The Ex Talk

“Only ten minutes late,” Ameena says, jumping out of her chair to lasso me into a tight hug. “That’s got to be a new record, right?”

TJ pulls out his phone to check the notes app. “There was one time last March we were all on time except for Shay, who was only three minutes late.”

I roll my eyes at this, but guilt twists my stomach. “It’s great to see you, too. And I really am sorry. I was rushing to finish one last thing and lost track of time.”

We try to schedule dinners as regularly as we can, but my mother and Phil are violinists in the Seattle Symphony with regular evening performances, Ameena is a recruiter at Microsoft, and TJ does something important-sounding in finance that I’ve never fully understood. On occasion—fine, most occasions—I stay late at the station to make sure everything’s prepped for the next day’s show. Today I was on the phone apologizing to Mary Beth Barkley for an hour.

I hug my mom and TJ, then shake hands with Phil. I’m still not sure how to navigate my mother having a boyfriend. Until Phil, she didn’t seem interested in dating. They’d been friends for ages, though, and he lost his wife a few years after we lost Dad. They supported each other during the grieving process, which of course never really ends, until they eventually became a different kind of support system.

I should be used to it by now, but by the time they started dating last year, I’d only just gotten used to the idea of my mother as a widow.

“As much as I love bullying Shay,” my mother says with a half smile in my direction, “I’m starving. Appetizers?”

Phil points at the menu. “The chili cumin pork ribs are supposed to be incredible,” he says in his Nigerian accent.

After we order and exchange how-was-your-days, Ameena and TJ share a quick sideways glance. Before they started dating, Ameena and I were the ones sharing sideways glances, inside jokes. Being the fifth wheel is only slightly crushing when I realize I’m not anyone’s person. Ameena and TJ live together, so it’s natural that she shares secrets with him before me, and my mother has Phil. I am a solid second, but I’m no one’s first.

I’m on a dating app hiatus, something I implement every so often when swiping becomes especially frustrating. My relationships seem doomed to never last longer than a handful of months. I want so badly to get to that place where Ameena and TJ are, five years of dating after they accidentally swapped orders at a coffee shop, that it’s possible I rush things. I’ve never not been the first to say I love you, and there are only so many times you can stomach total silence in response.

But I won’t lie—I want to be that first person someone tells everything to.

“I have some news,” Ameena says. “I’m interviewing with the Nature Conservancy tomorrow. So it’s not news, exactly, but news adjacent. It’s just the first phone interview, but . . .” She trails off with a shrug, but her dark eyes are bright with excitement.

When Ameena started at Microsoft, her goal was to gain enough experience to ultimately recruit for an organization that does good, ideally for the environment. She was the president and founder of our high school’s Compost Club. By default, I was the vice president. She’s a slow-fashion aficionado who buys all her clothes at thrift shops and rummage sales, and she and TJ have an impressive herb garden on their apartment balcony.

“Are you serious? That’s incredible!” I say, reaching for a rib the server places in the center of the table. “They have a Seattle office?”

Her expression falters. “Well, no,” she says. “They’re in Virginia. I mean, I doubt I’ll get the job.”

“Don’t reject yourself before you’ve even interviewed,” Phil says. “Do you know how many people audition for the symphony? The odds were never in our favor, either, although I still claim it’s nonsense Leanna had to audition three times.”

My mother squeezes his arm, but she beams at the compliment.

“Virginia is . . . far,” I say intelligently.

“Let’s just ignore the Virginia part for now.” Ameena brushes a stray thread from the vintage charcoal blazer we fought over at an estate sale last month. “I’m really not going to get it, though. I’m the youngest recruiter on my team. They’re probably going to want someone with more experience.”

“I miss being the youngest,” I say, taking to heart Ameena’s “let’s just ignore the Virginia part” suggestion. Virginia isn’t something I can even wrap my mind around. “It feels like the interns are getting younger and younger every year. And they’re all so earnest and fresh faced. One of them actually told me the other day that he didn’t know what a tape looked like.”

“Like that reporter you’re always going on about?” my mother says. “What’s his name again?”

“Dominic something, right?” Phil says. “I did like that piece he did on arts funding in Seattle compared to other cities.”

“He’s not an intern, he’s Kent’s favorite reporter.” And apparently the new star of Puget Sounds, based on the social media snooping I did after the show. Twitter loved him, which proves Twitter is a hellsite.

“Talk to me when you’re thirty,” Ameena says. We celebrated her thirtieth two months ago, in December, and it’ll be my turn in October. I’m still in denial.

My mother waves a hand. “Please. You’re both still babies.” She says this, but my mother is gorgeous: dark red hair, sharp cheekbones, and a closet full of chic black dresses that would make Audrey Hepburn quietly, beautifully weep. In a symphony of fifty musicians, she steals the show every night.

I tug my hair out of its usual low ponytail and finger comb my long bangs that skim the top of my tortoiseshell glasses. Thick, brown, and coarse: the only adjectives that describe my hair, and all of them are tragic. I thought I’d have learned to style it by now, but some days I fight with a straightener and other days I fight with a curling iron before I resign myself to another ponytail.

It’s only when I examine my mother, searching for the physical similarities between us—spoiler: there are none—that I notice she’s acting strangely. She keeps rubbing at the hollow of her throat, one of her telltale signs of nerves, and when the food arrives, she pushes it around on her plate instead of eating it. She and Phil are usually pretty affectionate. We had a body language expert on the show a while back, and the way she talked about people falling in love described the two of them perfectly. Phil is always resting his hand in the small of her back, and she’ll often cup the side of his face and skim her thumb along his cheek.

There’s none of that tonight.

“How?

??s the house?” Phil asks, and I respond with a dramatic groan. He holds up his hands and lets out a soft laugh. “Ah, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize it was a sore subject.”