Page 23 of Secrets on Ice

Cassidy looks around. “So …”

“So,” I say back.

“What the hell do we do now?” she asks.

“I honestly have no idea.”

“I was hoping you did.” She sighs. “Couch?”

I nod as we head back to our places on the couch. “Oh, let me make some popcorn before I settle in.”

“Okay, I’ll look at what’s on and get it ready,” Cass says, while I busy myself in the kitchen getting supplies for a day spent doing nothing, again.

Once I’ve got everything we need, I put it on the coffee table and get myself comfortable. She is still scrolling until she finds a movie where the man is wearing a suit and staring intensely at a woman in a ball gown.

“This looks awful,” she says.

“It looks perfect.” I grin as I hand her a bowl of popcorn.

We settle in.

One movie becomes two.

Two becomes three.

We order pizza from downstairs. Having room service in your apartment is dangerous. We eat more ice cream and cry at scenes that aren’t even sad. By the time it gets dark, neither of us has moved much.

“I think this couch has swallowed me,” Cassidy says as she plays on her phone.

“Me too.” I stretch out my crinkled limbs.

“Dammit, I think I am regretting our choice,” Cass says, staring at her phone. Huh. What is she talking about? She turns her phone around, and it’s an image of Sully standing in a pair of boardshorts, with no shirt on, showing off his abs. When the hell did he get so ripped? Has he always looked like that? Behind him is crystal-clear water and a white sandy beach. “That could have been us.”

I will say, in that moment I might be regretting things. “Could you have handled all that lovely dovey stuff?”

Cassidy looks up. “Hell no.”

“We did the right thing by not going.”

“I know, but still, that does look stunning,” Cassidy says as she continues to scroll through her brother’s socials.

“It does, but we had fun today too,” I add.

Cassidy looks up at me and then around our pile of mess. “Fuck this.”

“What?”

She throws the blanket off. “We’re doing this wrong.”

“Doing what wrong?” I ask her.

“Being miserable.”

“We’re allowed to be miserable.”

“Do you think our husbands are at home being miserable?” Cassidy’s question catches me off-guard. “Do you think us leaving them has done anything to them? Do you think they have stopped sleeping with each other? Or do you think they can finally relax and not have to worry about us finding out?”

“I don’t know.”