Page 3 of Sweet Ruin

And that’s when it hits me. The lull. That weird, hollow ten minutes where everything is either in the oven or in the fridge and there’s nothing to do but wait.

I lean back against the bench and roll my neck. My eyes fall on my phone, still propped against the flour bin. I tap it and the notification I missed earlier reappears on the lock screen.

Vivian Dorsey has added three new videos to the Dorsey Sisters shared album.

I use a rag to clean the flour off my hands and pick it up.

I don’t know why I open it. Boredom, I guess. Either that or morbid curiosity.

Whose Parisian chateau is Vivian staying at now? Which exclusive dinner club is serving her caviar? Is she dating a pop star? A hedge fund bro? Some hotshot podcaster with deeply misogynistic takes on relations between the sexes?

The album loads. I skim past the last deluge of stuff to the three new tiles at the bottom, all with the little play triangle in the middle.

I tap the first one.

It’s dark and shaky for a second. A lamp just out of frame is casting warm yellow light across the scene.

I see a shoulder. A broad back. A man’s broad back, with a mole under the left shoulder blade.

Then I hear a moan.

I sit up straight.

My first thought is that it’s a mistake. That’s a video Viv took at a party, or a video off the internet she meant to send to somebody, or one of those things where an app grabs the wrong file. I think, She’s drunk, she’s always getting wasted when she goes out on weeknights, she must’ve hit the wrong button.

Vivian appears. The lower half of her, at least. But it’s definitely her. I know those skinny legs, that flawless, perky butt.

She isn’t wearing anything. Not one single, solitary stitch of clothing.

She isn’t alone, either.

The man appears again. Bicep, forearm, half a stubbled throat drenched in shadow.

The camera jostles and points away from the couple.

I hold my phone closer.

And all the blood rushes from my face.

I know the headboard. It’s the one my grandmother left me, dark oak with the two carved knobs. One of the knobs is loose because Connor knocked it with the vacuum in 2019 and never fixed it, so now, it leans a quarter-inch to the left.

The one in the video?

It’s leaning a quarter-inch to the left.

When the camera pans, I realize I know the quilt, too. It’s shoved down to the foot of the bed, but it’s without a doubt the green and gold one I bought from the Parachute shop in SoHo last spring.

Worst of all…

I know my husband.

I slam my phone face-down on the stainless steel counter. But I forgot to press pause first, so I still hear it, the moans growing louder and louder, the creaking of the bedframe, grunts and whispers that I know well because they’re supposed to be for me, for me alone, the one thing in this world that Vivian can’t take from me.

But she is.

She’s taking it.

I fumble with my phone, trying to turn off the volume, but my hands are shaking so badly that it falls to the floor and bounces underneath one of the rolling carts.