“And not spend the next two hours sitting in my backyard toasting the happy couple?”
Cassandra’s eyes sparkle. “Right,” she says.
“I think that could be arranged.”
We sneak into the family room, where I know the cake is being stored. It’s a huge white monstrosity with flowers everywhere, and I cut off a big square at the bottom, sticking the roses back around to try to make up for the hole. It doesn’t totally work—they’ll probably notice—but I can’t quite feel too sorry.
Then I grab three plastic forks and lead the procession back up to my room. We settle on the floor, attacking the cake. Jake confesses it tastes like cotton candy.
“Synthetic goodness,” Cassandra says.
I flick some frosting at her. She wipes it off her nose and licks her finger.
“Disgusting,” Jake says.
“I can’t believe you’re even consuming this much processed sugar,” I say through a bite.
“That’s it, guilt-trip him,” Cassandra says, bobbing her head. “More for us.”
Jake takes Cassandra’s face in his hands and plants a giant sugared kiss on her. It makes me laugh. It’s weird how not weird it is. If they broke up, that would be weird.
Cassandra slaps Jake away. “What should we do?” she asks.
I set my fork down. “Chutes and Ladders?”
When the three of us were younger we used to spend hours playing board games. Monopoly, Candy Land. Chutes and Ladders was Cassandra’s favorite, though.
Her eyes light up. “Yes!” she says. She goes into my closet, the one she knows so well, stands on her tiptoes, and reaches for the box that sits on the top shelf. She pulls it down. The lid is dust covered, but inside, untouched, are all our old supplies.The Three Musketeers Rule-Book, aka Bob, written in Cassandra’s loopy cursive. Letters to one another. An old baseball hat with our initials marked in the inside. Photographs, valentines, and our board games.
Cassandra takes out Chutes and Ladders and lays it on the floor next to the cake. “While I beat you guys, we want to hear about what is going on,” she says.
I set the pieces up in a row next to the start spot and groan. “Let’s just say the fact that I’m currently missing my sister’s wedding does not seem that screwed up in comparison to how tragic my L.A. life has become.”
Cassandra glances at Jake and then back at me. “What happened?”
I take a deep breath, and for the next hour I fill them in on everything. The night of the Awards, the breakup, Jordan and me in Tokyo. How terrible I feel about both Jordan and Rainer, and their relationship with each other. It feels so good to finally let everything out, all the details.
“It’s really too bad your sister is downstairs celebrating her wedding,” Cassandra says when I pause to eat more cake. “Because this story has got to be worth more than ten grand.”
Jake elbows her. “What she means to say is: Are you okay?”
I look at him. People have asked me that so much. But somehow, hearing it from Jake is the first time I feel like someone has actually wanted an honest answer. So I give him one.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure out what the new normal is. I keep thinking the answers will become clear, but every time I think I’m there, that I understand, I learn something about my new reality that brings me back to square one.”
“And Rainer and Jordan?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s not even about them; it’s me. Sometimes it’s hard to know who I am anymore. I’m not sure who to believe.”
“Us,” Cassandra says, no sarcasm.
“Well, more than that, yourself,” Jake says, eyeing Cassandra. “You can be a lot of different things at once.” Jake’s gaze shifts to me. “You can be the girl from Portland and the movie star. Life isn’t stagnant—it’s constantly evolving. I mean, look at the three of us. You and I once made out.”
“Jake!” I say. I steal a quick glance at Cassandra; her hand is over her mouth and her eyes are squeezed shut. She’s laughing.
“It happened,” he says. “And we’re fine. But we couldn’t have known that then.”
“What’s your point?”
