Page 84 of On the Line

“Please,” I say, grabbing Paige’s hand. “I’m still not ready to talk to him about this. Tell him I will call him tomorrow when I’ve calmed down a bit.”

She heads toward the door with nothing but a nod. I hear the door open, and then nothing. He doesn’t say anything. Paige doesn’t say anything. In the kitchen, Jackson, Sierra, and I just look at each other, brows knit together in confusion.

I’m about to peek into the hallway when I hear multiple sets of footsteps heading toward us. What the hell? I spin around, ready for a confrontation with Jameson, and instead find Jules and Audrey headed straight toward me, both of them with outstretched arms. I let them pull me into a group hug, and when they finally let go, I pull back and ask, “What are you doing here?”

“Jameson thought you might need more friends after ... you know ... what happened earlier,” Jules says. “Morgan’s on her way too. It’s not exactly the girls’ night we were talking about having, but it’s the one you need.”

I want to be mad at him. Iammad at him.

But I asked for space, for a night with my girlfriends to process this, and he is not only honoring that by not showing up, but he sent in reinforcements to support me. Why does he have to be so damn supportive and thoughtful?

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Please say that you’re going to let us look through whatever’s in here with you?” Audrey says as she hands me a manilla envelope. My name is scrawled across the front in Jameson’s handwriting.

“What is this?” I ask, turning the envelope over and looking at it like there might be a bomb inside. Because whatever it is, I’m pretty confident it’s going to rip my life apart.

“It’s everything Jameson was going to give you tonight when he told you about Josh,” Audrey tells me.

So he wasn’t lying that he had more information and was going to talk to me about it tonight, in person. That’s a relief, but also, a ball is forming in the pit of my stomach as I consider how cold I was to him, without giving him any opportunity to explain.

“Here,” Jackson says, handing me the first margarita. “I topped yours off with extra tequila.”

“Why? It’s a Wednesday night, I can’t be hungover tomorrow. I have a job and two kids to take care of.”

“I’ll spend the night,” all five of them say simultaneously, and then Morgan’s walking into my kitchen asking if we’re having a sleepover.

“I don’t have enough beds for that.” I laugh.

“Whatever,” Jules says, “we’ll be too drunk to care where we sleep.”

“Someone has to stay sober,” I say. “In case anything happens with the girls. What if one of them wakes up sick or something?”

“It’s fine, I won’t drink,” Sierra says. I see Jackson eye her sister-in-law’s belly and wonder if it means what I think it means. But I’m not going to ask in front of people she doesn’t even know.

Paige catches Morgan up on what she missed while I introduce Jules and Audrey to Jackson and Sierra. Then we take our margaritas over to the dining room and I set the envelope in the middle of the table, where we all stare at it.

I take a deep breath, my hand hovering over the flap of the envelope. Once I open it, I’ll know things I can never forget—about my marriage, my house, and the mystery woman who was a part of both. I’ll have answers. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll also have some sense of how to move forward.

I open the flap and slide the papers out of the envelope. “There’s a printout of an email from Derek, Jameson’s assistant,” I tell my friends, since they don’t know who he is. I still haven’t met the man, just heard about his greatness. My eyes scan the page. “Sophia Lennox,”I say the name out loud.

The other woman.I want to think she was just the woman Josh was sleeping with, but if they were remodeling this house together, it was so much more than that. It makes me wonder if his heart was actually here in Boston, not home in Utah with me and the girls.

“It’s a list of all of her social media,” I say, and Jackson snatches it out of my hand.

“I’m on it,” she says.

Behind that paper is a thin stack of more paper. I take another gulp of my margarita and then flip through the pages quickly, passing each page to Morgan, on my right, as I go. “She lives in the Back Bay, really close to you guys,” I tell Jules and Audrey as I look at the printout of the aerial view of the map, with her address starred. “Like, I may have actually parked in front of her place when I came over for dinner the first time.”

I scan the next page, a printout of her profile on a popular professional networking site. “Fuuuck,” I say on a sigh. “She’s a brand manager for an energy drink company. Not only were they one of Josh’s endorsements, they have ties to the Rebels. They were one of the sponsors for tonight’s game. She might even have been there.”

I pass that page to Morgan, and slowly the pages make their way around the table. All the while, I’m wondering if Sophia knows who I am.

“Jameson was probably right about not telling me before the game. If I’d known any of this, I’d have been so focused on figuring out who she is and if she was at the game, instead of focused on doing my job.”

I lock eyes with Paige, who’s wearing her bestI told you soface.

“The good news,” Jackson says, “is that there are no pictures of just her and Josh together on social media.”

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