“Oh,” she said. “I just saw the train and I assumed…”
“You were wrong,” I said, simply. I decided not to tell her that I was reading her book and instead walked to my door, giving her the cold shoulder.
My sister caught her good-for-nothing husband sending dick pics to a girl from work. She called me sobbing while I was at Darius and Jolene’s, and I had to step outside to talk to her.
“Come visit,” I said, right away. “Book your flight and just come. You need a few days to clear your head. Besides, I don’t like you being alone with that sex maniac right now.”
“All right,” she said, her voice raspy. “I’ll book it now.” I stayed on the phone with her until she had, then I went back inside.
“I hate men,” Jolene said. I saw Darius raise his eyebrows, and I wanted to smile. “You’ll have to bring her by so we can meet her. If she’s up to it, I mean. It’s a really hard thing she’s going through. Maybe we can help cheer her up.”
I nodded. “She’d like that. It’ll be her first time out here, actually.”
“How did he get caught?” Darius asked. He was trying to mash the potatoes for Jolene, making a big show of not knowing how to use the KitchenAid. She shoved him aside with her hip, and he reached out and smacked her butt playfully. I laughed watching them. They always put on a good show.
“His phone. Don’t they always get caught that way?”
Darius nodded. “Technology is the doom of the cheating man.”
“Yuuup,” I said. “But, knowing my sister, she’ll stay with him. So, I can’t talk too much shit, you know. Puts me in a bad place. He’s a bastard, though.”
We moved over to the formal living room and Darius lit a fire. I noticed that Jolene had added a metal replica of the Space Needle to the mantel above the fireplace.
“Where did you get that?” I asked her.
“Incidentally, the Space Needle,” she said. “Why? You gonna buy one too?”
“Not my style,” I tossed back. “It’s a little kitschy.”
Darius choked on his drink. I hadn’t meant to say it. Sometimes that just happened to me and I blurted things out—I had no filter, George always said.
I walked over to the mantel to examine it. You could love Seattle, sure, but putting lowbrow art in your home to illustrate it seemed … desperate. Like, what were you trying to prove? I could guarantee you I loved Seattle more than Jolene, but I wasn’t going to run out and get a tattoo of the Space Needle to prove it. I suddenly felt very competitive about it. She’d only been here a few years longer than me anyway. That didn’t say anything. She thought she was more of a hipster Seattleite than I was, and that was bullshit.
“I’ll have to take my sister,” I said. “To the Needle. She’d like that.”
“We had dinner up there,” said Darius. “The restaurant spins.” He made a circle motion with his finger and whistled. Such a dork. They were that couple who were always doing something.
“How did you two meet?” I asked Jolene when there was a break in conversation. She automatically reached for the wine and refilled her glass. Wow. Telling.
“Well,” she said, shooting her husband a look. “We knew each other through a friend. We didn’t start dating until they broke up and we ran into each other at a concert a year later.”
“Um … are you still friends with her?”
“Dani? No. She didn’t want anything to do with me when she found out.”
Darius cleared his throat while Jolene downed her wine. So much back story I was missing. Dani … Danielle? Dannika? Daniella? I wanted to be able to go home and look her up.
“Well, I guess it all worked out in the end,” I said. “You two are together, and I’d say that trumps friendship, yeah?”
Darius raised his glass to that. Then he leaned forward and said, “I would have left her for Jo five years sooner, but it took a little Hootie and three beers to throw me some courage.”
Jolene slapped him playfully on the arm. “You call staring at me all night courage?” She laughed.
“Yes, you’re really aggressive. I was taking a risk. Besides, you didn’t hesitate when I asked you to lunch.”
“Yes, because it was lunch,” she said. “Lunch is not a date, it’s just two acquaintances catching up. That was your winning move. If you’d asked me to dinner I would have said no.”
Darius clutched his heart like he was hurt.
I’d read somewhere that women who were unhappy in their marriage started noticing the males closest in proximity first—a friend’s husband, a personal trainer, a coworker. When their happiness failed, they fixated on the good qualities of other men, weighing the option that someone else could better meet their needs. During the hard times with George, I fixated on the FedEx guy, a muscular Topher Grace lookalike who always made small talk as I signed for my packages. He never wore a wedding band, and I always fantasized that he would ask me out for coffee one day. We’d meet up at Tin Pin and laugh about how slutty the girls dressed, averting our eyes, and also only having eyes for each other. I found out that his name was Tom, and I noticed that he always stepped aside on the sidewalk to let women pass. A real gentleman. And when he spoke to me he looked me in the eyes, something George hadn’t done in years. Then one day he stopped delivering my packages and was replaced by a dikey middle-aged blonde named Fern. After Tom it was a guy from the gym. We never spoke, but I could feel the tension from across the room as he ran six miles a day on the treadmill. He was as into me as I was into him. I started calling him gym husband in my head. One day I imagined we’d reach for the sani spray at the same time, and we’d laugh and start up a conversation. I’d leave George for him, and though it would be messy, in the end it would all be worth it.