Page 13 of The Villa

I find Chess there, a dishcloth tucked into her belt as she stirs a pot on the stove, her own glass of wine in one hand. Her phone sits on the counter, and I hear music playing from hidden speakers somewhere in the house. It takes me a minute to pick out the tune, and when I do, I laugh, making her turn around.

“Are you seriously cooking and listening to Avril Lavigne?” I ask her, and she gestures at me with her spoon, dripping some kind of viscous sauce on the stovetop.

“I am listening to my incredibly special ‘Em and Chess BFFs Playlist,’ thank youverymuch.”

She nods at her phone, and I pick it up. Sure enough, she’sgot a playlist pulled up called “JessieC+EmmyMac4Eva (1998–2018)” filled with songs that bring back an avalanche of memories from all the years we’ve known each other, from singing into hairbrushes in her bedroom to drunken karaoke the night before my wedding.

Even the title is nostalgic. “Jessie C” and “Emmy Mac” were old nicknames for each other. I stopped using hers because she never liked people referring to her as any normal offshoot of Jessica, and she’d stopped using mine once I’d become Emily Sheridan instead of Emily McCrae.

But it’s nice, seeing those old versions of ourselves side by side again.

Touched, I put the phone back down and push myself onto the counter, feet dangling as I watch her cook. “Why does it end in 2018?” I ask, and she turns, a wrinkle of confusion between her brows.

“Hmm?”

“The playlist,” I say. “It starts in 1998, which was the year we met, but it ends, like, five years ago.”

“Ah,” she says, turning back around. “I made it for our twentieth anniversary party.”

Now it’s my turn to be confused. “What twentieth anniversary party?”

“The one I was going to throw,” Chess replies as the music shifts into something fromHigh School Musical. “It was going to be this huge thing, like arealanniversary party, but afriendshipanniversary. I was gonna have it at my place in Kiawah, invite all our friends, family. Everybody.”

It sounds sweet, but also slightly unhinged, which is kind of Chess’s entire brand. “Why didn’t you do it?”

She turns back to me, placing the spoon in a little ceramic cradle on the counter and folding her arms. “Well, I got busy.That was the yearThe Powered Pathcame out in paperback, and suddenly everything went…”

She waves her hands around because is there any word that can sum up just how nuts things went with that book? Chess had been successful before that, of course.Things My Mama Never Taught Mehad done really well, andThe Powered Pathhardcover had done even better, but the paperback had really skyrocketed.

That’s when Oprah had happened, and Chess had suddenly been on TV, in magazines, the kind of famous that meant people actually recognized her on the street.

“And thenyouwere so busy,” she continues, then gives me a look out of the side of her eye. “Wasn’t that the year Matt started all the Baby Stuff?”

Ah, yes. The Baby Stuff.

That had come later, actually. It started Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when Matt got up at our family dinner, held my hand, and announced to everyone that we had decided to “start trying for a family.”

We’d talked about it hypothetically, not in a way that felt all that serious, and I certainly hadn’t wanted toannounceit to anyone. I still remember sitting there, my hand sweaty against Matt’s palm, my face red as I thought,Do my parents really need to know that we’re about to start having a lot of sex?

But that was Matt. Very much a “state your intentions, follow through” kind of guy, and my parents had looked so genuinely happy about the idea, and it just felt easy to go along with it all, I guess. Like Chess, Matt was good at kind of sweeping you up in his plans while making you think it had been your idea all along.

I hadn’t known it then, but that was the beginning of theend. That Thanksgiving dinner with Matt shooting me a look for refilling my wineglass even though I definitely wasn’t pregnant yet, and my mom pulling up her Ancestry.com account to see what family names we might want to use, and my brothers joking about who would be the favorite uncle, and me thinking,This is great, this is what I want, I’m just out of sorts that he announced it so early, that’s all.

Now I shrug off Chess’s question, saying, “I also wrote two Petal books that year, so you’re right, it was a crazy time.”

Chess turns back to the stove, taking a sip of wine. “Anyway, the timing was bad, I guess. Plus, I brought up the idea to Matt, and he was, like,superweird about it. I think he felt like I was stepping on his toes or something? Like only he could have an anniversary with you?” She laughs then, her hair brushing her shoulders as she tips her head back. “Do you remember how mad he got at your reception when I joked that he was actually marrying both of us?”

He hadn’t actually beenmad, just… irritated, I think. I can still remember how his smile had gone a little hard on his face, how I’d had this sudden knot in my stomach.

What will I do if they don’t like each other?I’d wondered when they’d first met. Things with me and Matt had moved pretty quickly, and he and Chess had only hung out a couple of times before the wedding.

But that had ended up being a pointless fear. Even though Chess can be a lot, Matt genuinely liked her. The three of us hanging out had never been awkward, and Matt good-naturedly accepted our in-jokes or references to some teen movie from 2002. Thinking about it now, I realize that I almost miss him.

What a fucking pathetic thought.

Matt is gone now, and Chess is here.Iam here, and I hop off the counter, going to inspect the stove.

There’s the pot Chess was stirring, which I see now is gravy, and there’s another sauté pan of asparagus on the back burner. In the oven, I can see a chicken, skin brown and crispy, surrounded by piles of golden chunks of potato, and I straighten up, my eyebrows raised.

---