The Unhoneymooners

I laugh. “Oh my God.”

She swallows, nodding. “Apparently he has a waitress position at Camelia for you.”

Huh. His nicest restaurant. I love my family. “Cool.”

This makes Ami laugh in her disbelieving Oh, Olive way. “ ‘Cool’?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I swear, I am so emotionally wrecked I can’t even get it up to be excited right now. I promise to do better when I talk to David later.”

She sets her glass down. “My poor Ollie. Is your stomach feeling better?”

“My stomach?”

“Dane said you weren’t feeling well.”

Oh, I bet he did. And funny thing: as soon as she mentions Dane, my stomach does roll over. “Right. Yeah, I’m okay.”

Ami tilts her head for me to follow her as she carries her water into the living room and sits on the couch, legs crossed in front of her. “Ethan ended up leaving early, too.” She must note the look of surprise on my face because she raises a brow. “You didn’t know?”

“I haven’t talked to him since I left.” I lower myself down beside her.

“Like at all?”

I take a breath. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

She frowns, confused. “To me? Is this about how weird he was being?”

“No, I—What do you mean?”

“He was just really quiet, and about twenty minutes after I got there, he said he was going to head out. Dane said he probably had the same bug you had.”

I clench my hands into fists, and then imagine what it would be like to slam one of them into Dane’s smug face. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Dane.”

“Dane?”

“Yeah. He . . .” I pause, trying to figure out where to begin. I have gone through this conversation a thousand times, but I still don’t have the right words. “Do you remember when Ethan and I first met?”

Ami purses her lips together as she thinks back. “At some picnic or something?”

“The State Fair. Pretty soon after you and Dane started dating. Apparently Ethan thought I was cute, and when he mentioned to Dane that he wanted to ask me out, Dane told him not to bother.”

“Wait, Ethan wanted to ask you out? How did he go from that to hating your guts, all in one day?”

“It’s sort of a long story.” I tell her about seeing Ethan, thinking he was hot, how he was sort of flirty . . . and then his reaction when he saw me eating. I explain that it was a misunderstanding, but I can tell she gets it—we’ve both always struggled with our curvy genes, and objectively the world treats thin women differently. “But I guess Ethan had asked Dane if it was cool if he asked me out, and Dane basically said I wasn’t very nice, and not to bother. Since I thought Ethan was being a jerk about the food, I was distant to him, and then he just assumed Dane was right, and that set our entire dynamic into motion.”

Ami laughs like this is a silly joke. “Dane wouldn’t say that, honey. He’s always hated that you two couldn’t get along. He was genuinely so happy when he saw you two at the airport.”

“Really?” I ask. “Or is he just saying that because it’s what we all want to hear?” I stand from the couch and move to sit on the coffee table in front of her. I take her hand in mine. Our hands are similar in so many ways, but Ami has a glittering diamond on her ring finger.

“I think . . .” I say, still focused on our entwined fingers. This is so hard to say—even to the person I know best in the whole world. “I think Dane wanted to keep me and Ethan apart because he didn’t want Ethan to let it slip that Dane was seeing other women when you were first together.”

Ami jerks her hand away like she’s been shocked. “Olive, that’s not funny. Why would you say that?”

“Listen to me. I don’t know the exact dates, but Ethan said something in Maui about you and Dane not being exclusive until right before the engagement.”

“Ethan said that? Why would he—”

“He assumed you knew. But you and Dane were exclusive the whole time, right?”