in two weeks, and I can hear the way my own shakes when I answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Ollie.”
I leave a long, quiet pause. “Hey, Ami.”
Her voice comes out thick and strangled. “I’m really sorry.”
I have to swallow a few times to get past the clog of emotions in my throat. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she says, and then, “but yes. Do you want to come over tonight? I made lasagna.”
I chew my lip for a few beats. “Is Dane going to be there?”
“He’ll be here later,” she admits. “Please Ollie? I really want you to be here tonight.”
There’s something about the way she’s said it that makes me feel like it’s more than just sister-reconnecting time. “Okay, I’ll be over in twenty.”
• • •
I LOOK AT MYSELF IN the mirror every day, so it shouldn’t be so jarring to see Ami standing on her porch waiting for me, but it is. We’ve never gone two weeks without seeing each other—even in college. I was at the U, she was at St. Thomas, and even in the busiest week, we still saw each other at dinner on Sundays.
I wrap my arms around her as tight as they’ll go and squeeze even tighter when I can tell she’s crying. It feels like that first inhale after holding my breath as long as I can.
“I missed you,” she says through a sob into my shoulder.
“I missed you more.”
“This sucks,” she says.
“I know.” I pull back, wiping her face. “How are you?”
“I’m . . .” She trails off, and then we sort of stand there, grinning at each other through the telepathy because the answer is obvious: My wedding was ruined by ciguatera toxin, I missed my honeymoon, and now my husband may be cheating on me. “I’m alive.”
“Is he home?”
“Work.” She straightens, taking a deep breath and pulling herself together. “He’ll be home around seven.”
She turns and leads me inside. I love their house—it’s so open and bright, and I’m grateful that Ami has such a strong decorating sense because I assume if it was left up to Dane, the decor would be a lot of Vikings purple, dart boards, and maybe some hipster leather couches and a craft cocktail cart that he’d never use.
Ami moves to the kitchen, pouring us each a big glass of wine.
I laugh when she hands mine to me. “Oh, so it’s that kind of night.”
She nods, smiling even though I can tell there’s nothing happy happening in her body right now. “You have no idea.”
I still feel like I have to tiptoe around the topic, but I can’t help but ask, “Did you take his phone last night? What’s the latest?”
“Yeah. I took his phone.” Ami takes a long drink and then looks at me over the rim of her glass. “I’ll tell you all about it later.” She tilts her head, indicating that I should follow her into the family room, where she’s already got our plates of lasagna set up on two TV trays.
“Well, this looks comfy,” I tell her.
She curtsies, flops down onto the couch, and hits play on The Big Sick. We missed it in the theater and kept meaning to watch it, so there’s a sweet little ache that rises in my throat knowing that she waited to see it with me.
The lasagna is perfect, the movie is wonderful, and I almost forget that Dane lives here. But then an hour into the movie, the front door opens. Ami’s entire demeanor shifts. She sits up, hands on her thighs, and takes a deep breath.
“You okay?” I whisper. Am I here for moral support while she confronts her husband? I can’t decide whether that will be fantastic or excruciating or both.
I hear Dane drop his keys on the counter, shuffle through the mail, and then call out, “Hey, babe.”
“Hey, honey,” she calls back, brightly, falsely, and it is so incongruous with the bleak way she looks at me.
My stomach drops in a weird burst of anticipatory stress, and then Dane is there in the doorway. He sounds surprised and displeased. “Oh. Hey, Olive.”
I don’t bother turning around. “Go to hell, Dane.”
Ami chokes on her wine and then looks at me, eyes shining with amusement and tension. “Honey, there’s lasagna in the oven if you want some.”
I can feel him still looking at the back of my head—I know he is—but he just stands behind me for a few more seconds before saying quietly, “Okay, I’ll grab some and leave you two to it.”