“Ivy, are you listening to me?”
She drives a little faster. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about anything that happened while I was gone.”
“But there’s something you need to know.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to know.” Her voice is sharp. This conversation is over.
But then she looks at me and smiles and takes my hand. “Let’s go see Ash,” she says, and something in me lightens, and something in me drops. What if we were enough? Just Ivy and me?
IvyandFern. FernandIvy.
“We’re a team,” she says. “You and me.”
And what about Tami? Where does she fit into all of this?
“Oh, I have plans for Tami,” Ivy says, like she read my mind.
* * *
• • •
Ash has a different kind of house than Tami and Ivy. It is old, originally a summer home for some big lumber family back in the day when there was still old-growth forest on the peninsula. It’s all dark wood and stone, plush furniture you sink into, rich colors and soft rugs. A huge fireplace as tall as me is the centerpiece of the living room, and that’s where we find Tami and Ash sitting together on a couch, her legs draped over him, her favorite position.
“Long time no see,” Tami says. She is drinking iced coffee. There is a tray of fruit and pastries on the coffee table. Somehow Ash can make even sweatpants and a T-shirt look sexy. Tami is in her casual chic getup, looking like a sportswear model. “We just came from yoga class,” she says, picking at some fruit.
“You do yoga?” Ivy asks Ash with a playful smirk on her face. She is enjoying this game of pretending they are acquaintances.
“Only when Tami makes me.”
Everyone laughs for exactly one second. It is all perfectly normal. It is afternoon, and we are drinking iced coffee and eating fruit, and everyone’s sober as far as I can tell.
“Grab a chair and get something to eat,” Tami says, as if she is the hostess, as if this is her house.
“Ash, your house is beautiful,” Ivy says.
“Wait till you see the wine cellar,” Tami says. “It’s as big as a poor person’s house. Isn’t that why your dad bought this place?”
“Yeah,” Ash says. “Everyone at rehab says he needs to get rid of his collection, but it’s his prized possession. There’s like half a million dollars’ worth of wine down there.”
“I don’t blame him,” Tami says. “He shouldn’t have to get rid of anything.”
“You’re not helping,” he says.
“What? Your dad has run a multibillion-dollar department of A-Corp for years. He can stay sober if he wants to. All it takes is willpower.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy.”
She rolls her eyes. “You want to make everything complicated.”
“I wish we could go swimming,” Ivy cuts in. “I brought my suit.”
“No one’s going swimming today,” Tami says. “Unless you want to die of asphyxiation.”
“My mom’s having a meltdown because the lawn’s brown,” Ivy says, her voice too high, too perky, like she’s genuinely trying to befriend Tami. “She keeps trying to bribe the gardeners to water it.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Tami says. “How can the government tell us what to do with our own water?” She smiles at this thing they have in common, whatever it is. That their mothers have a similar disdain for environmental protections?
“It’s shared,” Ash says lazily. “Everyone shares the same water. It all comes from the same place. Nobody owns it.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” Tami says.
“Tell that to Mother Nature,” he says.
“My boyfriend, the armchair activist,” Tami says, then leans over and kisses him, and I can feel Ivy tense next to me. But what did she expect? Tami is his real girlfriend. Ivy is not.
Tami’s phone buzzes. She looks at it and smiles, angles her body so Ash can’t see the screen as she texts back.
Despite all her training and experience and awards, Ivy right now is a terrible actress. She keeps looking at Ash with a face that says everything. Ash is the real actor here. He barely even looks at us. He runs his fingers up and down Tami’s perfect, smooth leg, as if hers is the only body he’s been touching lately.
How can he make this look so easy? How can he act like he doesn’t even care?
“I have to make a call,” Tami announces suddenly. She catches my eye with a covert smile as she hops up and glides out of the room. The second she’s out of sight, Ash walks over to our couch and kneels between Ivy’s legs, and she pulls his face to hers, and I am just sitting here next to them as they inhale each other, but I am miles and miles and miles away. I am who they touch when the other isn’t around. But I am invisible now.
I hear footsteps. “She’s coming back,” I whisper, but they do not separate right away. Ivy has to push Ash’s chest to get him to go back to his seat. It’s almost like he wants to get caught.
He is not fast enough. When Tami enters the room, he is falling into his seat, still staring at Ivy, and she is staring at him, and I am looking back and forth, at their wet lips, their panting mouths, the want in their eyes, and I am filled with a sudden, shocking anger. How could they be so stupid? So reckless? This is mine to lose too.
Tami stops in her tracks. She looks at Ash, then at Ivy, and a wave of recognition passes over her face. Her hand squeezes around her phone. She takes a tight, shallow breath. Then she smiles. A sickly anything-but-sweet smile.
“I’m bored,” she announces. Her voice is too loud. She is a bad actor too. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go to the city.”
No one moves.
“Right now!” she commands, her voice cracking with anger. I have never heard Tami raise her voice before. She’s never had to.
“Um, okay?” Ash says. Tami squeezes his shoulder, hard. “Ouch!” he says, rubbing it as she walks toward the front door and picks up her purse from the table there.
“We’re going now?” Ash says. “Like this? Can I at least change out of these fucking sweatpants?”
“Fine,” Tami says. “We have five minutes to change our clothes.”
“I think I’m going to stay back,” I say. “I’m not feeling well.” But Ivy looks at me and shakes her head, her eyes pleading. She cannot do this without me. And even though I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen, I know I can’t leave her.