2. Brooke #3
He hands me the reassurance so cleanly that I can’t even find the seam in it, and the small voice in the back of my head that wanted to keep asking questions just quietly sits back down, because everything he said makes sense. It does make sense.
Audience overlap is a real thing. Layla is genuinely perfect for it. And it’s not like I want it to be anyone else, some stranger, some starlet I’d have to worry about.
It’s Layla. It’s my Layla.
If it has to be anyone, thank God it’s her.
I decide to believe that all the way down, and mostly I succeed.
***
Layla calls that night, right as I’m rinsing the last plate.
I know it’s her before I look because she has a ringtone I assigned her years ago as a joke and never changed, and the sound of it makes me smile before I’ve even said hello, which tells you everything about how I feel about this woman.
“Okay, don’t be weird,” she says, the second I pick up, no greeting, pure Layla. “But can you believe this? Can you actually believe it?”
“I genuinely cannot,” I say, tucking the phone against my shoulder and drying my hands. “My best friend and my husband, teaming up to sell a book. It’s like a sitcom. A good one, though. Not one of the bad ones.”
“It’s going to be so fun.” She’s giddy, her voice bright and fast the way it gets when she’s actually happy and not doing the version of happy she does for cameras.
I can always tell the difference. That’s one of the things twelve years of friendship buys you, the ability to hear the real one.
“I’ve already got a whole vision for the shoot.
And Brooke, I promise, I will make him look so good.
I’m going to make your husband a heartthrob if it kills me. ”
“He’s going to be unbearable. You understand that. His head’s already the size of the moon.”
“Somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be family.” She laughs. “God, I’m so glad it’s me and not some random. Can you imagine? You’d have had to be nice to a stranger at all the events. This way you just have to keep being nice to me, which you’re already contractually obligated to do.”
“Barely tolerating you, technically. There’s a difference.”
“Rude. I’m hanging up. I love you. Tell Adrian I said the shoot’s going to be incredible.” A pause, warm. “And Brooke? Thank you. For being cool about it. I know it’s kind of a weird thing, me and him. You’re a good friend.”
“It’s not weird,” I say, and I mean it, because it isn’t. “It’s great. I’m happy for both of you.”
We hang up, and I stand there in my kitchen smiling at nothing, and I feel the whole knot in my chest that I didn’t even fully admit was there just let go.
See? I tell myself. That’s Layla. That’s the same Layla who has known me since I was nineteen and stupid.
The half-second thing this morning was just my own junk, my own old fear that I’m the least interesting person at my own table, and it has nothing to do with her and nothing to do with him.
Everybody’s excited. Everybody loves everybody. It’s fine. It’s better than fine.
I go to bed happy. I want that on the record too.
***
The next afternoon, the first photos go up.
I’m on the couch with my sketchbook when Layla tags me in the post, and I open it, and there they are. Adrian and Layla, on the promo set, and I’ll be honest, they look incredible.
Of course they do, that’s the whole point, that’s the entire job.
He’s in a dark jacket with his sleeves pushed up and that half-smile he does, and she’s got a hand on his arm, laughing at whatever he just said, and the lighting is perfect and the whole thing looks expensive and easy and good.
I smile at it.
My husband looks handsome and my best friend looks radiant and the launch is going to be enormous, and I do the thing you do, I tap the little heart, I like the post, because I like the post, because it’s a nice photo of two people I love.
And then I do the thing I shouldn’t do, the thing everybody says never to do, the thing I do anyway because I’m a human being with a thumb.
I scroll to the comments.
Most of them are what you’d expect. Fire emojis. People losing their minds about the book. A few asking when the shoot comes out. And then, three comments down, one that has more likes than all the others stacked together, and I read it before I can decide not to.
They have more chemistry than most married couples lol.
I scroll past it. That’s the first thing I do, I scroll right past it, fast, the way you pull your hand back from a hot pan before your brain has even finished the sentence that’s hot.
But I’m not fast enough. Because on the way past it, my eyes catch the number underneath.
Two thousand and forty-one likes.
Two thousand strangers looked at a photo of my husband and my best friend and saw a couple. And the worst part, the part I won’t say out loud to a single living soul, is that for half a second this morning, so did I.
I close the app and I set the phone down. I tell myself two thousand strangers don’t know the first thing about my marriage.
At least, I try to convince myself too.