41. Jenna
Jenna
“Here. Extra strong—I told the guy to make it angry,” Hailey says, handing me a coffee the size of a fire extinguisher and dropping into the seat beside me with the enormous soft pretzel she’s already half eaten. “Drink. You look like a hostage video.”
“Thank you. You’re a wellspring of comfort.”
Hailey arrived at my apartment this morning exactly sixty-one minutes before I needed to leave, wearing last night’s clothes and this morning’s smile, and she took one look at my face and my suitcases and hugged me. “I’m so sorry, Nen.”
She didn’t want gory details, just a vague understanding of what made me bail on my whole life in the span of an evening.
I didn’t have much besides, “I just can’t anymore.
” And she didn’t push—just piloted the aftermath with coffee, Advil, and the task of calling our mother to warn her I was coming home at zero notice and not to make this a “Scene,” capital S.
The gate seating is all hard plastic and armrest conflict.
A couple with twin infants is already playing Pass the Screaming Potato, and the man next to me is doing a full portfolio reallocation on his iPad, muttering about quarterlies.
Hailey and I move to the farthest bench, our knees bumping like we’re wired for codependent misery.
“So,” she says finally. “You’re sure you want to go through with this?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because it’s a lot, Jen. What you’re giving up.
The job. The apartment. The marriage.” She gestures at the gold band still on my finger.
“If last night showed me anything, it’s that you’ve built a life here.
Even after that speech went wrong, you got up there and took the room back.
Those people respect you. You built that yourself. ”
“I built a costume.” I twist the band, slow. I don’t know why I haven’t taken it off yet.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Hailey says, tearing off a chunk of dough and pointing it at me like a cross-examiner.
“You think it’s a costume because you built it around yourself.
But you were giving valedictorian speeches and organizing everybody else’s disasters long before Chicago.
The buildings got taller, your accent got smoother, but you didn’t become somebody else. ”
I take a gulp of coffee, let the bitter work its way through the scaffolding inside my chest. My arms are covered in a fine, anxious static. “Then why’d I have to work so hard at it?”
Hailey rolls her eyes. “Because careers that earn you stupid amounts of money are fucking hard.” She takes another bite and her phone buzzes with a text from our mother.
“What did she say?”
She scrolls one-handed, thumb up and down the message chain. “She said, and I quote, ‘Oh.’ Then: ‘Is this about her marriage?’ And: ‘do you want chicken with your rice when you get here, because I have to leave by five and I need to know.’”
“Classic.”
“She never asks for an explanation. Just logistics.”
It’s comforting, in a way. The Queens version of unconditional support: don’t ask, don’t demand. Just set a plate.
“Hey, at least she’s sober,” Hailey says with a shrug. “She’ll get her thirty-day chip soon. She’s real proud. But she’s gunning for the sixty-day one since it’s gold, and you know she loves her gold.”
“She really does,” I say, ignoring the way my stomach flips at the thought of sixty days. My mind immediately returns to the night on the plane.
“I want sixty days.”
“Sixty days for what?”
“Real life.”
The memory drags me backward to the dim lighting of the private jet and the intoxicating, insane proposition. Sixty days. Two months to test-drive a marriage.
For a while, it felt exactly like a fairytale.
I think about the mornings in Bucktown, waking up tangled in expensive sheets while the man who terrified half of Chicago’s financial sector carefully brought me coffee.
I think about the way he looked at me across crowded conference rooms—a secret, searing heat that made me feel invincible.
Every argument we had turned into foreplay, every business obstacle a dragon we slayed together.
He built this glittering, flawless kingdom for us, choreographed by a man who never leaves a single detail to chance.
I was the cynical realist, but Dominic made me believe in the magic of being completely, unapologetically wanted.
But fairytales are just beautifully bound lies, and reality didn’t just knock last night—it drove a wrecking ball straight through the glass slipper.
The moment he took that podium, the glittering facade collapsed.
The prince didn’t want a partner; he wanted a conquest. The room laughing, the label of the “impossible challenge,” the smug victor holding his glass up to the crowd.
In the span of three minutes, my entire career, my intellect, my painfully constructed armor—it was all reduced to a maze he had successfully navigated.
The fairytale ended, and I was right back in the real world where women like me are just shiny trophies for men who enjoy the hunt.
My stomach twists, acid rising to meet the aggressive airport coffee. I press my thumb against the gold band on my left hand, tracing the smooth, heavy metal. I need to take it off. I know I do. But my fingers refuse to execute the command.
Am I really just a trophy?
“Hey.” Hailey bumps my shoulder with hers, jostling me out of my head.
She’s watching me with those infuriatingly perceptive eyes.
“You can back out if you want. We can tell Ma you’re staying with me instead.
Or we can even say fuck it and go on a trip somewhere together—give you some time to think things through before making any life-altering decisions. ”
I shake my head, the motion tight and controlled. “A trip is just a delayed panic attack with better scenery. I need structure. I need Ma handing me a Swiffer and telling me I missed a spot on the baseboards.”
Hailey snorts, dusting a grain of pretzel salt off her jeans. “She will absolutely do that. Within ten minutes of us landing.”
“Good. I require the grounding.”
The PA system crackles above us, a static-drenched voice announcing the pre-boarding process for Flight 412 to LaGuardia.
Passengers immediately stand, forming the jagged, impatient mass that makes me want to reorganize them by zone and seating assignment myself.
It’s an inefficient, chaotic mess. Normally, I’d be in the priority lane, scanning emails, my mind still stuck in a Mercer Capital boardroom.
Or, more recently, I’d be flying private with Dominic, drinking sparkling water while he watched me work with that infuriating, devastating half-smile.
I force the image out. Box it up. Put a lid on it. Because he couldn’t even say he would have wanted me without the challenge. And I think that’s what I hate the most. That instead of giving me a simple yes or no, he gave me his entire philosophy of who I am and what I need.
I’m not stupid. I know that’s how he loves—pushing, chasing, enchanting, making every breath between us a wager.
I thought I was immune, that I could ride the voltage and coast. But the truth is, I want to be wanted without being a puzzle for someone else to solve.
I want to be chosen for myself, not because cracking my safe is a medium-hard challenge for the world’s most stubborn bastard.
The stubborn bastard who loves me . . .
“They should be calling our section soon,” Hailey says, snapping me back as she wraps her unfinished pretzel and stares at the slowly moving line.
“You didn’t have to switch to my flight,” I say to Hailey, though the thought of doing this alone makes the static in my arms spike into a full electric hum. “You have your interview follow-ups. You’re practically hired in San Francisco. You don’t need to chaperone my retreat.”
“Please. I was going home today anyway. I moved my ticket by three hours, and if I don’t sit with you, who’s going to translate your death glares for the flight attendants?
” She nudges my knee again, warm and steady.
“Besides, Lucy Hartford made a bit of a spectacle of herself last night. So it’s best she leaves Chicago before that guy I got a room with last night googles her and realizes she doesn’t exist.”
I latch onto the distraction like a drowning woman to a life raft. “Wait. You actually went through with the Lucy Hartford bit? Who was the guy?”
Hailey takes a very deliberate, very satisfied slurp of her coffee. “That is the absolute best part, Jen. I have absolutely no idea what his name was.”
I blink at her, my corporate-honed brain glitching at the sheer lack of data. “You don’t know his name? How do you sleep with someone without at least knowing their name? What if he’s a serial killer? Or worse, a junior compliance officer?”
“He was gorgeous—blond, gray at the temples, a little older than I normally go for—and he bought ‘Lucy’ three martinis in the hotel bar. We were both taking a little break from the gala. He was fun to talk to, had great arms,” she says, entirely unrepentant.
“I didn’t need his W-2, I just needed his undivided attention for a few hours.
And I snuck out at six a.m. before he even stirred.
Left him a note on the hotel stationery that just said ‘Stay mysterious.’ It was the perfect crime. ”
“So you gave him a fake name? And he didn’t give you one at all?”
She nods. “Correct.”
I stare at her, equal parts horrified and impressed. Hailey has always been comfortable with the unknown. She can slip into a fictional identity, have a night of passionate, nameless abandon, and walk away without leaving a single fingerprint. It’s chaos, but it’s a chaos she pilots flawlessly.
Meanwhile, I’m a woman who builds spreadsheets for floral arrangements.
I require variables to be solved and risks to be mitigated.
And right now, I’m sitting in a departure lounge, hyperventilating over a man whose Social Security number, dietary restrictions, and exact time of day he needs to switch from coffee to tea are permanently burned into my brain.
I’m fleeing the most heavily documented relationship of my life, wearing a gold band my own anatomy refuses to relinquish.
“You’re a menace to society,” I tell her, though a tiny, genuine fraction of a smile breaks through my exhaustion.
“I’m an enigma,” Hailey corrects, bumping her shoulder against mine one last time.
The gate agent’s voice cuts through the ambient noise again, sharper this time. “Zone Three, you may now proceed to boarding.”
“That’s us,” Hailey says. She tosses her pretzel into a nearby trash can and hoists her duffel bag onto her shoulder. The playful glint in her eye softens into something fiercely protective, the sister who’ll always have my back. “Come on, Nen. Let’s get you home.”