1. Raven
— ? —
Raven
I spent the entire morning preparing for our tenth anniversary dinner, and if that sounds simple, then you’ve never met my brain.
The fish market first. Josh’s Nantucket grandmother had mentioned it once, maybe twice, years ago when we’d visited the compound.
A story about how they imported from specific waters near the Cape, how the fish tasted different when it came from cold Atlantic currents.
She’d served us salmon that night that made Josh close his eyes after the first bite, and I’d memorized the look on his face.
Pure, uncomplicated pleasure. The expression he used to get when he looked at me.
It took the better part of an hour each way in LA traffic that seemed personally offended by my happiness.
The 405 was a parking lot, because of course it was.
I spent the time rehearsing what I’d say when he walked in.
“Happy anniversary” seemed too simple. “I love you” was too close to begging.
Maybe I’d just let the dinner speak for itself.
Maybe he’d walk in and see the effort and remember who we used to be.
The fish market smelled of cold brine and very fresh fish. The man behind the counter recognized me from previous visits, the ones where I’d dragged Josh along and he’d made jokes about Mercury levels while secretly loving that I cared enough to drive this far for dinner.
“The salmon from Cape Cod,” I said. “The same kind you sold me last summer.”
“Good choice. Special occasion?”
“Anniversary. Ten years.”
He smiled, the kind that reached his eyes. “My wife and I just hit thirty. Gets better if you let it.”
I wanted to ask him how. What was the secret? When did you know if you were letting it get better or just watching it die? But instead I smiled back and paid for fish that cost more than my first headshots.
Back home, the sauce was my first disaster. Too much lemon, or maybe the cream curdled, or maybe I was just too nervous to read the recipe right. My brain kept insisting I was doing it wrong even though I’d followed every step exactly. The kitchen smelled of curdled cream and failure.
“You’re fine,” I told the destroyed sauce as I poured it down the drain. “Well, you’re not fine. You’re actually ruined. But I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
The second attempt went better. I measured everything twice, set timers, didn’t let myself get distracted by the memory of Josh teaching me this recipe on our third anniversary.
Back when he’d stand behind me at the stove, arms around my waist, chin on my shoulder, whispering instructions that had nothing to do with cooking.
The place cards took an hour. Hand-written with our inside jokes, the ones that still made us laugh. Or used to. When was the last time we’d really laughed together? Not polite chuckles at industry events or performative amusement for friends. Real laughter, the kind that made your stomach hurt.
“Reserved for the man who thinks Die Hard is a Christmas movie,” I wrote on his card.
We’d had that fight so many times it had become tradition.
Every December, the same debate. He’d argue it with the passion of a man defending his life’s work.
I’d counter with increasingly absurd arguments.
We’d end up laughing, then kissing, then forgetting what we were fighting about.
“Reserved for the woman who cried at that commercial with the dog,” I wrote on mine. He’d held me on the couch while I sobbed over thirty seconds of manipulative advertising, never once making me feel ridiculous. “You feel everything so deeply,” he’d said. “It’s my favorite thing about you.”
When did that stop being true? When did my feelings become too much instead of just enough?
I arranged the cards on the table, stepped back, moved them a little to the left. Still wrong. The whole table looked wrong, overworked, trying too hard. Which I was. God, I was trying so hard my bones ached with it.
The flowers were their own special nightmare. White roses felt too formal, too desperate. Wildflowers felt too casual, the pick you reach for when you’ve stopped bothering. I stood in the florist’s cooler too long, paralyzed by indecision, until the teenager working there asked if I needed help.
“Tenth anniversary,” I said.
“Tin or aluminum,” she replied automatically. “Though most people just do flowers.”
“What flowers say ‘I love you and I’m sorry we’ve been slowly disappearing from each other’s lives but maybe we can fix this over dinner’?”
She blinked at me. “Peonies?”
So peonies it was. Pale pink ones that reminded me of our first apartment, when Josh would buy them from the grocery store at midnight after callback auditions. “They reminded me of you,” he’d say. “Beautiful and chaotic and impossible to ignore.”
Now I felt extremely ignorable, background noise in my own marriage.
I arranged the flowers three times before my brain would stop screaming that they were crooked. The stems wouldn’t cooperate, leaning in directions that defied physics and reason. Everything turned into a metaphor if you were desperate enough, and apparently I was.
The dresses. Jesus, the dresses.
The black one belonged at a funeral. Which maybe this was.
The red one screamed trying too hard. The green one had a stain I hadn’t noticed when I pulled it from the closet, probably from some premiere where I’d smiled while Josh told the same story about his process and I’d quietly died inside, one canapé at a time.
Finally, the navy blue. Simple, elegant, nothing special except Josh had zipped it up for me three years ago before a premiere. His fingers had lingered on my spine, and he’d kissed the spot where my neck met my shoulder.
“Jesus, Raven, you can’t wear that,” he’d said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll forget how to breathe. I’ll forget my own name. I’ll spend the entire night wanting to unzip it.”
“That’s the point,” I’d said, and we’d been twenty minutes late.
Now the zipper stuck halfway up. I contorted myself trying to reach it, finally got it closed using a hanger and determination. The dress still fit, just differently now, my body quietly rearranged around the disappointment.
I’d reminded him seventeen times about tonight. That should have been my first clue. You don’t have to remind someone about the things that matter to them.
Sticky notes on his coffee maker with hearts drawn in red pen: “Anniversary dinner tonight! 6 PM! I love you!”
Texts throughout the week with probably too many emojis. The heart eyes, the champagne bottles, the eggplant that was supposed to be funny but now felt pathetic.
A voicemail this morning where I sang our wedding song badly on purpose. “Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get anniversary dinner,” I warbled, off-key and ridiculous. “Don’t be late or I’ll have to eat all this fish myself and you know how that ends.”
He’d had food poisoning from bad sushi once. I’d held his hair back while he threw up, brought him Gatorade and sympathy, slept on the bathroom floor with him. That’s what you did when you loved someone. You showed up for the ugly parts.
Seventeen reminders, because I needed him to know this mattered. Needed him to remember I mattered.
Six o’clock came with military precision. I lit the candles, vanilla ones that supposedly smelled of cake and really just smelled of trying too hard. Fixed my lipstick twice, the red one he’d once called sinful. Checked that the salmon wasn’t overcooking. Adjusted the flowers one more time.
Poured a glass of wine. Just one. Just to calm the buzzing in my chest, a whole hive of it lodged between my ribs.
An hour later, the salmon was definitely overcooking. I turned the oven to warm, texted him a question mark. No response. Not even the three dots that meant he was typing.
Eight o’clock. I texted him a photo of the table. “Waiting for my favorite person.”
The candles had burned down an inch. The flowers were starting to wilt, or maybe that was just my imagination. Everything was dying by degrees.
At eight forty-seven, my phone buzzed.
It wasn’t a call, or an apology, or even words. Just a number. A channel number.
I stared at it, refusing to process what it meant. Then, with the dread of a terminal diagnosis, I turned on the TV.
Josh was on Grant Levy’s show, wearing the Tom Ford suit I’d helped him pick. We’d spent three hours in the store, me talking him into it while he worried about the price.
“We can afford it,” I’d said.
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“I don’t want to become the guy who wears ten-thousand-dollar suits.”
“You’re already that guy. This one just fits better.”
He’d bought it. Worn it to the Golden Globes. Won. Thanked me in his speech, called me his North Star. Now he sat in it on Grant Levy’s couch, and Sloane sat next to him.
My sister, in a dress I’d never seen, and she belonged there in a way I never had. Her hair was perfect, effortless waves that actually took a salon and half a morning. They were sitting closer than necessary, his body angled toward hers, drawn in without either of them seeming to decide it.
“The chemistry between you two,” Grant Levy was saying, his voice doing that thing talk show hosts do when they smell blood in the water. “It’s not just acting, is it?”
Josh laughed. Not his real laugh, the one that started as a wheeze and ended as a cackle. His public laugh, practiced and perfect. He put his hand on the back of Sloane’s chair.
She ducked her head, playing at shy. A performance. Everything was a performance except I was the only one who hadn’t gotten the script.
That’s when I saw them. The diamonds around her neck. The necklace he’d given me for our fifth anniversary.
They sparkled against my sister’s throat under the studio lights. Each diamond caught the light and threw it back at me, a small betrayal cut into facets. Thought shut off entirely. Just white noise where it should have been.
Had he given them to her, or lent them, and for how long, and why?