring the final apology I call out.
Will and I sit on the couch in the quiet, his hand still in mine, and he lets out a little chuckle before he leans over, resting his head on my shoulder. “I think that could have gone worse.”
