Chapter 2 #2
“Oh, sorry, I forgot about your extremely busy schedule of watching Meg Ryan movies and binge eating cookie dough,” she retorts. “When was the last time you left this place?”
“Tuesday,” I say, counting on my fingers. Not strictly true—technically I walked out to the elevator and turned back around as soon as I realized I was wearing mismatched shoes.
“Sunday.”
“No, not your apartment. But sad.” She grimaces. “I mean left Chicago. You’ve been complaining about how much you hate this city since you moved here. If you finally have the chance to get out of here, you should take it!”
“I need to fix things with the department before I even think about going anywhere. There are letters to write. Contacts to bother…”
Marianne stares me down like the hard-boiled detective she should have become.
“Where are the Warrens going?”
I shake my head.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Stella.” Given her tone, I might think she’s asking me where I hid the bodies. “Where. Is. The vacation.”
Internally, I weigh my options. In the many years I’ve known her, Marianne has only grown more relentless. If I tell her where they’re going, I’ll never hear the end of it. I don’t tell her, she’ll absolutely call my sister and get it out of her herself.
“Fiji,” I finally squeak out.
Marianne’s squeal is so loud I almost mistake it for a passing ambulance.
“Fiji? As in, land of turquoise waves and white sand beaches? As in the most beautiful island chain in the universe?”
“No, the water bottle factory,” I joke humorlessly.
“And you’re going to say no?”
“Did you miss the part where I said Harry and his family? You try being trapped on a boat with those elitist snobs if you’re so gung-ho about it.”
“It’s on a boat?” Marianne’s eyes go wide. “Call the doctor,” she says dramatically, leaning back and fanning her face with her croissant. “I’m going into early labor because my best friend is such a stubborn moron.”
“Look, I already feel like human garbage. The last thing I need is to spend two weeks with a family who thinks ‘dishwasher’ is a person.”
“Stella—unless they’ve invited Vladimir Putin on this boat, I don’t care,” she dismisses me.
“You know where my family holds their yearly vacations? Orlando. Home of pit stains, Disney adults, and tortured captive orcas. Not to mention, you don’t even know them!
Harry’s great, isn’t he? What’s to say his family will be any different? ”
“I know enough,” I inform her. For starters, Jules has never said one nice thing about them, which is basically her version of slander.
Marianne smacks her hand down on the table dramatically.
“You’re impossible! If you refuse to go on this trip, you’re basically throwing a moldy burrito in the face of the universe.”
“After the month I’ve had,” I sigh. “That sounds like just the kind of revenge I’d like to exact.”
Marianne gasps, looking up to my cottage cheese ceiling.
“She didn’t mean it,” she whispers, holding her hands in prayer. I glare at her. Marianne loves to talk about the universe like it’s some sentient being instead of a coincidental conglomeration of chaos.
“Stella, I’m going to level with you. As life shattering as this event has been for you, people lose their jobs all the time.
And you haven’t even been fired—it’s a suspension!
Your pity party time has expired. If you don’t get your ass out of this apartment pronto, I’m going to have to carry you.
Do you want to put that on a 5’2 pregnant lady? Huh?”
Even now, I can feel myself getting nauseous just thinking about my meeting with Dr. Rivera.
Outside of work, I have no hobbies, no passions—I don’t even remember the last time I picked up a paintbrush.
Without my fellowship, all I have to my name is a shoebox studio and two ferns in the kitchen whose crispy fronds look like Halloween decorations.
Marianne snaps her fingers at me to bring me back to reality.
“Earth to Stella! Are you even listening to me?”
“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. “Yes.”
“You need to go on this trip, babe. Not just because it will make your sister happy, or because your future brother-in-law probably has Drake’s contact saved in his phone…”
“Mer—”
“But because maybe, just maybe, you got let go for a reason.”
“I did,” I remind her. “I got let go because I let my breakup turn me into a human mud puddle.”
“No,” she howls in frustration, “I mean like a reason from the universe! What if all this is telling you to stop working away your life and actually start living it?”
She grabs my hands, squeezing so tightly I almost screech. Some of her long, red hair falls onto my arm as she leans in.
“Babygirl, you’ve been busting your ass as long as I’ve known you. Even if you don’t want it, you deserve a break. How do you expect anything good to find you if you’re hiding from it under all these blankets?”
I flatten my eyebrows. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s not just the Warrens I’m worried about.
It’s a family vacation period. Growing up, it was just me, Jules and Dad: my dad’s parents never emigrated from Sweden, and my mom left a few years after Jules was born.
Since Dad passed away nine years ago, my sister and I have been all each other have.
Until now.
Jules is moving on with her life, into a world I could never hope to fit into, and I’m one bad week away from using my masters degree as toilet paper.
“Oh. My. God.” A smile spreads across Marianne’s face like syrup on a pancake. “I have an idea.”
I let out an exhausted breath. “If you try to bribe me with baby naming rights again—“
“No, no, no. And it was just her middle name.”
Marianne smacks her fingers on the coffee table in a tiny drum roll before announcing, “Will and I will go with you.”
I snort.
“I can’t invite you on my sister’s family vacation, Mer.”
“Not the vacation,” she assures me, “To Fiji! Will’s airline flies there—it’s been far too long since we’ve capitalized on his pilot perks.”
It can’t say I’m surprised by her harebrained plan.
Like my sister, Marianne is one of those girls that every guy on dating apps claims to be looking for: spontaneous, easily pleased, and always up for an adventure.
But this idea, like her senior year scheme to sneak onto one of the Thanksgiving parade turkey floats, has gone too far.
“You can’t just go to Fiji,” I try to tell her. “They’re leaving on Monday.”
“Why not? It’s practically free, I can do my job from anywhere, and I’ve been trying to convince Will to go on a babymoon for ages! We could chauffeur you to your trip and spend a few days in paradise. I’d kill to escape this cold before I’m stuck here changing diapers til the end of time.”
I wipe some crumbs off my sweats and try, in vain, to get my raven’s nest of hair into something resembling a bun.
“I appreciate the effort, Mer, but it’s not going to happen.”
She sticks her lip out in an exasperated pout.
“But why?”
“One,” I start, “I just lost my only source of income.”
“Eh,” she makes a sound like a human buzzer. “Next.”
“Two, I’d rather stick my head in the dumpster behind the building than take a Warren handout. I’m nobody’s charity case.”
“Double next! Your sister’s marrying off Forbes 500, Stell. I really don’t think she’ll miss the six hundred dollars she’s going to throw down on your plane ticket.”
“Three: Jules doesn’t know about my job.”
Marianne screws up her face like I’ve just crop-dusted her.
“You didn’t tell her you got suspended? Why not?”
“Because!” I huff in exasperation. “Jules is…”
Jules is perfect. She’s the kind of girl who woodland creatures want to sing to.
Who attracts luck like fly-paper and never has to worry about parking spaces.
Sweet, bubbly, and oh-so-classically gorgeous, she’s the rainbow to my stormcloud.
Where I am, at best, an acquired taste, there’s not a thing about Jules that anyone could dislike.
Except, maybe, her borderline unhealthy love of ABBA.
“Because my fellowship was literally the one thing I had going for me,” I tell Marianne.
“And the last thing I want to do it ruin this for Jules. However she’s has managed to charm Prince Warren over there into thinking she’s trophy wife material, the quickest way to blow her cover will be to show off her unemployed, painfully single sister with crippling student debt.
How do we know he won’t throw her ass back in the sea and go fish for someone with more savory relatives? ”
“You’re being too hard on yourself! I hate to break it to you, Stell, but you could be making six figures and the Warrens would still spend your salary on breakfast. I really don’t think they’re gonna care that you’ve spent a grand total of three weeks of your life sans day labor.
And if it really makes you feel better, just don’t tell them! ”
“Great,” I huff. “Now I’m a failure and a liar.”
Marianne gives me the same look I’ve seen her give to her husband when he’s mansplaining. One that’s best described as unamused.
“Have I told you lately you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met?”
“Repeatedly,” I pull my blanket up to my chest. “Look, you can say whatever you want. But there is no way I’m going on this trip without a court mandate.”
We’re interrupted by another sound from my phone, but this time, it’s not a text. It’s the dreaded “Super Trouper” ringtone that can mean only one thing.
My sister’s calling.
Marianne bolts to attention, and our eyes lock on it at the exact time—my light blue phone case resting on the mantle next to an empty LaCroix and a half-eaten bar of chocolate. I glance back at her, fear rising in my stomach as I realize what she aims to do.
“Marianne,” I say slowly, putting my hand out the way you’re supposed to with an overly-curious wild animal. “Don’t even think—”
But before I can finish the sentence, Marianne is half way across the living room, her tiny legs propelling her towards the mantle with the speed of a thoroughbred.
I jump up to beat her, but it’s no use—my whole body crashes to the ground as my ankles tangle in the haphazard pile of blankets covering my feet.
“Mer, no!” I scream from the carpeted floor, but she already has the phone in her hand. She taps the screen before I can upright myself, holding the phone as far from my reach as possible as the song stops blaring.
“Stella?” my sister’s sing-songy voice sounds on the other side, cheerful as a basket of sunflowers. Marianne literally pushes her tiny hand over my mouth as she speaks into the receiver.
“Jules! It’s Marianne,” she says sweetly, her body practically bouncing as she prepares to ruin my life. “I have good news.”