Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
I sprawled on a yoga mat with my butt against one of the baseboards in my apartment, the backs of my legs and feet braced
vertically against the lilac wall. I couldn’t remember if this pose was intended to reduce anxiety or increase my blood oxygen,
but it was a win either way.
My phone chirped. Despite my resolve to get through a workout uninterrupted, I picked it up. Chuck Wheeler, agent extraordinaire:
DocuSign contract in your email if you’re good with the negotiated salary and benefits, he wrote.
I flew through the contract, intending to stay in the Pilates position to initial the DocuSign, when I found what I’d been
looking for. Salary.
“Oh. My. God,” I whispered. My toes went numb. I toppled off the wall, my feet twinging with pins and needles. I rested my
forehead on the mat.
The figure was so high, my head couldn’t wrap around the fact that it was meant for me. Dizziness clouded my vision. Even
though I could partially attribute my wooziness to my Pilates wall stance, something else was off.
My chest tightened. I should’ve been happy.
I was. But I couldn’t clear myself of this sensation that I wasn’t living my own life.
How incredibly foolish was it that me, Olivia Jane Adler, was a national figure for the biggest event that had occurred in the world in recent history?
Being cryogenically frozen would be more likely.
I was torn between the desire to blow it all on additional funding for my future documentary, some kind of wild vacation,
or living way below my means and saving everything else in a high-yield savings account. (My knowledge of those was indicative
of the years I’d spent reading finance books in the NYPL.) Here I was, sweaty, dizzy, and financially secure on my own for
the first time in my life. I lifted my head at the thought. On my own. I didn’t need Wells. I could choose to be with him, that soulmate of mine, with no financial stronghold between us.
This new salary provided me more money annually than I’d made in my entire life cumulatively so far. My father’s most favorite
refrain was “money can’t buy happiness,” but here on this yoga mat, as feeling slowly trickled back into my feet, I was reminded
exactly how wrong he was.
It was a fact. Money can buy happiness, up until a certain threshold, somewhere around low six figures a year. Food in belly, heat in air, roof overhead.
Money bought contentment. The people who go to bed worried about how to eat the next day had a hell of a lot more strife than
I’d ever had, so surely contentment was some form of happiness.
I blinked. A speck of dust floated into my eye. I pushed against my eyelid and scrawled my initials into the DocuSign.
And just like that, I was the next co-anchor of Per Diem news.
I texted Wells first, because Soulmail was real, as real as orbits and death and climate change, and I figured my soulmate
should be front row. I group chatted my parents, reported to Natalie, finished with Caleb. Everyone who mattered to me.
Then I opened my social media apps and frowned. I chewed the inside of my cheek, wondering why my more recent stats were so minuscule in comparison to my new usual, before I X’d out.
This. This was the kind of thing that meant literally nothing in the universe.
“No,” I said into my living room. “I refuse to be this person.”
I resolved to put the phone away, but it lit up again. Wells. Coming to the apartment to celebrate. For the first time.
Natalie had sent a series of emojis. A handshake, a shooting star, champagne.
My mother had written call us!!!, and Dad had thumbs-up’d her message.
Nothing from Caleb.
I scooted away from the wall.
It was sixty-something degrees and rainy. My sweatpants were either still packed or dirty, so I put on an old NYU sweatshirt
and a pair of shorts, then wrapped myself in a couch blanket. I buzzed in Wells, glanced at my apartment. It looked good.
Homey.
He brought champagne, and I drowned it in orange juice. “There’s a new reality show on,” Wells said after we’d clinked. “Couples
competing in relationship tests with the grand decision of deciding whether to undergo IVF or not.”
“Seriously? What’s it called, Race to a Baby?”
“Wow. Almost. It’s worse, though. It’s called Pink or Blue, Anything Will Do.”
I laughed, then realized he was serious. “Doesn’t that feel . . .”
“Unethical?”
“Beyond. Hard to imagine bartering an infant for fame.”
“Agreed. I can’t wait for the documentaries behind the making of these shows.
” The rain drummed on the windows. I was full of warmth, but not the temperature kind.
The happy kind. If we got married, I’d get to make sure the From Yes to I Do episode presented us in a decent light.
I burrowed into the couch. Even if things between us were fraught, maybe there was
something cosmically reassuring, something simple, about being with your soulmate. And that was exactly what I’d been turning
over in my mind ever since I was offered my new role: a seed of an idea, that there was maybe data to collect about people
who had addictions and what their Soulmail status was. I filed that into the research section of my brain. “How was the weekend
away?”
He brightened. “Oh, you know the drill. It was great.” Wells pressed the pad of his thumb to the stem of the flute. My body
continued to respond to this man, which was probably good. “Dad was cheesed about your fan-casting thing. Mom said she wants
to take you to lunch soon.”
“Mmm,” I said. Before all this, Wells’s mother would’ve rather watched plants grow than take me to lunch. “I’ve been eating
lunch at work a lot.”
His grin flashed. “I hear you. I do. We’re moving slow. Slow and steady, the therapist said, right?”
“Right,” I repeated. “Remember what she also asked us to think about?”
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“Why Soulmail paired us.” In that session, I had started to cast my mind around for the obvious—we got along well, the sex
was good, we seemed to have the same goals—when Wells had covered my hand with his. “I didn’t need a Soulmail to know she
was mine,” he’d said. I’d trapped the side of my tongue in my teeth—a literal bite-back of a response?—but the why behind pairing us had stuck with me. Our Soulmail was an indisputable fact, which meant I’d work with it, though I’d trade
a lot to know what was behind the rationale. I checked my phone again. Still nothing from Caleb. I swallowed, willing the
snarl of emotion in my throat to vanish.
Wells leaned over and adjusted his sock. “I like to think it’s fate.”
Fate. I put my flute on the coffee table, resolute. If the universe was trying to teach me a lesson about forgiveness, I’d
at least let it try.
In bed, our roles were comfortable, easy, effortless. My earlier doubts shifted somewhere into the ceiling above us. I didn’t
have to tell him not to nibble my earlobe; I didn’t have to explain I don’t like my neck kissed. He knew to cup my jaw in
his hand. We knew our pressures, our angles, our subtleties.
After, we lay beside one another, our pinkie fingers just barely grazing. Sweat lined the cleave of my breasts, the small
of my back. Outside, the rain poured over the windows.
In the kitchen, Wells cracked the cupboard next to the refrigerator (he knew where the snacks would be without asking—another
point for our soulmateship) and retrieved a bag of salt and vinegar chips. The rip crinkled over the rain. I lit a candle,
one of the unscented soy ones my mother loved.
“I have a tux fitting next week,” Wells said.
“You do?” My voice was shockingly neutral.
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Should I go?”
The candlewick spit, spluttered. “I don’t see why not. You should take a video there in case we need it.” Olivia, olive branch.
Time purchased before retrieved or wasted. “Oh! I’m thinking about having a dinner party,” I blurted, which I hadn’t been
thinking of until I said it. As soon as I did, though, I was all in. “We haven’t seen Emma and Samir in ages. We could have
them . . .” They were the couple whose wedding we had been bridesmaid/groomsman paired at. Our origin story. I hiked myself
onto the counter. “Plus Natalie. And Caleb, maybe.”
“Olivia, sweetheart,” Wells said.
My eyebrows knitted. “What?”
He spread his hands wide. “Totally agreed on getting everyone together, but maybe let’s do dinner out instead?”
“Why?” My robe slipped open. I tugged it shut.
“I just—” Wells cleared his throat. “Don’t you think . . . It would be a little tight in here?”
“I don’t, actually.”
“Where would we sit?”
I heaved myself from the counter. “My table has a leaf,” I said. “See that console bench there?”
“Yeah?”
“It just got delivered last week. You flip this slot under, and pull out the table from the wall, and voila!”
“Voila?” he echoed. Amused.
“Yeah, it’s easy,” I said. “Let me show you.” I worked to tug the stored wooden plank from its catch. My cheeks strained with
effort. Three tries later, I held it up. “See?”
“I see,” Wells said. “Do you want some help?”
“Not needed.” I pulled the end pieces away from one another and tried to plunk the insert between. They sprang back toward
one another like a clamp. The leaf plunged from my hands, crashing onto my foot, bringing a pain so fierce it drew tears.
I braced myself against the counter, counting my breaths to steady them. I tapped my phone, aiming for nonchalance. No new
messages.
“Another time,” Wells said lightly. He opened the freezer, handed me an ice pack. “Maybe someday we can host together, okay?”
The next drop of Soulmails arrived on the expected monthly anniversary in September, and a week later came Phoebe’s last day
of work.
My final Per Diem special correspondent report was on the unprecedented upswing in rural real estate. New couples had to navigate families all over the globe, so a solution for a percentage of them was relocation. The movement had been dubbed “rural plural.”
The network gifted Phoebe a diamond tennis bracelet on air. When I wrapped my last Du Jour segment, I retreated to my office,
where I’d stashed a package of granola bars. The staff had set up a lunch spread to celebrate Phoebe’s “early retirement,”
with regulars like Alanna Sorensonn and Phoebe’s favorite wellness expert and recurring cooking segment guests in attendance,
but guilt scratched my stomach. I didn’t know how to face Phoebe, who loudly claimed she been offered a guest role on a competing
network. I crunched an antacid, zipped in and out, and left a note on Phoebe’s cleared-off desk.
With my promotion, Samantha explained we’d move Du Jour from daily to seasonal specials like the soul family one from August,
since exclusivity would drive higher ad revenue. I chose not to remind her of the literal meaning of du jour. The third dissemination of Soulmails gave the world the confidence it was here to stay, so the network decided to shift
it—with me—into the everyday fabric of our lives.
On my first morning as co-anchor, Josef raised his Per Diem coffee mug in my direction during our last-minute touch-ups. “You
ready to co-broadcast some news?”
My smile was feeble. Leading up to this moment, I hadn’t let my mind fully sink into the reality that I was suddenly a national
news co-anchor, and this avoidance was paying me back by yanking my appetite and putting my blood pressure on fast-forward.
“Pretty surreal.”
He nodded. “I remember.” Josef shook out his hands and wiggled his jaw. “This role—there is great responsibility in it. The
things we report, and how we push the information, influences the consumer.”
“Places, everyone,” Jaime the production assistant called, and we were off, wrapping Soulmail into the daily news.
Word from the Vatican that morning: the Catholic church was not walking back on their initial ban of reading Soulmails, unlike the pervasive new rumors that they were. One radical priest
of the church had offered to forgive the sins of anyone who visited the Phoenix branch in person.
College Greek life “rush week” was postponed until October so the heads of sororities and frats could decide if they should
organize based on Soulmail status.
Natalie’s influencer cousin, Aili, said she was “pulling an Olivia Adler” by “only telling the truth.” She interviewed a handful
of newly-eighteens who’d just received their Soulmails, offering tips, tricks, and resources on whether opening them was the
right move for them. (“She is absolutely unmanageable right now,” Natalie had ranted on the phone. “Biggest ego of all time.
She had the nerve to try and get everyone in our family to celebrate Christmas early. In October. So she has, and I quote, ‘timely seasonal content.’ I will destroy you if you let fame do this to you.”)
Elsewhere, a museum curator lived his life orbiting somewhat near me instead of next to me.