Alexa had been trying to get her to give Max another chance, with some bullshit about how she couldn’t give up on love at the first sign of adversity, and that she was clearly miserable without him, and that sometimes relationships took hard work, and no, their fight wasn’t a sign that she never should have dated him in the first place. First of all, yes it was a sign, and secondly, how did her sister know her so well?

“And that’s nice and all, but unless he says any of that to me, it doesn’t really matter, now does it? I haven’t heard from him since I told him to stop sending those cakes. Granted, I’m not sure if any of it would matter at all—I still think we’re too different, no matter how much we both love each other. Maybe if we’d met when we were in our twenties, we’d be able to figure all of this out together, but as it is, we’re just both too old, too set in our own ways to change for other people. And when you add his job to all of that … it seems impossible.”

Jamila took a bite of Olivia’s favorite spicy curry and her eyes widened. She jammed her fork into the pile of rice on her plate.

“I’m just saying, don’t be too definite about that, okay? And please stop acting like you’re some old crone, too old to change—you just moved across the country this year! You’re not all that set in your ways!”

Olivia tossed the remote to Jamila.

“And I started watching a show I’ve scorned for years, and now I’m addicted to it. Find it for us, please.”

Jamila apparently got the message that Olivia was done talking about Max, because she scrolled through the channels and found Housewives for them without another word.

When the episode was over, Jamila got up.

“I should go home, I have an early day tomorrow.” She raised an eyebrow at Olivia. “That is, unless you need me? I can stay if you want to talk, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted that.”

Olivia shook her head.

“No, you go home. But … I might take a rain check on that? Thanks for dinner. And for coming over.”

Jamila grinned at her.

“You’re welcome. And you can have that rain check anytime.”

After Jamila left and Olivia had put the leftovers away, she got back on the couch and pulled her phone out of her pocket to check her email.

Draft contract was the subject line of the email that popped up. Olivia went to click on it, but stopped, confused. What contract? Was this some sort of spam?

Then she looked closer, and froze. After a few seconds, she opened the email.