“With dessert.” Ilena faces the assembled table: Sun and Ava, her supposedly close friends whose names she has to keep reminding herself of; Kai, Aubrey’s one-night stand; James, her husband’s actual spouse; Noreen, the employee who deserves a raise in both worlds; the reanimated Ethan, still a colossal prick;and Aubrey and Mallory, her two friends whom she’s starting to think she hasn’t been all that “best” to lately. “It’s a soufflé so...”
James rattles his chair back. “Let me.”
Before she can form a response, he’s already in the kitchen.
“Good man,” Ethan says. “Soufflés can go south in an instant. Once they do, well, there’s no way back. You can’t pluck feathers from a bald chicken.”
The words cause Mallory to drop her fork, where it clanks against her plate, drawing all eyes to her. She gives a smile that Ilena knows is forced, though Ilena can’t fathom why.
“Okay, then,” Ilena says, an unease settling over her. “Probably a better choice, anyway. Not sure Mallory could find the oven with a schematic.” Ilena pats her best friend’s shoulder, covered in that same Burberry coat they timeshared in their world, as she passes behind her. But then Mallory grabs Ilena’s hand. “Love you too, Mal.” Ilena chuckles, yet Mallory’s grip only tightens.
Ilena bends and whispers, “Mallory.”
But Mallory squints and keeps running her finger around the emerald of Ilena’s engagement ring. Mallory’s cheeks pale, making her watermelon blush and bright pink lipstick appear painted on as if by a child fresh from her mother’s makeup drawer. When Mallory lets go, her face creases in a way that’s hard to discern. Not jealousy or anger or sadness or disappointment... fear. It’s fear.
Interstitial
They looked afraid. I wanted to tell them it’d be okay. That I’d protect their secrets. That they had nothing to fear from me and certainly nothing from him.
Now that he was dead.
One of them took the other’s hand, and I imagined how it must have felt. The warmth of skin against skin, the clasp that erases all space, the bond that transforms separate individuals into one. We all crave it. It is innate. It is how we are meant to live. It is how we thrive. It is how we survive.
It is how they would survive this.
I’d brought them together just when they were about to be split apart.
A twisted repeat of loss—theirs, mine, ours.
The universe might have been willing to let that happen, but I wasn’t.
Even though all of us were there, none of us really saw. Because our eyes are the most unreliable of narrators. I should know.
30
Ilena
Sunday Evening
Three DaysAfterthe Outing
“This is going to blow up, you do know that?” James says from beside the built-in wine fridge.
Ilena steadies her shaking hands as she checks the egg timer in the shape of an avocado. “Let’s hope not. But we are just in time. Two minutes left.”
James’s freckled cheeks pull as taut as his crossed arms. “Come off it, Ilena. This is insulting, to everyone.”
She can’t handle this now, not with her heart aching from the sadness on Mallory’s and Aubrey’s faces that’s making her think of Jonah. “I’m sorry, James, I didn’t really think you wanted to host this. I figured Felix was forcing you, but if you did, truly, I didn’t mean to infringe.”
“You are too much. Seriously, Ilena.Se-ri-ous-ly.”
“James, I honestly don’t know what this is about. But I’d like to. You’re Felix’s best friend. I want us to be friends.” They are already, aren’t they? “Stay friends. You know what I mean.”
“Oh, this is what we’re doing, then? Us, you and me, a couple of Felix groupies who lunch? A scone and a grapefruitmimosa and we’ll snuggle your mini me and ignore the fact that you orchestrated this whole thing?”
The avocado cracks open, revealing a pit that begins to bounce, but Ilena doesn’t move.
James places his hand on the pit to stop it. “You didn’t think I knew? Oh, sweetie, am I the one to tell you? How special.”
