2. Cali
CALI
Eight has always been my lucky number.
For more than a decade, it's been all eights, all the time. You can understand why I'm a teensy bit superstitious about the number. It's been my four-leaf clover, my horseshoe, my lucky rabbit's foot. Eight has always shown up to deliver good news.
Always.
So when the United app coughs up a single available seat on this morning's red-eye flight to Newark (UA 818), I take it as a sign, and I book it right away.
Then I proceed to have a brief and vicious panic attack.
What am I doing? This is crazy. I'm losing my mind. Stress hormones are turning my brain into Swiss cheese. Or maybe I picked up a playground parasite from when I finished Isabella's leftover Frosty last week and it's devouring my body from the inside out.
But that notification. That stupid, lilac-colored notification.
~Congratulations on reaching your goal weight—You've lost 40 lbs!~
Ugh. Even the subtly condescending tone of that dumb message is getting under my skin.
It's like when Simone Marquez's mom in middle school used to look at all us girls before dropping us off at the movies to praise our outfits and wish us luck.
She'd always save me for last, pulling me aside from the rest of my friends to whisper in my ear, "You're just so brave to wear a tube top, hun.
I wish I had your body confidence! Go get 'em! "
The little confetti animation every time I open the BioInfo app is just the cherry on top. You did it! Sparkle, sparkle, fireworks popping, champagne corks flying. You reached your goal!
Actually, ma'am, I want to sneer at the app, I did not. Someone else did it for me, in my bathroom, in the dead of night.
An email notification descends from the top of my phone screen, confirming my flight change. With it comes a wave of anxiety. Just like that, I'm right back to panic mode.
I'm throwing away a gilded, gift-wrapped chance at success for my new company.
Emmett Glover has a calendar guarded more fiercely than the Crown Jewels, but he made room for me.
If I just tell the alarm bells in my head to STFU, I could be chatting with him over croissants and coffee in just a couple of hours.
Who knows what would happen after that? Maybe he'd fund me, and the rocket ship of my dreams would be fueled up and headed for the stars. Don't I deserve that? Haven't I worked hard?
Hell yes, I have.
But instead of capitalizing on all the hard work I've put in… I'm going to ghost him.
On the back of a nasty little hunch.
I open up a blank email and type out a bunch of gibberish.
So sorry, family emergency, would love to reschedule at your earliest convenience.
When I read it back, it sounds like exactly what it is: a Hail Mary lobbed by a woman whose life is detonating in slow motion.
He'll skim it and be glad he dodged a bullet.
She's flaky. Unserious. Probably one of those founders who can't separate the personal from the professional.
He won't be wrong.
But I hit send anyway.
Because I know, deep in the pit of my stomach where a woman's intuition lives, that I am not going to be able to do one single productive thing until I know for sure who stepped their manicured little toes on my scale.
Even if I could somehow force myself to zombie walk into that coffee shop, sit across from Emmett Glover, and nod at all the right moments, it wouldn't make a difference.
I'd be a hollowed-out gourd of a woman, rotting from the inside, thinking about a stranger's bare, dainty feet on my bathroom tile.
So I jump out of bed and pack. I throw yesterday's clothes—battle armor undergarments included—into my suitcase without bothering to fold them, then hurry downstairs to check out at the front desk, where a very nice young man named Bryce asks if everything was to my satisfaction. I tell him it was lovely.
Uber to the airport, TSA Precheck line filled exclusively with screaming babies and illegally registered Emotional Support birds/ferrets/gerbils, then a four-and-a-half hour plane ride scented with the burps and farts of the passenger to my left, who's inexplicably eating a pretzel with mustard for breakfast.
By the time we land, I kind of envy the wailing babies. I'd like to scream, too. I've spent the whole flight running through the list of possible rationalizations in my head.
Maybe Todd stepped on by accident with one foot still on the ground.
Maybe a raccoon snuck into the house. Or two raccoons.
Maybe someone broke in, and while ransacking the house for all my worldly possessions, they decided to take a quick peek at their body fat percentage.
But then again…
Maybe not.
I let myself into the brownstone a little after four in the afternoon, New York time. The first thing that hits me is how normal everything is.
Hayden's tiny rainboots sit by the umbrella stand, the ones with the frog eyes on the toes.
Isabella's, even tinier, much pinker, stand next to them.
On the console table, Todd has once again dumped his keys not in the bowl that I put there explicitly for that purpose.
The Glade plug-in by the stairs is still pumping out vaguely lavender-tinged chemical sludge.
It's a home. It's my home. I am suddenly, viciously possessive of all of it.
"Todd?" I call, even though I know he's not here, because I checked his location as soon as I landed.
He's at the office in Manhattan, like I assumed he would be. So I have a little while.
I stand at the bottom of the stairs with my carry-on still in my hand and look up the stairs, toward where our master bedroom looms ominously.
If I go up those stairs, I won't come back down the same person. There'll be a Before Cali and an After Cali, with this staircase as the dividing line between them.
But I can't rest until I know.
I have to know. I have to.
So, with a deep breath, I begin the climb.
The master bedroom looks fine. I set my bag down by the door and just stand there for a second, taking it in.
I want to remember it like this. The last few seconds of not knowing for sure. Even now, there's a stubborn little gremlin in my chest still whispering, Maybe you really are crazy. Maybe Todd's right and you need to get on some meds.
I want to strangle that gremlin.
But I also kind of love her, because she's the only thing that's kept me married to a story I want so badly to remain true. And what's more precious than the little lies we tell ourselves?
I start with the bathroom. That's where the scale is, and the scale is what started this.
It's right where I left it, the navy blue plastic square, sitting on the tile by the tub.
I crouch down and poke it with one finger.
Right away, it lights up and chirps helpfully, like it just can't wait to be of service.
I feel a pang of betrayal at the thought of this scale chirping like that for another woman.
It's like imagining your dog licking someone else's face.
Or, I guess, like imagining your husband licking someone else's—
Yeah. You get it. Point is, this thing is Judas.
I don't get on it. I'm afraid of what it might say.
~Congratulations! You've added back on forty pounds—but on the plus side, you've lost your husband!~
Instead, I stand up and look at the counter.
That's when my Spidey senses start to tingle.
My hairbrush is sitting by the sink where I always leave it, bristles up. I pick it up—and there, tangled in the bristles among my own dark brown strands, are several long hairs that are not mine.
They're blonde. Honey blonde, thick, glamorous. It takes either a gift from God or three hundred bucks and a four-hour session in the salon chair to achieve this tone.
I lift the brush closer to the window light, because I want to be sure. The gremlin is screaming that maybe it's a trick of the eye, or it's a stray thread from a towel, or those damn raccoons.
But it's not. There's no denying what it is.
I set the brush back down with trembling fingers. I'm sweating and shivering at the same time. My body is as confused as my mind is.
I open the medicine cabinet next. I don't even know what I'm looking for, except that some animal part of my brain has taken the wheel.
There's a tube of mascara that isn't mine—Too Faced Better Than Sex, and isn't that a kick in the teeth?
—shoved behind Todd's deodorant where he probably thought I'd never look.
I don't wear that mascara. I wear the boring CVS one because, by the time I remember makeup exists, it's usually already eight in the morning and I've got a child gluing himself, herself, or his/her sibling to a banister downstairs.
When I close the cabinet, my own reflection swings into view in the mirror. I look like a woman in a slasher film right before something terrible happens behind her.
Hollow. Pale. Haunted.
The next logical place to look would be the bed, but I just can't bring myself to do it yet.
That's the inevitable end point. And yeah, maybe I'm edging myself with horror and heartbreak like the sick little freak I am, but, well, sue me.
This is my life that's exploding. The least I can do is let it explode on my terms.
So, delaying the finale, I go to Todd's nightstand.
My favorite coffee mug, the one that says Girls Will Be Girls superimposed over a drawing of a female praying mantis slicing the head off of her male lover, is resting in a puddle of condensation.
That's not so unusual. He's a heathen who leaves dirty dishes everywhere, so if anything, it would be more suspicious if there weren't a dirty mug somewhere within arm's reach.
But when I look closer, I see a lipstick stain pressed into the white ceramic.
A perfect little crescent of filler-enhanced smoochers, in a muted mauve-pink that I'm sure is selling like hotcakes on TikTok Shop.
Needless to say, I'm not up on the latest in lipstick color trends.