Page 32 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Sitting here in this very parking lot.

My breathing gets shorter.

But no… This all just has to be some big misunderstanding. Jake’s a good man.

… Isn’t he?

I pick up my phone and text my best friend, Brianna.

[LENNON: Can I come over? It’s important.]

The three dots appear immediately.

[BRIANNA: Of course. Everything okay?]

I look at the hotel.

[LENNON: No,]

I type back.

[But it will be.]

I believe this, actually. I believe it the way I’ve believed things my whole life—with the specific stubbornness of someone who has learned that believing hard enough is sometimes the only available way to get through tough times.

Maybe Kathy got to Jake and convinced him to pull this jackass move. But it’ll all work out. I have to believe that.

Right now I just need my best friend in all the world. She’ll help make it better. Or at least she’ll give me a place to crash tonight that’s not in close proximity to my ex-husband’s brother… whose dick I accidentally fell on top of last night.

Not thinking about it!

I put the car in gear and drive the three blocks to Brianna’s house. We thought it was so great when we found a house in the same neighborhood as theirs.

We became BFFs my junior year in high school after we met in youth group, our husbands were best friends, and wouldn’t it be so convenient for the barbeques now, and later when I had kids? That’s what Jake was always saying—our kids could grow up together. Which always made me want to scream—thereare no fucking kids!

When I get there, Brianna opens the door and then opens her arms.

I walk into them, and for about thirty seconds everything is exactly what I needed.

There’s the familiar smell of Brianna’s fabric softener, her hand rubbing up and down my back, and the familiar sound of her kids shrieking somewhere deeper in the house.

“Oh honey,” she says into my hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

I pull back to look at her face and tell her what happened. Yes, it’ll be the first conversation in ten years of friendship where I say theactual true thingsinstead of the manageable version of them, because if I can’t do that now, the day after I left my husband, then when?—

“Whatever you did,” Brianna says before I can get a word out, “I know Jake will take you back.”

I go very still.

She’s already turning toward the sound of fresh shrieking, holding up one finger, and she disappears around the corner. I stand in the entryway, and I hear her voice shift into the mom-frequency she uses for the girls, firm and patient.

I sigh and look at the family photos on the wall.

There’s me and Jake, smiling at Bri and Jared’s wedding. Me and Bri, at mine. Both of us younger and smiling with all the confidence of young people so sure of the path ahead of them and what’s coming along down it. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes?—

I follow the sound of Bri’s voice to the playroom and sit on the floor next to Livi, Bri’s four-and-a-half-year-old, who is building something with blocks that her three-year-old sister keeps knocking over.

I start stacking while Brianna manages the situation, and I think about?—