“He’s not home,” she says, as if she can read my thoughts. “It’s poker night. He’ll be out for hours.”
“Oh, okay.”
I mean Oh, good, but I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic.
She leads us through the kitchen, where she pours me a glass of rosé to match the one she’s already drinking, and then into the living room, where we settle onto the ivory-colored sectional beneath the wall of medals. She pulls her feet up under her. On the glass coffee table beside us, a fragrant candle burns brightly.
“I know we don’t really do this,” she says, gesturing at the couch between us. “Or at least, not for a long time.”
A decade ago, there was nothing unusual about us spending hours in each other’s bedrooms, sneaking snacks and talking about the movie stars we thought were cute. But that was before London, before she got married, before we grew apart and grew up.
“We can do this,” I say. “We’re friends.”
She gives a small smile at the word “friends” and sips her wine. “Yeah.”
“So…” I say, trying to prompt her.
I don’t want to push her, but I know she didn’t call me over here just to chitchat.
“I have news,” she announces.
“Okay,” I say gently.
I can’t help but race through the options: she’s not pregnant—she’s drinking wine—but maybe it’s something about Dimitri and Ryan, or her career, or worse, a health scare of some kind, or something terrible with her family.
She gives me a nervous look and takes a deep breath, as if she’s psyching herself up to say whatever it is out loud.
“I’m going to leave Dimitri,” she says.
Her voice is low and quiet, as if she can’t quite trust that we’re really alone.
“Oh my god, Jasmine,” I breathe. “Wow.”
She nods. “I know. I haven’t told him yet. I need to get my life in order first. But… I’ve decided.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” I ask.
“Part of me has known for a long time that marrying him was the wrong decision,” she explains. “It felt right at the time, but I was swept up by him, and I was so young, and I wasn’t thinking straight. He had a way of intimidating me—more so back then—and when he said we should get married, I wasn’t brave enough to say no. But…” She hesitates, then admits, “Part of the decision came from talking to you.”
“Me?”
I clap a hand to my mouth. I never hid my contempt for him, but I never outright told her to leave him, either. Meddling in a marriage, encouraging a wife to leave her husband—it all feels too adult for me. I’m way in over my head.
“It started at Nationals,” she recalls. “At the bar, remember? Nobody has ever dared to tell me to my face that Dimitri is…” She stops short and scowls. “An emotionally abusive asshole. But you did. You know what he’s like, better than anybody.”
“Not as a husband, though,” I say.
“Even still,” she says. “Once you said it, I couldn’t ignore it. It gnawed at me for days afterward. Everything he had said and done over the years, I brushed it aside. But you didn’t, and it made me think that I shouldn’t, either.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Our relationship wasn’t balanced, you know?” she continues. “There was never a time when it felt like I had the upper hand, ever. It was always him. We were gymnast and coach and then husband and wife, but the dynamic between us never shifted. We were never equal partners, the way you’re supposed to be.”
“I wondered about that,” I admit. “When I first heard you were together, I just… I couldn’t make any sense of it.”
“I didn’t know how strange the relationship was,” she says. “I didn’t see how unhealthy it was.”
“You deserve so much better than him,” I say. “I mean, nobody deserves him at all, but especially not you.”
I’m relieved for her, but I’m afraid for what I’ve set into motion. I know that, on average, it takes women seven attempts to finally leave their abusive husbands for good. I wonder where Jasmine will go; I’d let her stay with me and Sara, if she wanted to, even though the prospect of Dimitri banging on our door late at night makes me feel sick with nerves.
“I think I know that?” she says tentatively, like she isn’t ready to fully commit to the idea just yet. “I mean, I look at my life, and the only common thread throughout all the different parts—gymnastics, TV, marriage—is that Dimitri has always been right there behind me, making me feel small. Everyone else cheers me on. But with him, it’s always…”
Jasmine falters, and her expression crumples.
“Nothing is ever good enough for him. I’m not good enough for him,” she says. Her voice gets high and tight. “He says I’m too anxious, too sensitive, too mediocre.”
“Maybe you’d be less anxious if he didn’t make you so anxious,” I point out.
I don’t know if she even hears me—now that she’s started to spill how she really feels, she barrels on, spitting out the insults Dimitri has hurled her way over the years.
“The dinner is late,” she recites. “And my cellulite is bad. I supposedly interfere with his schedule. I really don’t think all that is true, but no matter what I do, the comments keep coming… I thought marriage was about being on each other’s team, you know? But not mine.”
She gingerly places her wineglass on a coaster on the coffee table and sinks back into the cushions with a hand pressed over her mouth to muffle her sobs. For a moment, her shoulders shake, and I reach across the couch to hug her. She leans into the embrace, and we stay like that for a long time. I rub her back and wonder, with a sickening feeling in my gut, what it must be like for her to prepare to leave the man she has been with for most of her childhood and the entirety of her adult life. I can’t fathom it. She is so incredibly brave—she always has been. I hold her until she steadies herself, returning to the normal rise and fall of her breathing.
“I’m sorry for getting emotional,” she says quietly, wiping away her tears.
“Please, there’s nothing to apologize for,” I insist.
She shrugs.
“You know, I’m here if you need anything—any help at all,” I tell her.
“There’s a lot I need to figure out,” she says, sighing. “All my money is in a joint account, and I’ll need a place to live, and I need to find a good divorce lawyer. That stuff, I can do on my own. But maybe, when it’s time, you’ll help me pack up and move out?”
“Of course,” I promise.
She suddenly looks shy. “Or even if you just continue to be my friend, that’s more than enough, you know. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we came back into each other’s lives. Really and truly just blown-away grateful.”
She gives me the most tender smile, and I feel so touched that she sees me as a person who will have her back again. It’s heartbreaking to watch her reckon with the broken pieces of her relationship, but I’m proud that she trusts me to help her heal and move on. Before Nationals, I never would have guessed in a million years that Jasmine and I would be friends again—could be best friends again, the kind of presence in your life where it doesn’t matter if you cry in your sweatpants or your voice cracks when you reveal the gnarled insecurities and fears that keep you up at night, because that person loves you for you and loves you for good, forever. I didn’t think a friendship of that magnitude could abruptly drop dead and be revived nearly a decade later. But this time, I’m glad to be proven wrong.