Too familiar.

  I squint. Are those . . . my diaries?

  I let out a shriek and rush across the yard to get a better look. I don’t dare go inside, but I don’t need to. I’d recognize those books anywhere. It’s not my full canon of color-coded journals, only the first five books I wrote. Eighth grade through senior year. Strange. I zero in on the fifth one—the pale-yellow edition I know I stashed in the glove box of my LEAF yesterday. Right beside it, serving as a bookend, is a framed photograph in black and white.

  It’s a couple in profile. They’re dancing, the man dipping the woman in his arms.

  I press my face against the glass and cease to breathe. Because . . .

  The man in the photograph is Glasswell. The woman he’s dancing with . . . is me. He’s in a tux. She’s—I’m wearing a white dress. We’re smiling, gazing deep into each other’s eyes.

  “No. No way,” I whisper, even as I know. Even as I feel it to be true.

  I look down at my left hand and see a thin gold wedding band.

  My knees buckle and I fall backward. Into the pool.

  Chapter Eleven

  Splash.

  I sink like the Star of Scotland in the deep end of the pool.

  Married?

  My feet touch the bottom. I bend my knees and push off, shooting toward the surface.

  To Glasswell?!?

  Whose idea was this?

  I break through the surface and gasp for air, my shock tempering the water’s chill.

  That photo of us dancing. The soulmate smiles we wore. The ring on my finger. And Glasswell’s . . . ugh . . . kindness tonight. These are clues that tell a convincing story. Usually, I’m the kind of detective who ends up abandoning the mystery, but this one I can’t deny.

  I push out of the pool and lurch onto a chaise lounge. I find a plush towel on a side table, drag it over myself, and try to figure out whether the hysterical sound coming out of my mouth is laughter or a keening sob? Whatever it is, it’s causing the canines of the canyon to respond.

  How could this happen?

  I twist the ring. There’s no green stain on my skin beneath it. It’s real. Why did it take me so long to notice? I do tend to forget to look for wedding rings before chatting up attractive strangers at bars—Masha’s gotten on me for this before—but I really should have noticed the ring on my own damn finger.

  Married.

  In some surreal sense, this happened. Is happening. It’s not just Glasswell up here living the high life. I seem to be living it, too.

  But I am not a plaything of the gods. I am not an art experiment. I am Olivia Dusk.

  So how do I get out of this?

  I need to wake up. As far from here as possible. Because one explanation is that this is all a dream. An extended, torturous, traumatic dream. A thought edges my mind—something I’m supposed to remember, something I’m supposed to know.

  Why We Dream was my mother’s inaugural podcast read.

  I curse myself for not quite having skimmed it. It was more of a mid-bagel glance. But I did listen to my mom describe it. The book said that every dream manifests the dreamer’s deepest, unspoken desires.

  I look at the house where Glasswell lurks inside. Agree to disagree, Michael Walker, PhD.

  The French doors open and Glasswell shows his face. “Baby?”

  I seize up in the chaise, grabbing more towels and pulling them to my chin.

  “You still out here?” he says into the darkness. “Thought I heard a wounded deer.”

  The yowl I make now is every bit as feral.

  Glasswell’s head angles toward me. His posture grows taut. He crosses the yard at a clip.

  “Did you . . . go swimming?”

  “It was an accidental dip.”

  “You must be freezing.”

  I can barely speak through my chattering teeth. Glasswell springs into action, and is—right before my very eyes—stripping off his clothes. Down come the sweatpants. Off peels his sweatshirt . . .

  Until he stands before me in a thin white muscle tank and tight black cotton boxer briefs. I can’t even pretend I’m not ogling him. The man’s muscles are gravitational, and my eyes are moons.

  When Glasswell turns toward a towel rack, I gape because I’ve never seen an ass like that on a non-principal ballerino. And I’ve been looking.

  “Olivia?” he says, and I realize he’s holding out his clothes for me. “Put these on before you catch a cold. I’ll hang your dress up.”

  “Uhhhh . . .” He expects me to strip. Like a wife.

  From inside the house comes a beeping sound—a kitchen timer or a smoke detector or please God, an alarm saying Wake up, this was only a dream.

  Glasswell looks toward the sound.

  “I’ll be right back,” he says over his shoulder. “Take that dress off.”

  I do as he says—once he’s inside and can’t see me wrestle with the soaking sheath. I take everything off, dropping my underwear into the pile, trying not to remember traipsing around in it in Masha’s suite this morning.

  I slide into Glasswell’s clothes, breathing in his eucalyptus scent. I feel the ghost of his body in the warm material. It feels like clothes straight from the dryer, except the dryer is a hot-ass bod. I’m in over my head.

  I wrap my hair up in a towel and drag two fingers underneath my eyes, where running mascara must make me seem even more like wildlife. I drape the dress over the chaise lounge and study it for damage.

  I remember Masha’s hand like a stop sign in my face, the cold judgment in her family’s eyes. I have nowhere else to go, no one else to call, no choice but to march toward this beast of a chateau with Glasswell inside.

  I enter the sunken living room to notes of Fleetwood Mac. The house is massive, its surfaces all white marble and mauve leather, soft gray velvet. Does Glasswell really own this place? What kind of prenup do we have? And where did we find that sex-height marble dining table?

  Oh God. Have I had sex with Glasswell on that table?

  Of course I have. And probably everywhere else in this house. We’re married. We must have banged a thousand times. A pleasurable tweak passes through me at this thought.

  I scowl. Even my body is against me.

  “Hey,” he says, coming around a corner I didn’t know was there.

  I yelp in surprise. His eyes roll over my body so territorially I almost slap him. Then I remember he’s not trying to be a creep. He thinks he’s my husband.

  “I love it when you wear my clothes,” he says, his low growl feeling like he’s got his hands on me. He steps close, blocking any chance of an exit with his heat, with his scent. “I know what you need.”

  I gulp. “You do?”

  Slang sex words roll from his tongue. It’s a lot of vowels and L-sounds, clearly something dirty.

  “I don’t know . . .” I say.

  “You were begging for it last night.”

  My insides wince. High Life Olivia begs for it? She doesn’t even know what “it” is!

  “I’m pretty tired,” I say. “Maybe I’ll just crash out here—”

  “Come on, I thought we’d go a little crazy tonight,” Glasswell says, sotto voce. “And try it . . . with a chicken.”

  “Okaaay,” I say to buy us all some time. Lots of people in the canyon keep chickens in their yards for eggs. I briefly flirted with the idea myself. As I look around for evidence of my husband’s husbandry, I wonder just how crazy is this realm?

  Sex stuff . . . with birds? I beg for this?

  “Really?” Glasswell seems surprised. “You’re into it?” Like a boy on Christmas morning.

  He takes my hand and pulls me deeper into the room. Oh God. Something deeply perverted is imminent. He leads me to the vast sofa and sits me down. Instead of sitting next to me, he grins.

  “Don’t move,” he says excitedly and disappears.

  Help! What is it about hot guys that turns them into sexual freaks? Life’s too easy, so they need to generate a challenge? Or is the problem too much success?

  A moment later, a heavenly scent fills my nose. Glasswell’s headed back toward me. He’s carrying a large wooden tray—of steaming food.

  “Et voila! Alouettes sans têtes,” he says. “I know your French side shudders because the dish is traditionally made only with beef, but you know, we’ve had that chicken sitting in the fridge.”

  I laugh, relieved to my marrow, and only a little concerned about my fading French comprehension skills.

  “Thank you.” I hear in my voice the profound gratitude that Glasswell and I aren’t into bestiality, but he takes my tone in stride. Like he does things like this regularly for me. Like I’m this grateful all the time.

  I can’t get my mind around how comfortable he is—in this house, in that kitchen, and most of all with me. This is clearly what he wants, not just in our wedding photo, but every day, every moment. Right now.

  I don’t understand what’s happening, but I’m starting to see it could be worse.

  I take the tray he’s holding out. The dish looks like it could have come from the kitchen at my favorite French restaurant, Petit Trois. He filleted the chicken, pounded it, stuffed it with breadcrumbs and garlic, and rolled it into a spiral. Beside it lie two forks, two napkins, and two empty white wineglasses.

  “Loire or Bourgogne?” he asks.

  Before I speak, he reads it in my eyes.

  “Loire. Great. Be right back.”

  How did he know—a second before I knew it myself? White wine from the Loire Valley is exactly what I want. It’s what my mom likes to order on her birthday.

  I run my hand over the mauve leather of the sofa, which looks like it could seat forty guests. A flame flickers in the molded stone fireplace in the corner. A window-wall looks out on all that’s lovely in LA. The plush white rug is straight from the showrooms I stare into while stuck on La Brea, coming home from Werner’s restaurant.

  Werner.

  I wonder if we know each other in this realm. Should I call him? Could he help me? He’s the least judgmental guy I know, and though I’ve never seen him correctly operate an elevator on the first try, he can keep a secret. I make a mental note to check my phone later for his number.

  Glasswell returns with a corkscrew and a bottle of Sancerre. I want to know when he moved to LA, whether his show tapes out here. I want to know what I do with my days. I clearly don’t Lyft in that fancy Lucid in the garage. But since I don’t know how to broach these topics with Glasswell, I take the corkscrew and opt for wine.

  He sits down next to me. His knee overlaps mine and his elbow rests on my thigh, and he’s warm and he’s firm and he makes no move to shift away. The length of his arm presses the length of mine, he looks at me, and smiles—that wedding photo smile, that forever-everything-entwined smile. He leans over and kisses me, halfway on my cheek and halfway on my eye, so casually it barely matters where it lands because there are seven million more where that one came from. It freezes me in place, because I can feel the love it’s made of.

  Which is scarier than anything else tonight. But it’s real. It’s here between us. And if I don’t get away soon, I’ll have to face it.

  Glasswell picks up a remote, which comes as a huge, well-timed relief. In seconds something numbing will be on TV. In high school, if memory serves, Glasswell was obsessed with Premier League soccer. I’m ready to zone out, eat my chicken, banish all thoughts of marriage from my mind, and pass out on this acre of a couch.

  When Glasswell opens the Bravo app and selects The Real Housewives of Plano, I almost spit out my wine. Glasswell watches TRH?

  “I know,” he says guiltily. “We said we were going to wean ourselves off this month—”

  “We ain’t weaning shit,” I say and snatch the remote from his hands.

  “Thank God,” he laughs as I press Play.

  We settle back on the couch, holding our plates in our laps. On TV, a real housewife is quoting Scripture, one hand lifted high in prayer, the other holding a margarita.

  I take a bite of Glasswell’s dish, and I can’t help but moan. It’s too good—hot and garlicky, tender and rich.

  “You did not cook this,” I say.

  “The dish by which a real chef wishes to be judged,” he says, with the air of pretension I haven’t heard him use yet as my husband. That’s more like it. It only took two hours for the old familiar snob Glasswell to return.

  Then he winks and nudges me, like we’re in on some sort of inside joke.

  “Were you quoting someone just now?” I ask.

  “My favorite wife,” he says.

  What? I’d never say that. Or would I, in this life? Has Glasswell turned me into an elitist snob? Is that the price for all of this? The two of us get along in this marriage realm . . . but I suck? Is that why Masha hates me?

  “It’s a complicated impersonation,” Glasswell says, “Since you were originally quoting Aurora. Still, I think I nailed the nuanced layers.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard,” I say, my tone made of ice.

  “What does that mean?” Glasswell asks.

  “What does anything mean?” My voice breaks, and he reaches over, giving my shoulder a rub. In the exact place with the exact firmness that I like.

  “It’s been a hard night,” he says.

  “It . . . has.”

  “I know,” he says kindly, softly.

  He doesn’t know. Something is seriously broken with my life. And my last brilliant idea for fixing it—going to sleep in my bed and waking up in the real world tomorrow . . . isn’t possible. I miss Gram Parsons. The thought of him in his green sweater makes a lump form in my throat. Does he exist in this version of my life? Is he—I shudder—someone else’s fuzzy little guy? I miss Masha—the Masha who doesn’t want me dead. And my mom—whom I talk to so often it’s like our phones are walkie-talkies.

  I’ve got to get back to my life. I’m on the brink of tears. I don’t sob or shake, I don’t even wipe my eyes, but somehow Glasswell sees it. He puts his arms around me.

  Now I start to sob.

  “Should we go to bed?” he asks.

  I’d love to go to bed. Especially now that I’ve consumed this anvil-heavy chicken and Sancerre. Besides, I imagine snob-Olivia’s sheets have thread counts higher than the national debt. But wait . . .

  Married people sleep in beds together.

  “You go ahead!” I say. “I’m going to . . .” Roll down the hill and see what happens? “. . . take a bath.”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  This bath. It’s like I’ve made a pilgrimage to a temple. The tub’s been cut from a single piece of Carrara marble. Surrounded by candles and dozens of expensive potions, it’s nearly the size of my old bungalow below. The tub sits in the middle of a large, glass-encased room. I look through the glass, toward the dark cliff’s edge above my former home. I pick up the matchbook on the sink and light the logs in the marble fireplace in the corner. How many fireplaces does this house have?

  I set my wineglass on the marble floor. I turn on the tap.

  As the tub fills with steaming water, I take down three of Glasswell’s sweaters from a retractable clothesline above. In real life, he wears suits, at least as far as we mere plebes know. But apparently in our house, he sports alpaca hoodies, handmade in Ecuador. I can’t help running my fingers over them, picturing his shoulders in these corners, his muscles mixed with heat.

  I pile the sweaters, dim the lights, and light a candle that smells like tomatoes growing on a vine. I dump in salts and oils and foaming gels and soon I’m sitting with my second glass of wine, submerged lavishly in bubbles, trying to clear my head.

  I try to reason with the uncanny, to use the things I know are different here. I’ve got no Masha. No mother. Just Glasswell.

  What I need is guidance, a combination fairy-apothecary, like Carol Kane in The Princess Bride. I need a sassy ethereal presence to put it to me straight, lay down the rules. What I’ve got is an evasive yogi-rabbi who vanished into the Pacific Coast Highway. But what would that stoner even say if I pinned him down?

  You’re here because you were an asshole to America’s Sweetheart Jake Glasswell. Now accomplish these three tasks to prove you’ve learned your lesson, and I’ll put you back in your real life.

  That’s what happens in these stories, right? The time-warped pay their karmic dues. Then they bound gratefully through the front door of their real home.

  The thing is, I have learned my lesson. Glasswell is human. He is capable of being kind. I’ve been too hard on him. I made him into a villain, to preserve my own fragile sense of peace.

  Now I’ll do better. It’s been painful and I’ve grown.

  So, if anyone is watching, maybe we can skip ahead to the part where I go home?

  I gaze out through the window at the one star you always see from this part of the canyon. It might not even be a star. Maybe it’s Venus.

  I make a wish. I’m ready. Someone just tell me what I have to do.

  I remember the joint Yogi Dan and Jake gave me just this morning. I spy my purse, hanging from the closet doorknob. I can reach it without even leaving the tub. I dry one hand, stretch behind me, and open the bag’s pearl clasp. I crank open the window next to the tub, light the joint on the flame of the tomato-scented candle, and take a tiny hit.

  I cough, then lean back in the tub, closing my eyes, willing the weed to be magical, to take me home. It can even spit me out naked and stoned back at Masha’s real reception and I could figure out the rest.

  But I stay right here, extremely tranquil and a little obsessed with the geometric tile of the backsplash until my wineglass is empty and the bathwater is cold.