Chapter 19
Ilena
Two Years Before the Outing
“We’re never hosting again, promise me that,” Jonah said as Ilena scrubbed at the chocolate ice cream ground into their hand-knotted
cream rug.
“Grab your phone, you can record me.” She pressed herself back on her heels. “Never again. They’re monsters.”
“Monsters is too kind. What’s worse than monster?”
“Banshees?” Ilena said, dabbing at the rug and only making the stain grow.
“Beast?”
“Chupacabra?”
“Devil children.” Jonah plopped down beside her with a spray bottle of rug cleaner. “Even Satan’s scared of them. Truly, that’s
how Bree and Sean got them.”
“We visited them in the hospital after she gave birth.”
“An elaborate ruse. Trust me.”
He ran his hand through his wavy hair. She’d begun to notice more strands of gray interloping among the dark brown.
When the first couple appeared, she’d worried he’d go entirely gray overnight and it would age her—make her look older as she stood beside him.
But she’d come to appreciate what it meant for their relationship.
They’d been with one another long enough to start to go gray together. There was a comfort in that.
She pressed her lips to his cheek before picking up the rug cleaner and reading the back of the bottle. “Crap. I was supposed
to spray this and let it sit before even breathing on the stain.”
“Well, you’ve always been a go-getter.” Jonah hauled himself to his feet, then pulled up Ilena. “I’ve been thinking a fern
would look great in the living room.”
Ilena raised an eyebrow. “Here, right in the middle underneath the coffee table?”
“You never think outside the box, I.”
“I? As in ‘aye, matey’?”
“As in ‘Ilena.’”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how you say my name.”
“I’m more of a visual thinker.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Ilena untied the belt of her wrap dress and slipped it over her shoulders so that it spilled onto the floor right on top of
the stain. “Then what does this visual make you think?”
Jonah wrapped his arm around the bare skin of her waist above the nude-colored underwear. It didn’t match her black bra because
they’d been married long enough for that too. “Thank god you’re on birth control.”
After, they lay in bed sharing the rest of the Bordeaux they hid halfway through the evening.
Bree and Sean had abdicated their parental roles the moment they’d walked through the door.
Ilena and Jonah had spent the afternoon trying to grill lamb chops and bake dinosaur chicken nuggets while simultaneously stopping a four-year-old from climbing into their kitchen cabinets and a six-year-old from crumbling stolen artisanal cupcake in between the sheets in the guest room.
They’d decided Bree and Sean got the Portuguese table wine that Ilena got stuck with during the Yankee swap at AIM’s holiday party two years ago.
“Birth control rocks, doesn’t it?” Ilena said, rolling the Bordeaux around her tongue.
“Yes, yes, it does.” Jonah accepted the glass they were sharing and took a sip. “For now. Though maybe now doesn’t have to
be so long?”
Ilena sat upright. “What? Did you not see the rug? And I’m pretty sure the little one pooped in the shower and the older one
tried to clean it up.”
“At least she tried.”
“Jonah, what are you saying?”
He sat up beside her and handed her the wine. “We’ll be different.”
“Obviously. But still, now? AIM’s just hitting its stride.” If Ilena’s focus drifted, Mallory would resent it, resent her.
“I’m needed.”
“There are two of us.”
“So you’ll carry it half-time in your uterus?”
“You know I would.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You step on the scale every single day, freaking out over an extra ounce.”
“Noted. So that part’s yours. But after. I’m there. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Ilena stilled. That was probably what her mom thought once too. She drank the wine, slowly. “We will be, right? If we do this?
This is a choice we’re making together. We’re in. Both of us. All in.”
“Speaking of all in . . .” Jonah plucked the glass from her hand and set it on the nightstand.
His hand glided down her torso and wound around to cup her ass and kept traveling farther, and she thought: This is the man who’s going to take my kids to soccer practice, before groaning with pleasure.