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Her eyes are sympathetic as she nudges me with her elbow.
    I turn to face her, my hand still tightly gripping hers. “Thank you.”
    “It goes without saying.”
    “Well, I’d still be in a heap on the floor of the bridal suite if it weren’t for you,” I say. Jules had called the airline and changed my flight; she’d neatly folded and packed all of my bikinis, maxi dresses, and even my lingerie into my suitcase; and she’d put mywedding dress into the garment bag—the sound of the zipper sealing it inside making me feel nauseous.
    “You’re going to get through this,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. Then when she catches my skeptical expression, adds, “I promise.”
    “I’m going to have to trust you on this one, considering I’m not even sure how I’m going to lift my arms to brush my teeth tonight.”
    “I’ll help you. I’m staying over.”
    “Jules, you can’t. The kids. Ben—”
    “It’s already done. Ben loves you as much as I do and wanted me here with you. . . .” She pauses, amusement in her eyes. “Plus, better him than me dealing with the kids adjusting to the time difference!”
    We laugh. It feels foreign, almost like a betrayal of my pain, making me wonder how long it will be before the laughter rolls comfortably off my tongue like it used to.
    “Well, please thank him for me.”
    “Will you stop? It’s an unwritten rule that best friends take care of each other and best friends’ husbands understand. You’d do the same for me.”
    “Well, if Ben ever leaves you, I will kill him,” I say matter-of-factly. “I need you to know that.”
    Jules smiles wryly at my declaration and then regards me for a few moments, no doubt taking in my disheveled appearance—my oily face and the dark circles around my eyes exposing the stress of the last two days. My unwashed hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail and I’m wearing the same pair of sweats I’d woken up in yesterday.
    Finally, Jules says simply, “Well, you definitely look the part of someone who can wield a weapon.” She points to my puffy eyesand my sweatpants hanging low on my hips. Jules grabs my hand again. “Now, follow me. One foot in front of the other.”
    I walk in step with Jules down the hallway that spills out into the living room. The remote control rests on the glass coffee table where I left it after we’d watched an old episode of Project Runway the night before we left for Hawaii. Feeling tipsy from the wine, I’d told Max he should start wearing sweater vests and he’d pretended he hadn’t heard me. As Jules and I walk into the kitchen, the granite countertops gleaming—not so much as an errant water glass in sight—I have another flashback to the morning Max and I were leaving for the airport. I was gripping our freshly printed boarding passes tightly as I rushed around the corner, nearly tripping over the open dishwasher door. I’d wanted to be two hours early to LAX— at least —and Max had been hunched over the sink, his sleeves rolled up, running a round brush inside my cereal bowl that I’d forgotten to wash. He’d looked up unapologetically. “Can’t come home to dirty dishes.” Or apparently he hadn’t been planning on coming home at all.
    In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve thought about a dozen instances like the one that morning, wondering which marked the exact moment when he decided he couldn’t marry me. While I knew it wasn’t logical that he left me because I refused to rinse every glass and pan thoroughly before placing it in the dishwasher, I still wondered deep in my heart if it was part of what had factored into his decision. Had he finally grown tired of certain nuances about my personality that he’d once found endearing? Like my need to dissect the tribal alliances on Survivor every week? Or my inability to take out the trash before it was overflowing and too heavy for me to carry to the Dumpster? Or was it something bigger—maybe he wasn’t attracted