The worst thing about crises is they can’t be ignored. I can’t just walk back to bed and crawl under the covers and sleep for the next month, because at eight in the morning, only an hour after Ami leaves, Tía Maria texts me to let me know I have to go down to Camelia and talk to David about a waitressing job.
David is ten years older than I am but has a boyish face and a playful smile that helps distract me from the throbbing background impulse to pull all my hair out and fall kicking and screaming to the floor. I’ve been in Camelia about a hundred times, but seeing it from the perspective of an employee is surreal. He shows me my uniform, where the schedule is taped to the wall in the kitchen, how the flow of traffic moves through the kitchen, and where the staff meets for dinner before the restaurant opens each night.
I have years of waitressing under my belt—all of us do, many of them at one of my cousin David’s restaurants—but never at a place this classy. I’ll need to wear black pants and a starched white shirt, with the simple white apron around my waist. I’ll need to memorize the ever-changing menu. I’ll also need to have a training with the sommelier and pastry chef.
I admit to looking forward to these last two things very much.
David introduces me to the rest of the waitstaff—making sure to leave out the part where I’m his baby cousin—as well as the chefs and sous chefs and the bartender, who happens to be there doing inventory. My brain is swimming with all the names and information, so I’m grateful when David turns and tells me to be here tomorrow night for the staff meeting and training, starting at four. I’ll be shadowing a waiter named Peter, and when David winks like Peter is cute, my stomach twists because I want to be with my cute man, the one who won me over with his wit and laugh and—yes, his biceps and collarbones. But I’m pissed at him, and maybe he’s pissed at me, and for the life of me I have no idea how this is going to shake down.
David must see some reaction in my face because he kisses the top of my head and says, “I’ve got you, honey,” and I nearly break down in his arms because whether it’s luck or generations of effort and attention ensuring it, I have a truly amazing family.
It’s only noon by the time I’m back home, and it’s depressing to register that I should be halfway into my second workday at Hamilton, meeting new colleagues, setting up accounts. But I admit there is a tiny glimmer in the back of my thoughts—it isn’t relief, not exactly, but it’s not altogether different from relief, either. It’s that I’ve accepted that it happened—I messed up, I was fired because of it—and that I’m actually okay with it. That, thanks to my family, I have a job that can carry me as long as I need it to, and for the first time in my life I can take the time to figure out what I want to do.
As soon as I finished grad school, I did a short postdoc and then immediately entered the pharmaceutical industry, working as the liaison between the research scientists and medical doctors. I loved being able to translate the science to more clinical language, but I’ve never had a job that felt like joy, either. Talking to Ethan about what he did made me feel like Dilbert in comparison, and why should I spend my entire life doing something that doesn’t light me on fire like that?
This fresh reminder of Ethan makes me groan, and although I know he’s at work, I pull out my phone and send him a quick text.
I’ll be home tonight if you want to come over.
He replies within a few minutes.
I’ll be there around seven.
I know he isn’t the most emotionally effusive guy, but the tone of his last three texts sends me into a weird panic spiral, like it’s going to take more than a conversation to fix whatever is going on with us, even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I have no idea what his perspective is on any of this. Of course I hope that he believes me, and that he apologizes for last night, but a tight lead ball in my stomach warns me that it might not go that way.
Looking at my watch, I see that I have seven hours until Ethan gets here. I clean, I grocery shop, I nap, I memorize the Camelia menu, I stress-bake . . . and it only eats up five hours.
Time is inching along. This day is going to last a decade.
I can’t call Ami and ramble about any of this, because I’m sure she’s still not speaking to me. How long is she going to keep this up? Is it possible that she’ll believe Dane indefinitely, and I’ll have to eat my words even though—again—I haven’t done anything wrong here?
I put the menu down on my coffee table and sprawl on the carpet. The possibility that this rift between me and Ami could become permanent makes me light-headed. It would probably be a good idea for me to hang out with someone for distraction, but Diego, Natalia, and Jules are all at work, Mom will only worry if she knows what’s going on, and calling anyone else in my family will just result in fifteen people showing up on my doorstep with sympathy dinner later when Ethan and I are trying to hash things out.
Thankfully he doesn’t make me wait. He comes over right at seven, holding takeout from Tibet Kitchen that smells so much more appealing than the pizza I’d ordered for us to share.
“Hey,” he says, and gives a little smile. He ducks, like he’s going to kiss my lips, but then makes a detour at the last second, landing on my cheek instead.
My heart drops.
I step back, letting him in, and it suddenly feels too warm in my apartment; everything seems too small. I look everywhere but at his face, because I know if I look at him and get the sense that things between us really aren’t okay, I’m not going to be able to keep myself together for the conversation we need to have.
It’s so weird. He follows me into the kitchen, we make up plates of food, and then we sit on the floor in the living room, on opposite sides of the coffee table, facing each other. The silence feels like a huge bubble around me. For the past week, Ethan has practically lived here. Now it feels like we’re strangers all over again.
He pokes at his rice. “You’ve barely looked at me since I got here.”
The response to this dries up in my throat: Because you kissed my cheek when you walked in. You didn’t pull me against you, or get lost in a long kiss with me. I feel like I barely had you, and now you’re already gone.
So instead of answering aloud, I look up at him for the first time and try to smile. He registers the failed effort, and it clearly makes him sad. An ache builds and expands in my throat until I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to get words around it. I hate this somber dynamic more than I hate the fact that we’re fighting.
“This is so weird,” I say. “It would be so much easier to be snarky with each other.”
He nods, poking at his food. “I don’t have the energy to be snarky.”
“Me either.” I really just want to crawl across the floor and into his lap and have him tease me about my bra being too small or how I couldn’t stay away from him long enough to finish my dinner, but it’s like Dane and his fratty face are just parked here in between us, keeping us from being normal.
“I talked to Dane last night,” he says right then, adding, “late. I went over there late.”
Ami didn’t mention this. Did she even know that Ethan stopped by last night?
“And?” I say quietly. I have no appetite and basically just push a piece of beef around the plate.
“He was really surprised that that’s how you took what he said,” Ethan says.
Acid fills my stomach. “What a shock.”
Ethan drops his fork and leans back on both hands, staring at me. “Look, what am I supposed to do? My girlfriend thinks my brother hit on her, and he says he didn’t. Does it matter who is right here? You’re both offended.”
At this, I am incredulous. “You’re supposed to believe me. And it absolutely matters who’s right here.”
“Olive, we’ve been together for like two weeks,” he says helplessly.
It takes a few seconds for me to be able to unscramble the pile of words that falls into my thoughts. “I’m lying because our relationship is new?”
Sighing, he reaches up, wiping one hand over his face.
“Ethan,” I say quietly, “I know what I heard. He propositioned me. I can’t just pretend like he didn’t.”
“I just don’t think he meant what you thought he did. I think you’re primed to think the worst of him.”
I blink back down to my plate. It would be so easy to choose to make peace with Ethan and Ami and just say, “You know what? You’re probably right,” and just let it be, because after all this, of course I’m primed to think the worst of Dane, and I could easily give him a wide berth for the rest of time. But I can’t do that. There are too many red flags—why am I the only one who can see them? It’s not because I am a pessimist or look for the worst in people; I know that isn’t true about me, not anymore. I fell for Ethan on that island, after all. I’m excited about a job at Camelia so that I have time to really think about what I want my life to look like. I’m trying to fix all the parts of me that aren’t working because I know I have a choice in how my life goes—that it isn’t all luck—but as soon as I try to be proactive, it’s like no one wants to let me.
And why isn’t Dane here with Ethan, trying to make things right with me? Actually, I know why: He is so sure that no one will believe me, that everyone will think, Oh, Olive is just being Olive. Just believing the worst about everyone. My opinions are so inconsequential because in their eyes I’m always going to be the pessimist.
“Have you talked to Ami?” he asks.
I feel the way heat crawls up my neck and across my face. The fact that my twin is on Ethan and Dane’s side here is truly killing me. I can’t even admit it out loud, so I just nod.
“You told her about him dating other people before they were exclusive?” he asks. I nod again. “And about yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you weren’t going to say anything to her,” he says, exasperated.
I gape at him. “And I thought Dane wouldn’t hit on his wife’s sister. I guess we’ve both disappointed you.”
He stares at me for a long beat. “How did Ami take it?”
My silence clues him in that Ami didn’t believe me, either. “She didn’t know about the other women, Ethan. She thinks Dane has been committed since day one.”
Ethan looks at me pityingly and it makes me want to scream. “So you’re not going to be able to move past this?” he asks.
My jaw actually drops. “Which part? My sister’s husband cheating on her before they were married, your brother hitting on me, or my boyfriend not believing me about any of it?”
His gaze turns back to me, and he looks apologetic but unwavering. “Again: I don’t believe his intent was what you think it was. I don’t think he’d hit on you.”
I let him hear the shock in my voice. “Then you’re right,” I say. “I’ll have a hard time moving past this.”
When he leans forward, I think he’s going to dig into his plate, but instead he pushes to stand. “I really like you,” he says quietly. He closes his eyes and drags a hand through his hair. “I am crazy about you, actually.”
My heart twists, painfully. “Then take a step back and look at this situation from a different angle,” I plead. “What do I have to gain from lying about Dane?”
We’ve had so many disagreements, and they all seem so hilariously minor in hindsight. The cheese curds, the airplane, the Hamiltons, Sophie, the Skittle dress. I get it now—that all of those were opportunities for us to have contact with each other. This is the first time we’ve been at a true impasse and I know what he’s going to say before he even gets the words out.
“I think we should probably break up, Olive. I’m sorry.”
