Whenever Tobin’s around, I get… smaller. Quieter. Even less interesting. Without meaning to, he soaks up all the energy in the room, leaving none for me.
If I’m going to pick up my life and point it in a different direction, I have to crush the part of myself that relied on him to do the socializing and path smoothing.
And I need to find a formula to turn my base metal into his gold. Which reminds me to make a note.
Places to find improv partner: Online? At work?
I flinch while typing “work,” but I’m desperate. No one wants to practice with me. Amber’s slammed with work and parenting. Béa has a wedding to plan; Sharon doesn’t want another evening commitment. Jason’s busy the nights I’m free. Dick Head—forget it.
I close my bag. Time to go.
In the foyer, there’s no sign of my box-throwing breakdown. I drop my suitcase to make a quick pantry run for soft cat food. Bribes might convince Yeti to sleep at Amber’s more often.
When I come back, Tobin has the suitcase halfway out the front door.
“You said you’d stay on the couch.”
He shoots me a look. “It’s heavy.” It’s one of his only old-fashioned habits—carrying heavy things.
But I need to carry my own things.
I dart forward, yanking on the handle, ignoring how my hands spark against his. He’s an annoying granite wall, repelling my efforts without even noticing. My feet tangle, I tilt, and the slow-motion disaster unfurls and unfurls like a thousand miles of scarves out of a clown’s sleeve.
I face-plant into his chest, fingers still locked over his.
He brings his free arm around my shoulder. He did this withonearm. Infuriating.
“You okay?”
I’m not okay. My nose is at Tobin Ground Zero; my face is cradled against the softness of his shirt. I can’t help closing my eyes and taking a big inhale.
Sadness pierces my chest.
This is the last time he’ll hold me. I didn’t know, when he was seducing me last week, that it wouldn’t happen again. But now the knowledge is a countdown clock ticking away the seconds of my marriage.
“I’m fine. Let go.”
He releases the bag, his hand flexing and opening at his side. “Let me put it in your car. Please.”
“It’s half a block. I walked.”
He looks horrified. “You’re staying with Amber? She—”
I give him the hand. “Don’t. We’re getting along fine.”
“Are you, though? She isn’t trying to make every single decision for you?” He has the audacity to look worried, this wreck of a man in his two-day-old pajama pants. He is not allowed to pity me. I will not have it.
“My sister loves me,” I hiss. Defensively, because there was a time I was pretty sure she didn’t. She was sohappythose fouryears in Colorado, just her and Mark, no parents or sisters. They almost never visited Pendleton, which Amber brushed off with a breezy “Mark isn’t into family.” She posted pictures of the two of them hiking, skiing, climbing—all the things she hated doing with Mom and Dad. And me.
But then it turned out Mark actually wasn’t into family. After he left, Amber got folded back into the Lewis family batter like a chocolate chip that fell on the floor for not quite five seconds—still good. And if scheduling me into Eleanor’s life meant she loved me, then she really, really did.
“Oh? Then I assume Amber’s being extra nice to you right now.”
“I didn’t feel like being babied.”
“No, huh? You didn’t feel like watchingThe Big SickorThe Lovebirds,with popcorn and wine, so the two of you could thirst over Kumail Nanjiani?”
Amber disapproves of my rom-com habit—according to her, they give people (me) unrealistic ideas about relationships. Tobin knows I wanted to comfort-watch and she didn’t. He knows I know he knows she didn’t. That’s marriage: a hall of mirrors, where everyone can see everything, and no one can escape.
