Page 33 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Well, I’m back to not thinking about anything.

I stack blocks.

Livi knocks them down this time.

I stack them again.

Brianna settles onto the floor across from me.

“It’s not about taking me back,” I say, quietly enough that the girls don’t register it over their own noise. “I left him, Bri. I left because it’s been wrong for a long time and I couldn’t stay anymore.”

“Lenny.” Her voice is heavy with patience. Just like she uses with the rambunctious girls. “You knowI knowhow hard things have been. But Jake loves you. He was literally just telling Jared last night how much he?—”

“Jake locked me out of all our bank accounts this morning.”

She blinks.

“Every card was declined. I can’t get into anything.” I keep my voice even. “That’s my money too. I worked for it.”

“I’m sure it’s just?—”

“It’s not a glitch, Bri.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Livi’s tower collapses and I start rebuilding it without looking up, my hands moving automatically while I wait to hear what my best friend is going to say. Because I need her to say something that makes sense of that and the man I thought I knew. She and Jared have been our best friends almost since we met.

“Look. Lenny. You know you can get a little—” she starts, and stops.

I can get a littlewhat?

I look up sharply only to find she has the expression of someone choosing their words with great care.

“You know…Dramaticsometimes. But Jake knows that about you and loves you anyway.”

The tower falls down.

I look at the blocks on the floor.

Dramatic.She means the migraines, I think. I probably called her too many times crying about the pain I was in, because it seemed enormous when it all began. Chronic illness felt shocking when we were all so young and carefree, and when none of the tests could turn up anything concrete about what was causing the occasional flare-ups of crushing migraines, nausea, and fatigue…

Well, everyone just got tired of hearing about it after a while. But that’s kinda what makes chronic illnesses feel extra debilitating… because you feel so damn isolated.

That just left Jake… and a whole host of other reasons not to leave him, as ruthlessly mercenary as that felt.

But how could I leave when sometimes I was literally in such pain and so exhausted, I could barely haul myself to the toilet to get sick into? I told myself it was a tactical exchange—he seemed to want me around, and Ineededhim, so…

But laughably, because sometimes I was upright and not complaining, the times Iwasso ill and daring to talk about it just seemed likebeing dramaticto Bri.

Or maybe she means all the times I’ve beentoo loudor worse, the all-damning and all-encompassingtoo much, when I forget that my sole focus is meant to be on behaving normally. Aka, like everybody else.

We live in suburbia and we’re meant to be gingerbread men and women, stamp-like mirrors of one another, who fit perfectly into our cardboard cut-out homes that are the same five floorplans on rotation throughout the neighborhood. Sometimes at parties, you get a weird déjà vu of stepping into your exact house but filled with someone else’s things and decorations. All of us examining each other’s kitchen amenities like,oh, how lovely, you went for the pot-filler option.

“We’ve all been through it sometimes, babe,” Bri continues, and she puts her hand on my forearm. Her voice is warm. It’s genuinely warm, that’s the thing. She thinks she’s being kind. “You can just get a little cray cray, you know? But Jake’s always been so patient with you.”

I look at her hand on my arm.

I think about how last night I asked,am I being too much?in a hot tub to a man I’d just met out of reflex. Because it’s how everybody in my normal life makes me feel. Like I’m always on the verge of embarrassing them or getting overly emotional or acting…cray cray.

I pick up a block… and put it down.