Chapter 25
Over the next few days, I reread that brief conversation with Ro more times than I’d ever admit. Didn’t want to wake you! doesn’t even read like an actual sentence anymore. The words have lost all meaning.
I wish I’d said anything else. I wish I hadn’t left that day at all. I wish I’d never gone over there in the first place. But no matter how many times I return to our thread to fix things, it’s Ro’s No worries message that leaves me at a loss.
Right now, though, I’ve got more pressing matters to attend to anyway. Like my extremely pregnant sister, who’s currently gnawing a pen cap and pacing the length of the living room, while she barks orders at me and Mom like a drill sergeant.
By their ninth month, most moms-to-be are deep in their nesting phase, but my big sister has always been the exception to every rule. Her focus is still on world domination.
Zola’s emergency call for an all-hands-on-deck company launch has made this past week an incessant onslaught of round-the-clock planning.
I’m indebted to her for minimizing the free brain space I have to dissect Ro’s notable absence, but if I’m struggling to keep up this pace, I have to wonder how she’s handling it all.
Unfortunately, after one too many days of checking in with Zo about the dark circles under her eyes, Mom and I have been warned off the topic entirely.
At this point, though, they’re distracting. As is the way Zola keeps wincing and clutching her lower back as she speaks. My eyes dart to catch Mom’s, but she’s already looking at me. I raise my eyebrows, silently prompting her to take the lead on this one.
Mom clears her throat. “Zola, honey. Do you want to sit down maybe?”
She’s trying to sound as unconcerned as possible but fails miserably because she is concerned. We both are.
“I’m not the first woman in history to have a baby,” Zola seethes, her head volleying from Mom to me, like she’s caught us mid-coup. “If Serena can win a Grand Slam pregnant, pretty sure I can plan a party.”
Zola doesn’t sit as she refocuses on the steno pad that’s become an extension of her hand.
“Another week’s not a lot of time,” she continues. “But we’ve already got a decent-size group committed.”
She turns her laptop around, so it’s facing Mom and me from its spot on the coffee table. My heart trips over itself at the sight of her website. The site Ro built for her.
“Ro added an events feature, so any time I enter the details of an in-person mixer here, it auto-blasts to subscribers and everyone following our socials.”
Hearing Ro’s name outside of my own head is dizzying. My personal boogeyman, stepping out from his shadowy dimension and into a world that’s meant to be mine.
Zola clicks the link for next weekend’s mixer, and my face flushes with pride.
It’s my first time having this reaction to Ro’s designs in front of an audience, but it’s far from my first time.
Since leaving his place a week ago, I’ve become overly, intimately, stalkerishly familiar with every detail of Ro’s online presence.
When he added Zola’s branding to his portfolio, let’s just say I got my clicks in.
“Everything’s tracked here,” she continues. “He set it up to generate shareable graphics, so we can leverage each attendee’s contacts to fill in gaps in the guest list like a pyramid.”
This is what I mean—Zola’s building a new business and a tiny human from scratch, and she’s still way ahead of me somehow. I look to Mom again to see if she’s tracking, but she’s lost too.
I raise my hand a little as I speak: “Meaning…”
Zola pauses her pacing only long enough to huff dramatically before she explains her plan. “If everyone sends it to a friend who sends it to a friend, and so on, the guest list grows exponentially without us having to do any legwork. And we build out our own contact list in the process.”
I scrunch my face. “Isn’t that a little too close for comfort? Sounds borderline incestuous.”
Zola gently pushes on her belly to shift the baby. Like that’s a completely normal thing to do and not an alien scene from a sci-fi movie. But when relief washes over her face, I’m ready to volunteer my own two hands to prop the baby up until he makes his exit.
“I don’t care if we end up with a beach full of second cousins,” Zola says. “As long as I get some content.”
“Got it.”
It’s all I have a chance to say before Zo continues.
“Can you get Liv and Ro to help out with that part?”
“With what part?” I ask, doing my best to ignore the way my heart rate spikes at the promise and threat of having to contact the man who, prior to this meeting, I’d only successfully gone two minutes without thinking about.
Zola’s less than impressed by my inability to keep up. At this point in her pregnancy though, an eye roll is basically her resting face.
“You said Liv’s dating a rock band—”
“Just one of them,” I correct.
“And of course Ro should be there. Because I owe him, but also because he’s hot and single and local.”
All valid points.
“He acted funny when I invited him, but his circle and Liv’s would probably account for the most photoworthy attendees. I need them both there.”
I don’t know what’s more horrifying—the thought of Liv’s world converging with my real life, or the prospect of Zola classifying Ro as hot and single at her dating mixer. I open my mouth to argue, but Zo silences me with a raised hand.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she says, chin lifted as she pridefully waddle-limps toward the stairs. “If I don’t get this kid off my sciatic nerve, I’m gonna tear it out.”
When she hears her words out loud, Zola turns back to face our horrified expressions. “Tear the nerve out,” she clarifies. “Not the baby.”
Her abrupt exit leaves us with a weighty silence and our marching orders. I text Liv first, who commits the entire band and their entourage without pausing to check their schedules. But I know she’s good for it. Liv’s as impossible to deny as Zola.
As much as I don’t love the thought of Ro at a beach mixer with a bunch of bikinied women, I’m glad to have a script and a purpose for the first text I’m sending him in days.
Once I do, though, I worry he might be offended that this is how I’m popping back up after the way we left things. I wouldn’t blame him.
But when my phone pings in my hand, a smile finally breaks free as I read the text that’s just so impossibly Ro.
Ro: Now why am I in it?