29. Talia
Talia
Talia watched Sam walk across the parking lot to his bookstore. She waited for him to turn around again and wave, but he didn’t. Was he upset about something?
She thought about rewinding for a few minutes to double-check, but she couldn’t do that, not after she’d just undid her kiss earlier this week.
Then she picked up her phone and saw Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth’s note.
“Oh no. Sam!”
Talia opened the car door to go after him, but then her phone rang.
It was Libby.
As Talia answered the video call, she realized with a pang that she didn’t know where on the planet Libby was. She’d been even worse than usual lately with keeping up on Libby and Jacob’s posts; time had gotten tangled up in her head, thanks to the watch.
“Oh god, Talia,” Libby sobbed, her eyes red and face puffy. She was on a bed in a hotel room, no obvious decorations to indicate what country she was in.
“Libby, what’s wrong?” Talia sat straight up in the driver’s seat. “Is the baby okay?” She had expected this to be a regular conversation, besides her own apology for being so unavailable, and that she and Libby would then squeal over the baby.
“Jacob didn’t mean to… I-I don’t… I don’t know what to do!”
“What the fuck? I will kill him. Did he hurt you? The baby?”
“No, I—” Libby devolved into tears again.
Jacob appeared, wrapping his arms around her and stroking her hair.
“Hi, Talia,” he said. “I’m sorry you found out over YouTube. Libby wanted to tell you first, but I slipped—”
“And now the whole world knows!” Libby cried. “Our baby is doomed and she never even got a choice!”
“Hey, hey, shh.” Talia leaned in toward her screen. “It’s going to be okay, whatever’s going on. Just tell me what happened.”
Libby spilled everything the best she could, and when she got caught up in tears, Jacob filled in.
They talked about their qualms about including the child in their public life, from documenting the pregnancy to turning their Libby & Jacob accounts into a family affair.
In a world of AI models that could easily be edited into any place and any situation, there was a certain cache to still being real humans.
But while Libby and Jacob had made the decision to sell parts of their lives as a business, their future child had not, and she wouldn’t be able to consent—or even understand the magnitude of what she was giving up—for more than eighteen years.
On the other hand, there were examples of loving families who had made the transition well, like the Globetrotter Quartet. Jacob and Libby sometimes crossed paths with them and therefore knew that they were genuinely good people. Plus, they were giving their kids a global upbringing and education.
“So what do we do?” Libby asked when they had finished.
It was an echo of when she and Talia were kids, their parents out at another party, having left them without anything to eat for dinner.
“What do we do?” Libby had asked all the time back then, looking up at her big sister for help while also knowing that Talia would have an idea, Talia would figure something out, Talia would keep them fed and bathed and cared for.
“Well,” Talia said now, “it sounds to me like if you could do things entirely your way, you would not put your baby online in any of your content. But because of the momentum of ‘Libby & Jacob’ and the pressures of the creator industry, you feel like you have to consider it. Is that an accurate summary?”
Libby nodded. She’d always found it comforting when Talia broke down a big emotional problem into logical chunks. It made things seem more manageable.
“Okay,” Talia said. “Then you have three paths: One, quit the business and do something else—maybe not as profitable, but you’d be able to find work in a marketing agency or something similar, given your background and experience in the field.
Two, continue your existing business with the baby, or three, find a way to continue the business without the baby. ”
Jacob squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, a sheen of tears covered them.
“We’ve worked so hard to build a business and a life that didn’t confine us to an office.
If I hadn’t fucked up and accidentally announced to the whole world that Libby was pregnant, maybe we could have salvaged this.
We could have found a way to avoid filming her stomach in the next months, and then we could have made sure that contracts we signed for the future were just us, not the baby.
But now everyone will want our baby as part of the deals, too. ”
Libby’s lip trembled. “So I guess that means we’re out of options. Our fans already know about the pregnancy and want more. So… we have to quit.”
“Unless…” Talia touched the watch on her wrist. According to them, it had only been a couple of hours since Jacob had revealed their secret on their live stream.
“Unless what?” Libby looked at her through the screen with those same hopeful eyes from their childhood.
Talia told them everything about how she could rewind time. She didn’t include all the details, because the most important thing right now was to make Libby feel better and to make things okay for her as soon as possible.
“Do it,” Libby said as soon as Talia was finished.
But Jacob frowned. “This can’t be real, can it?”
“It’s real—I swear,” Talia said. “But you’re going to forget all this, and I’ll explain it to you again after I rewind.”
Libby turned to Jacob. “Please, honey. Who cares how it works? If Talia says she’s going to do something, she will.
And she can make all of this go away. She’ll call us and tell us about what happened this time, and then you won’t say anything about the baby during the live stream and it will buy us more runway to figure out how to adapt our business. ”
Jacob pulled her into his arms. “Of course. Whatever you want.” He turned to Talia on the screen. “Just help me fix this for Libby, okay?”
Talia turned the crown on her watch back.
She hunched over the trash can in her office. It was early afternoon and several hours before she would meet Sam on the coast and eat at Taco Bell, but she swore the ground beef and nacho cheese were previewing a rebellion in her stomach.
After half an hour, the walls around her finally stopped spinning, and the light of a screen didn’t make her want to throw up anymore. She dialed Libby.
“Hi, Tal!” Libby chirped. “We were about to head out to do a live stream for a color-analysis service. Can I call you later?”
“Actually, no—this is important,” Talia said.
Libby stopped short. “Oh, okay.” She turned off-screen and said, “Jacob, honey, I need to talk to Talia real quick.” She ducked into the hotel bedroom and shut the door. “Um, what’s up? Is everything all right?”
Talia nodded. “I just wanted to check in. You called me a week ago, and I’m sorry I ran off to that silly singles mixer that didn’t even work out. I should have stayed home and talked to you about whatever it was you called for. But here I am now. You’d said you wanted to pick my brain?”
“Yeah. I think we’ll need more than the five minutes or so that I have to spare right now, but I do have something huge I want to tell you.” Libby’s face glowed even though she wasn’t wearing any makeup. “Jacob and I are having a baby!”
“Oh my god!” Talia clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe it. Wow wow wow… Congratulations!”
“Thank you. I’m just so happy, Tal.”
“I know. You always wanted a family.”
Libby nodded. “And you get to be her auntie, and I won’t even get mad if you spoil her rotten.”
Talia laughed. “It’s a plan. But hey… will this change what you and Jacob do? I’m sorry if I’m overstepping, but my protective-auntie instincts are already kicking in about my baby niece or nephew being broadcast to three hundred million strangers.”
Her sister let out a long, pained exhale. “You read my mind. That’s exactly what I’d wanted to pick your brain about.”
“Don’t worry—I can help you think it through.”
Jacob knocked on the bedroom door. His voice came in from off the screen. “Hey, sweetie, we need to head out now. You ready?”
“Tell Jacob to come over here,” Talia said.
His face popped on the screen as he sat next to Libby on the bed. “Hey, Talia!”
“Libby just told me the wonderful news. Congratulations, Future Daddy.”
He grinned, his world-famous dimples showing. “Thank you, Future Auntie.”
“All right, well, I know you two have to get going to that color-analysis thing, but just remember, Jacob—no jokes about color matching for the baby, okay?”
Jacob looked confused. “Why would I make a joke like that?”
“Exactly,” Talia said.
She decided in that moment not to tell them about the watch. Let Jacob move forward without feeling any guilt about his previous mistake. Talia was happy to be able to help them without taking credit for it.
She turned her attention back to her sister. “Call me when you’re done, and we’ll brainstorm, all right?”
“Definitely. Thank you, Tal!” Libby blew her a kiss, and they hung up.
Talia flopped forward, head on her desk. Disaster averted.
A notification popped up, chiming at the same time on her Omni 3Ds, her computer monitor, and her phone.
Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth: It has been four days since you have seen or communicated with Sam, even though he has texted you.
I have analyzed your prior messages and his recent ones, and there does not seem to be any conflict between the two of you.
However, your mood markers have been a bit lower recently.
May I suggest that you reach out to him? I think it would be good for you.
Her heart did a little pirouette at the thought of getting to spend the next few hours with him again in the hidden cave off the beach.
At the end of the evening, when she drove him back to Lighthouse Books, a flashback of the last time they’d been in the parking lot flickered through her memory.
But Talia had taken care of all that. She’d done it again, better. So hopefully, this next part would be fine.
As she pulled into the parking lot, she asked Sam to hand her her phone from the glove compartment.
He passed it over without looking at the screen.
There was no message from Erin, gushing over Libby and Jacob being pregnant.
Whew.
“I’m glad we got to hang out, Tal,” Sam said, opening the passenger door. “I missed you.”
“Same. Good luck at the Summer Million tournament.”
He crossed the parking lot toward the lighthouse, but before he got there, he turned back and waved again. Not mad.
All right, maybe she’d broken her promise to him again, changed things a tiny bit.
But it’s innocuous, she thought, so it’s fine.