I swallow. I’m crushed and have no idea what to do. Where to go. Of course this isn’t her house. Of course my mom moved on. She only lived in this duplex in the version of life where I held her back. When I left for college, my mother found her way on her own. She’s famous now and good at what she does. She’s vanished from my life.

  I don’t want to leave my yard, the orange tree still bearing the swing my mom hung for me twenty years ago. Looking closer, I see the painful signs that someone else lives here now. My mom would tend her flowers with far more love and care. Toy trucks line the porch. This is someone else’s childhood now.

  Tears prick the back of my eyes. I’m trespassing and can’t move from this lawn. Jake puts his arms around me. I fall into him, holding on. Suddenly I can barely stand up on my own.

  “How did this happen?” Emotion cracks my voice.

  He sighs, like we’ve discussed this many times, yet somehow it still hasn’t sunk in. “Your mom never got over you doing what any responsible adult would have done. It was just a simple loan . . .”

  And just like that, he confirms all my suspicions. I see the whole thing played out as disastrously as I imagined. But it doesn’t have to stay like this. I’m sure it doesn’t.

  Jake holds me close, looks in my eyes with an intensity that’s almost too much.

  “Your life was just beginning,” Jake says. “You wanted to go. You needed to go. And every lucky thing since then happened because we got on that plane to New York.”

  In Real Life, taking that flight was impossible when my dad died. But in this one, I took it. Because I’d kissed Jake.

  And after last night, I understand how that would sway me. We’re that good together.

  “Maybe we should go home,” Jake says. His voice is kind, but it’s the wrong thing to say.

  “No.” I cry harder, tugging away from his embrace. Getting lost in Jake’s spell—as I’d done last night—is what cost me my relationship with my mom. I suddenly see that if I’m going to do this, it’s got to be alone.

  I take a step away from him, backing against the trunk of a tangerine tree. I feel the bark against my shoulders, smell the fruit, and I know where to find her. It’s Saturday morning, and the Santa Monica Farmers Market is three blocks away. She’ll be volunteering at Food Forward.

  “Jake, I have to go.”

  “What?”

  “Take the car, take Gram Parsons, go home. I’ll meet you there this afternoon. I’ll explain everything.”

  “Olivia—” He sounds shocked and a little hurt, but he doesn’t follow me as I take off running down the street.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  The Third Street promenade is a bustling pedestrian-only block with the biggest and most famous farmers market in Southern California. From artisan soaps to fresh dates to macrobiotic popsicles, they have everything you never knew you needed. When I spot the Food Forward logo on a stack of boxes on a dolly, I follow it to a booth at the edge of the market.

  “Rick!” I say to the founder of the organization. Please know me, please know me, please—

  “Olivia,” he says, doing a double take, giving me a worried squint. “Are you here about the glitch in auto-pay? We called your assistant. I really don’t know how that happened.”

  “There was no mistake. I tripled the donation.”

  He blinks. “That’s—wow. Thank you.”

  “Is my mom—is Lorena here?”

  “She and Silver just left,” he says and points toward the parking lot. He glances back at me, a note of worry in his face. “Green Polestar. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “She’s with Silver?” I ask. I knew they worked together, but weekend volunteering seems a little much.

  I take off running. When I catch a glimpse of ombre tunic and matching harem pants, the word pours out of me, echoing through the parking lot.

  “Mom!” The cry is all instinct, but it dies on my lips in a strangled yelp when I see my mother turn to Silver and adjust the orchid tucked behind her ear.

  Suddenly I’m so jealous I want to tear this Pushcart nominee in half. Now they’re getting into Silver’s Polestar and already pulling away.

  I hear a canine yelp and look up to see Jake’s car squeal to a stop one foot in front of me. Gram Parsons sits in Jake’s lap, his head out the driver’s window.

  “Get in, gorgeous,” Jake says. “Gram Parsons wants to tail them.”

  We head north along PCH, Jake shadowing Silver’s car as surfers in wet suits bob on distant waves.

  “What do we know about this Silver?” I ask.

  “Silver’s not your problem,” Jake says. “This is about you and your mom. Do whatever you can to tune Silver’s false positivity out.”

  “Oh God, this is really bad.”

  Instead of a house, they pull into a parking lot. Is this the studio where they record their show?

  “Mom,” I call as she gets out of her car. I say it again, louder and more desperately. “Mom.”

  She whirls around, her eyes bright and so familiar on mine. I’m dying to run into her arms, but I manage to hold back. And it’s a good thing I do. Because even though there’s a moment of true love and joy on her face—it quickly twists into something else. Something I’ve never seen on her before, something I never fathomed could exist. Lorena is not happy to see me.

  “What are you doing here?” Silver asks. “An unwelcome presence is a cancer on the world.”

  “Silver,” my mom says, “don’t.”

  I have to proceed as if Silver doesn’t exist. As if it’s just my mom and me.

  Mom hasn’t said a word to me. She looks at Jake, standing not quite at my side but solidly, supportively a little bit behind me.

  “Hello, Jake,” she says.

  “Lorena.”

  “Olivia.” Her face is like a stone.

  “Mom,” I say, letting my voice break.

  “We’re on in ten, Lorena.” Silver’s voice flows like poison through the chasm between my mom and me. “Strength is strongest when it’s weak,” she adds.

  “Can I talk to you alone?” I ask my mom.

  “I’m spreading a safety net for her,” Silver says, “and it’s made of razor wire that only cuts your soul.”

  “Olivia,” my mom says my name and I almost fall over in relief. It’s cold and angry, but it’s familiar, too. She loves me, and she knows I love her. She has to.

  “Mom,” I breathe. I left the matcha in the car. I’ve botched this badly, but I’m here, as sincere as I’ve ever been. I love my mom. I need her. Surely, she must love and need me, too? “Can we please talk? I have some things I need to tell you. I—”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “I’m sorry too! I’m so sorry, and all I want is to make things right—”

  “No,” she says, “I can’t do this—”

  “Talk to me?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait. You’re about to record. I’ll wait here until you’re finished and—”

  “No,” she says. Just no.

  “What?” I whisper. “Mom.” I catch my breath. I close my eyes. “I hurt you.”

  “And you insist on perpetuating it,” Silver says. “Can’t you let her heal? When a wound is always open it becomes a life.”

  Tears dampen my mom’s eyes. I hate the sight of them, but . . . is this the crack in her veneer I need to make my way in?

  I come close. I reach for her hand. It’s cool and soft just like always.

  “It’s still me,” I whisper from the bottom of my heart.

  She whips her hand away and turns. “That’s the problem, Olivia.”

  Then she walks inside the glossy building and is gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  I run my hand along the mattress the next morning, seeking my husband’s heat. We’d made love in the wee hours, both of us half asleep, and the memory of it is hazy and wonderful, like the luckiest kind of dream. This is the first time I’ve awoken in the High Life without Jake holding me—and it’s the first time I’ve wanted him to. My body feels cadaverous, buried in the bed, and it takes me several seconds to remember why:

  In the parking lot yesterday, Lorena looked at me like I was dead to her. I saw with my own eyes and felt with my own heart that my mother and I are estranged.

  I want to go home. I want my mom back. I’ll never take her love for granted again. I want out of the High Life. Except—

  “Jake?” I say his name before I know I’m going to. I say it with an urgency I’m not ready to know I feel.

  He appears in the doorway between our bedroom and the master bath, wearing a robe and bringing sexy back to brushing teeth. He smiles, toweling off his freshly showered hair like it’s no big whoop to be so gorgeous. Hey you, my loins demand, get back in bed where you belong.

  “Good morning,” he says, wasting America’s Sexiest Voice on just me. Concern narrows his eyes and he sits by me on the bed. “You’re still upset about yesterday.”

  “It’s not just yesterday,” I say, my voice cracking. “Has she hated me that much for ten years?”

  “Olivia—”

  “How did I let this happen?”

  I slump against him and begin to cry, my shoulders shaking in his embrace. His arms are a comfort, but I’m so lost and scared. I don’t know how to get home to my real world, where my mom calls me fifteen times a day and borrows my shoes without asking and clips comics from the paper for my refrigerator and texts me songs that suit my vocal range for the next time I karaoke. And likes me.

  But when I do find Yogi Rabbi Dan, and I convince him to take me back to my Real Life, it will mean leaving this version of Jake behind.

  A week ago it would have been an easy bargain.

  I think of the ridiculous fun we had planting our garden together. The connection flowing between us, pitcher to catcher to pitcher on the mound. The magic of his skin on mine in the middle of the night. To say nothing of what he can do with his tongue. This week with Jake, I’ve experienced a level of intimacy I’ve never let myself imagine having with anyone.

  Especially Glasswell.

  And that’s who he’ll be again when I go home.

  It hurts to think of that, and I wonder—could I make him love me in Real Life? Hah. That feels about as likely as making up with High Life Lorena.

  Why can’t I take him with me? Why can’t I cobble together my best life, picking and choosing the choicest parts like an interdimensional Frankenstein?

  I don’t know who made the rules, but it appears that no one gets it all—not Helen Gurley Brown, not Frankenstein, not Ebenezer Scrooge. Perhaps the purpose of this glimpse of parallel-Olivia is for me to choose. What matters most to me? What sacrifices am I willing to make?

  Not my mom. Not Masha. I’ve been clear on that since Day One here. But now . . . how do I turn my back on Jake? He’s too good—we’re too good—to make that call just yet.

  And . . . I’m crying again.

  He kisses my forehead, dabs my tears with his fingertips. “Do you want to skip the party? Stay home and take it easy?”

  I shake my head. For once, I know what he’s talking about. Having finally wised to the Delphic powers of iCal, I’m equipped with the knowledge that Jake and I have RSVP’d to celebrate Aurora’s thirtieth birthday.

  Nothing fancy, just your basic chartered yacht to Catalina Island, which lies an hour off the coast of LA. Followed by your basic formal ball at the historic Catalina Casino. The basic Wrigley Mansion rented out for Aurora’s guests. It’s as over the top as Aurora—but it would be a lie to say I’m not tingling about another hotel tilt with Jake.

  I want to see him in a tux, his hair wild from the ocean breeze. I want to dance in his arms as an orchestra plays Count Basie. I want to kick his ass at mini golf. I want to snorkel with garibaldis, share a waffle cone from Scoops, and muse about returning in the winter to read novels by the fire in a cottage within walking distance of the library.

  Maybe it’s frivolous, and maybe it will make leaving the High Life that much harder when the time comes for me to go.

  Or maybe it will be the trip that convinces me to stay.

  “We’re still going,” I tell him, running my fingers through his hair, breathing in the eucalyptus soap on his warm skin.

  “Are you sure?” His mouth finds my neck, his tongue drawing the lightest line down my throat. “Because it could also be Sex O’Clock all day—”

  “No,” I say, laughing. “If we don’t take a break, we’re going to become conjoined. Then we’ll have to pose for medical photos and have a painful operation—”

  “We could join the circus,” Jake says, slipping an arm around me.

  “The clock strikes Sex O’Clock tonight at the Wrigley, after you wriggle out of your tux. Are you packed?”

  “Yes.” One kiss from Jake, one slip of his tongue between my lips has me ready to perish all thoughts of ever leaving our bed. I moan, then push him back a little to look into his eyes.

  “Wait,” I say. “Is this what we do?”

  “Is what what we do?”

  “Use sex to avoid our problems?”

  He squints at me, confused.

  “Not just parties we don’t want to go to,” I say, gaining steam, “but also this fight with my mom. Do you and I fuck to cope? We . . . fope?”

  “Olivia, we’re in love. We fove.”

  “Oh,” my voice comes out a little squeak, far more thrilled to hear his words than either of us expected me to be. We’re in love.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Dr. Kenyon and all the relationship podcasts I listen to,” Jake says, “it’s that married people having sex is never a problem.”

  “That’s kind of my point,” I say. “Maybe sex is a safe place for us to hide.”

  “But half the time we discuss our problems while we do it!” Jake says. “Remember last month when we had to decide on a new toilet for the half bathroom?”

  “When you’re having sex more often than not,” I say, “things are bound to come up in the middle of it. Ding-dong! It’s the FedEx guy! Let’s have a four-legged race to sign for the package!”

  “The way I see it, we’ve learned by now which problems are worth fixing, and which ones are better left alone.” He says this tenderly, but it’s a shock. Jake thinks my mom is a problem better left alone.

  Before I can argue, he glances at his watch. “Let’s leave here in ten so we don’t miss the boat?” He doesn’t wait for my answer—and it takes me a moment to realize he isn’t being rude. He simply doesn’t think I’ll have more to say on this subject. There’s a marital shorthand he knows and I don’t.

  As I head toward my closet, I think about how everything Jake’s accustomed to is alien to me. The moments where I’m best at blending in are when it’s just the two of us. But life isn’t just one relationship—even when that relationship is as wonderful as ours seems to be.

  A suitcase is spread open on my closet floor, half of it filled with Jake’s clothes. I run my hand over his T-shirts, his socks, his red leather dopp kit.

  I open the drawers in my closet, looking for clothes to add. As I dig around for a bathing suit, my hands find a stack of books buried at the bottom of a drawer. I take them out and spread them on the floor.

  They’re self-help books about repairing broken relationships with loved ones. Lorena and I reviewed a couple of these on her real-world podcast. In that realm I never dreamed of reading one for guidance in my life.

  I flip through Closing the Open Borders of Your Heart. A year ago, I couldn’t even open this one. I judged it as the height of woo-woo cheese. But High Life Olivia? She read the fuck out of this. And dog-eared dozens of pages. And highlighted things. And made notes in the margins.

  Original wound = the mirror?

  Don’t expect infinity from an hourglass.

  Häagen-Dazs can’t satiate Mother Hunger.

  Are these the ravings of a lunatic? Or simply another me grieving for her mom?

  High Life Olivia may have told Jake that Lorena was a problem best left alone. But tucked away deep inside her closet, she was stockpiling self-help books like food in a fallout shelter. She was studying each one like it might be a map to guide her home.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  “What are the odds Gram Parsons gets seasick?” Jake asks later that morning as he turns off PCH toward the port at Marina del Rey. I feel the sharp stab of déjà vu. Another life ago, on the morning of Masha’s bachelorette, I tried to parallel park into the same spot where Jake parks now.

  I flash on my best friend’s blindfolded face, her gleeful shriek when I pulled off the bandanna and she saw that we were going fishing. God, I miss her. If Mash were here, if she didn’t hate me too, she’d tell me what to do about Lorena, about Jake. But Masha’s half a world away in Sicily—and for the good of her honeymoon, I hope I’m the furthest thing from her mind. It’s bad enough I was a stain on her wedding day.

  When I realize Jake’s still waiting for an answer, I hoist Gram Parsons in my arms.

  “Seasick? This sea dog?” I say, pushing painful thoughts aside. “He was here a week ago, catching halibut with me and—”

  I catch myself, break into silence. Jake gives me the same concerned look he gave me when I pulled up to my mom’s old house.

  “Gram Parsons will be fine,” I say.

  “Fine . . . and afloat,” Jake says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask as Jake reaches into the back seat for a small wrapped package.

  “Don’t laugh,” he says. “Or do. But I’ll feel better if he wears this.” Jake opens the package to reveal a tiny life vest. Turquoise. With the handle on top that will make Gram Parsons look like a doggie briefcase. A near replica of the one I’d bought for him back home.