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“Shira!” her mom called again. Shira flopped herself over the side of the bed, landing dramatically (and painfully) on one knee.

“Fuck,” she said. Nobody responded. She shouted, “Fuck!”

Her door opened. Talia poked her head inside. “Are you dead?”

“Yes,” said Shira.

“Cool,” said Talia. “I call your computer.” She shut the door.

Great. Fine. Everything was fine. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to reach for her phone, trying to avoid the rising tide of dread in her stomach. Two of the pings had been emails from work; a third was a text from her boss asking why she hadn’t yet responded to the emails. None were from the group chat. The group chat had been silent for months at this point, yet she always instinctively looked for it anyway.

The next notification came from Leo, which was the first to make her smile. The only to make her smile, at least in the past month. Hey! You home yet? Then another ding. Can’t wait to get my print of New Country signed.

The smile dimmed. Right, he’d purchased a print of one of her paintings from the show. She went to tuck her phone away, then hesitated.

“Shira!” called her mom. “We’re going to eat without you.”

“One second!” she hollered back. “It’s work!” She quickly typed out responses to the work emails—they weren’t even that urgent! It was already close of business in LA!—and then turned to Leo’s. Yup! See you soon, I hope?

She tossed her phone on her bed and ran away before anyone could get back to her. Then returned to shove her phone into the pocket of her sweatpants because if her boss called, she knew she had to be able to pick up.

At the table, she kind of wished she could take her phone out without getting a reprimand and scroll so that she didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. She sat across from Talia, her mom on her right and her dad on her left, and all were watching her cautiously like she was a piece of old ordnance they’d dug up in a field. “What?” she said, bristling.

Talia said something in Hebrew. She’d become nearly fluent in the past year; she was planning on studying abroad next semester at her university’s partner campus in Tel Aviv.

“I’m going to start spraying you with water like a misbehaving cat when you speak Hebrew to me,” Shira said. “You know I can’t understand it. It’s extremely annoying. I wouldn’t speak French to you.”

“Yeah, ’cause you can’t speak French,” Talia said. Fair point. Shira had taken French to the minimum level needed to pass her school’s language requirement and only really remembered how to say the colors and parts of the body. “You used to understand Hebrew.”

“I mean, not really.” She’d known maybe a hundred words back when she was in Hebrew school, mostly related to prayers and the ancient Israel of the Torah—so if Talia had been talking about olives or fruits or numbers, maybe Shira would have understood. She used to be able to read Hebrew pretty well, though. Could she still? When was the last time she’d tried? It wasn’t like she’d been able to make it home for the most significant Jewish holidays where she’d need to, Passover or Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, in years.

An unexpected pang hit her in the chest. That’s what the party is for, she told herself. She’d get more involved in Judaism again when she was older and had more time. For now, she’d throw a great party and that would be her connection.

“We’re just worried about you,” said her mom, and it took a moment for Shira to realize that she wasn’t talking about her lack of Hebrew knowledge. “You seem very…stressed.”

“You hesitated before you said stressed,” Shira said. She couldn’t argue with the fact that she was stressed, so she’d pick something else to argue about. “What were you actually about to say?”

Her mom and her dad glanced at each other, eyes widening and narrowing, and Shira had to bite her tongue to keep herself from snapping, Stop having telepathic conversations about me. Dad was the one to turn to her this time. “Unhappy,” he said. “You seem very unhappy.” He paused. “And also stressed.”

She stabbed her pasta with her fork, wishing a tiny bit that it was a person and not a piece of rigatoni with Broccolini and garlic sauce, which was unfortunately very good. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Talia actually spoke up in English this time, which, to Shira, made things feel really serious. What was this, an intervention? “It hasn’t been that long since you and William broke up.”

“It’s been months,” Shira said frostily.

“Still,” Talia said. “You were together a long time.”

“Not that long.” Queen Elsa of Arendelle had nothing on Shira’s iciness right now.

“Still,” said Talia, but Shira had had enough.

“I’m the one who broke up with him, remember?” Though, admittedly, that did understate how hard the decision had been. She’d loved showing up at galas on his arm, enjoyed running into colleagues at restaurants or bars and having their eyes widen when he introduced himself.

But he’d ultimately forced her hand. It wasn’t the fourth time he’d left her on the verge of orgasm to take a call, or the umpteenth time he’d flaked on a friend’s birthday party or a dinner date or work lunch.

No. It was the day her show debuted. Everybody she knew was there, from her best friends (a lance went through her heart at the thought of Danica standing before her paintings with her plastic cup of wine, flanked by Ellery and Nora, beaming so proudly) to coworkers to random acquaintances she hadn’t seen in years but who happened to be in the LA area. And William was there, too. He showed up ten minutes late, but he came. And the first thought Shira had when she looked out at the crowd and saw him wasn’t I’m so happy to see him but Wow, I can’t believe he’s actually here. It had taken a few months for her to finally pull the plug, but that was the moment it started easing free.

She would always feel like he loved her second to his job. And if she’d ever worked up the nerve to ask him if that was true, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to respond, which was a response in itself.