Fiona looked up, her eyebrows raised. “Oh, right. That’s tomorrow.”
They settled on the couch in Margo’s small living room, the plate of random snacks on the coffee table, the popcorn bowl between them. Fiona had the remoteand was scrolling through streaming options like she had no idea what she actually wanted.
“There’s too much,” she said. “How is there this much television? Who watches all this?”
“Just pick something.”
“I’m trying. Everything looks exhausting.” She scrolled past thrillers, true crime, prestige dramas. “I don’t want to think. I just want to sit here and not think.”
“So pick something we’ve already seen.”
Fiona’s scrolling slowed. Stopped.
Stella saw it at the same moment she did.
Anne with an E. The thumbnail showing Anne on the bridge, hair wild, face full of desperate hope.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“We never finished this,” Fiona said quietly.
“I know.”
“We got to pretty far in and then...” She trailed off. They both knew what happened then. The twins arrived. Everything got loud. Stella started pulling away. The show sat there, close to the end, waiting for a night that never came.
“We could,” Stella said. “Finish it, I mean. If you want.”
Fiona looked at her. Something moved across her face—not quite sadness, not quite hope. Something in between.
“We stopped somewhere in season three,” Fiona said quietly.
“Anne had just?—”
“Don’t tell me. I’ve forgotten everything.”
“You cried at this episode.”
“I cried at every episode. That’s not a clue.” Fiona pressed play. “We’ll pick up where we left off.”
It wasn’tlong before Stella had forgotten she was waiting for anything.
The honey lemon butter was gone. The olives had been deemed “fine” and abandoned. Fiona had migrated from her end of the couch to the middle, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
On screen, Anne was being dramatic about something. Anne was always being dramatic about something. That was the whole point.
“She’s so much,” Fiona said, not looking away from the screen.
“That’s why you like her.”
“I never said I liked her.”
“You cried three times in the first episode.”
“I had something in my eye.”
“For forty-five minutes?”
“It was a very persistent something.” Fiona threw a piece of popcorn at her. Stella caught it in her mouth, surprising both of them.
