I went on, “But I’ve come to a conclusion. With Deja’s very loud, shouty help.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not the person I used to be, before you and I got together.” I hoped I didn’t hurt his feelings saying so, but there was no other way to describe the changes I’d been ignoring. “You know how weird I’ve been about the money thing and reconciling what I came from with what I’ve got, now. And it was because I was trying to be Sophie the independent, struggling Millennial trying to get ahead, when I don’t really need to get ahead. I wasn’t running a magazine because I really wanted to. I was doing it because I felt like if I didn’t have a job or I wasn’t doing something to earn money, then I was a gold-digging jerk. But as it turns out, the thing that was making me a jerk was me not being grateful for what I have and acting like I’m in the same position as everyone around me.”
Neil nodded. “Rejecting the advantages that our money gives you was your way of apologizing for being rich.”
“Exactly.” I guess I shouldn’t have doubted that he would get it. “And it just made me look like an asshole.”
I went to his chair and plopped myself across his lap without asking, looping one arm around his neck. “You’re retired. Olivia isn’t in school, yet. We can do basically anything we want to, right now. We can run off to Venice, and I can finally see that apartment you want to sell. We can…climb a mountain or something.”
“Do you own even one pair of closed-toed shoes?” he observed dryly.
I ignored him. “It was just an idea. And, yes, of course, I own closed-toed shoes. You’ve seen them.”
“I did notice that you seemed to resent the time you missed with El-Mudad while he was here.” Neil brushed my hair behind my ear. “And you were terribly wistful about the idea of running off to the south of France with him.”
“Well, yeah,” I walked my fingers across Neil’s chest. “I love him. I want us all to be together. And as long as I’m half-heartedly chained to the magazine, that can’t happen. And it’s definitely not fair to Holli and Deja, especially now that they have a baby on the way.”
“Oh?” Neil sat up straighter, holding me by the waist so I wouldn’t topple from his lap. “When did this happen?”
“Deja accidentally spilled the beans to me. Holli doesn’t know that. I’m waiting for her to get here. She’s going to be disappointed that she didn’t get to tell me, herself.” I winced. “I guess I should have let her tell you.”
“She can tell your mother,” Neil said. “I assume you’ll be going down there to drink and smoke marijuana cigarettes.”
“Yes, Reefer Madness, that is exactly what we do,” I admitted. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”
“I have far better things to be angry about than whether an adult who does not struggle with addiction has a few beers and a joint while hot tubbing with her friends.” He laughed. “If you ever seem to have a problem or try to enable mine, I’ll say something. I’m not going to relapse because you have a two-dollar wine cooler at your mother’s house.”
“Hey, be nice.” I pushed against his chest then nuzzled my cheek against it. “Can I ask you a question?”
“No,” he whispered against my temple.
I giggled. “I’m going to, anyway. Do you think I’m a flakey kind of person?”
He took too long to answer, then said, “I don’t think flakey is a permanent state. I think you needed to find yourself, and you put off looking for longer than you should have.”
“Okay, so now I’m looking. What do I find?” That was the part I wasn’t so sure about in all of this. If I wasn’t fashion journalist Sophie, and writer Sophie felt like a fraud, who the hell was I? “We joke about it a lot, but what if I’m just a trophy wife?”
“If you were just a trophy wife, I would only love you for your tight ass and perfect breasts.” Neil bounced his knee a little, and the latter of my two good qualities jiggled a little above the neckline of my dress. He smiled at me in nothing short of adoration. “But I love everything about you. If you decided to buy a boat and sail around the world tomorrow, I would still love you as much as if you decided to stay in your pajamas all day.”
“Good, because I might actually do that tomorrow.” Self-care was going to be crucial during this weird transition period.
“As long as you don’t make it a habit. Not that your mother would let you.” Neil put on his best imitation of my mother’s Michigan accent, which was actually pretty good. “‘Are you still wearing those sweatpants? You have billions of dollars. You can’t afford real pants?’”
I snickered. “You’re terrible. But I love you.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I jumped up. “I bet that’s Holli. She can’t have been that far behind me.” I leaned forward to give him a kiss.
He accepted it, but then said, “No, no, I’ll come with you.”
Holli’s text read, I’m coming in, so I hope you’re naked. No sooner than we headed down the hall and toward the foyer, I heard Holli call, “Is anybody home? If nobody’s home, I’m taking stuff!”
“Hello, Holli,” Neil called, amused, as we entered the living room.
Holli came down the few steps from the foyer. “Hey, Sugar Daddy. Can I steal your wife for the evening?”
“Oh, please, take her. I beg of you,” he teased, and dodged my playful elbow to his side. “I hear congratulations are in order?”
This time, the elbow to the side was real, and he wasn’t as good at avoiding it. But I didn’t hit him too hard. “Excuse me, I was going to break it to her gently.”
“Deja told you.” Holli made a loud, prolonged noise of frustration. “I knew she would do that.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” I promised. “It was pregnan—”
“Pregnancy brain,” Holli finished for me. “So weird. So, so weird.”
“I’m sorry you weren’t the first to tell me,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her upper arm. “And I’m sorry I told Neil, too. But I didn’t tell Mom.”
“Then, we should go down there, right away,” Holli suggested. “I texted her on the way over, just to make sure she and the boy toy weren’t—” She finished her statement with the classic index-finger-through-ring-of-the-other-index-finger-and-thumb motion.
“Gross, shut up.” I turned to Neil. “Give me a kiss. And make something that high people want to eat.”
Holli and I changed into our suits and left for Mom’s house. We walked, rather than drove, and we weren’t far from the house before Holli said, “So. Does Neil know that you gave away your magazine today?”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that Deja would have already told her. If our situations were reversed with Holli and Deja’s, I wouldn’t have waited for Deja to leave the building before I called Neil. It was nice that the top was ripped off the whole can of sardines already.
“Yes,” I answered with a definite nod. “And he fully supports me.”
“I don’t,” Holli said, a hard set to her jaw. “This magazine was your dream. I don’t see why you and Deja can’t—”
“It wasn’t my dream.” There was no reason to let her go on thinking that it was or silently judging her wife over this. “It was an idea. The dream came from Deja from the ground up.”
“She said she really let you have it,” Holli said quietly.
“She did.” There was no sugar coating that. “But I deserved it. You know I did.”
Holli sighed. “Yeah. I do. She probably didn’t say anything I haven’t been wanting to say to you for a while. But you’re my friend. I don’t like other people doing my job.”
“At least, this way, there aren’t any hard feelings between you and me.”
We walked a few steps in silence before Holli asked, “But are there hard feelings between you and Deja?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really. I’m kind of grateful to her. I could have just kept going on the way I was, feeling inadequate for not putting in the work, but not wanti
ng to put in the work because it was making me unhappy.”
“That sucks. I had no idea that’s how you felt. I just thought you needed to be on Adderall.” Holli was on that, herself, and had a bad habit of running around diagnosing everyone else. Her face lit up. “Oh, my gosh, I haven’t made a single Wilford Brimley joke, yet, today!”
Rolling my eyes, I laughed. “Let me get you your trophy. You know, you should really be worried about me. I’ve got some horrible disease.”
“Have you made your doctor appointment, yet?” she asked in what could have been a recording of my mom or Neil asking the same damn question.
“Yes, mother. I go in next week.” It felt like facing an execution. “I’m not going to be able to have any fun after all of this. It’s going to be nothing but rabbit food.”
“But you can afford the really good rabbit food,” Holli reminded me. She threw her hands out as though she were conducting an orchestra. “All the most gourmet lettuces from the most exotic gardens in the world!”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You smoked in the car on the way here, didn’t you?”
“A little,” she admitted sheepishly.
Mom already had the hot tub bubbling when we arrived, bypassing the front door to march around the side of the house and squeeze through the exquisitely manicured hedges.
“Ow, my hair!” I shrieked as it caught on a branch.
“Why don’t you just come through the house?” Mom demanded, exasperated.
“Because she never knows if she’s going to see you and your man accidentally boning again,” Holli quipped.
“Honey, the boning is never accidental,” Mom said, wiggling her eyebrows.
I made an exaggerated gagging noise.
“So, what’s the hubbub, bubs?” Mom asked as Holli and I stripped down to our swimsuits. “Why the sudden visit?”
“Because Holli has news,” I said, nodding toward her.
Holli bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m gonna be a mommy!”
“No!” Mom’s hands flew to her cheeks. “When?”
“April fourth, if the math is right,” Holli said, practically glowing with happiness.
“So, are you…” Mom asked, gesturing to Holli’s flat stomach.
She shook her head. “No. Deja is doing the heavy lifting. I just supplied the egg.”
“How nice,” Mom said, a little uncertainly, like she was afraid she would say the wrong thing. “It’s nice that you both get to…”
“To be involved in the conception and birth, like parents usually are?” I prodded.
“Yeah. That,” Mom said, a little uncertainly. She was always worried she would offend Holli inadvertently.
“So, what are you hoping for? Boy or girl?” I asked as we put our toes into the water.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say I just want it to be healthy, right?” Holli asked.
I gave her a look. “I’m being serious.”
“Okay, seriously?” She gnawed her bottom lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want it to be. A girl? Sure, I know a lot about girls. Way more than I know about boys, since I’ve never been one. But since I am a woman, I know what it’s like to be one. And I’m not sure I want my kid to have to deal with that.”
“Fair,” I agreed, sliding into the scalding water with a little hiss at the temperature.
“On the other hand, if I have a boy, I have to teach him not to be the kind of person who treats women the way men generally treat women. How do I do that? And what if it doesn’t take?” Holli asked, a note of panic creeping into her tone.
Luckily, Mom was there to step in and, well, mom. “You’re a good person, Holli. Your kid is going to be a good person because no matter what it is, it will have been raised by parents who care about other people.”
“And you’re not going to know what it is, right away, anyhow,” I pointed out.
“That’s true,” Holli agreed, sinking down beside me. “And that’s why we’re going to let the kid take the lead. We’re going to try to raise it gender-neutral.”
“Gender-neutral?” Mom asked, popping the top off a Smirnoff Ice and stepping in. “How does that work?”
Holli shrugged. “We don’t really know, yet. I guess we’ll know when we start. But we’re not going to do the all pink fancy bows or blue and baseball bats. We’ll probably do a little of both, or none of either.”
“And no gender reveal party?” I asked hopefully. I hated the idea of those. I hated the idea of strangers celebrating somebody’s genitals.
“That is a big, big nope on that one,” Holli confirmed. “But there will be a baby shower. And I expect it to be a blowout.”
Since I was on the receiving end of Holli’s pointed finger, I kind of figured I was the person she held responsible for that. “I’ll draw up a budget.”
“Sophie’s got big news, too,” Holli said, and at my mom’s wide eyes, she added, “Not the same kind.”
“Not the same kind at all,” I emphasized. “I’m quitting the magazine.”
“Oh?” Mom asked, looking between the two of us in shock. “How will that work with Deja being pregnant?”
“I guess that’s another thing we’ll figure out when we get there,” Holli said easily, though I did wonder how she truly felt about the extra workload suddenly thrust upon her pregnant spouse.
Of course, the workload wasn’t really extra since I hadn’t been pulling my weight in the first place.
“I’m giving Deja the magazine. Kind of.” There was no need to go into all of the business side of it with Mom, when I didn’t quite understand all of it, myself. “The lawyers will work it out, but at the end of the day, I walk away jobless by choice, and Deja and Holli own a very successful fashion magazine.”
“Lawyers,” Mom said with such derision that I was surprised she didn’t cross herself and spit. “They’re not going to cause problems between you guys, are they?”
“I hope not. Since I’m not paying them to cause problems.” One thing I’d learned in my leap to the one percent was that lawyers weren’t the evil bad people that pop culture liked to depict.
“I don’t suppose I can count the magazine as your baby gift?” I asked, only to be denied by Holli’s pointed glance.
“Don’t forget the wedding shower,” Mom reminded me. “Just because we haven’t set a date doesn’t mean you have no reason to give me presents.”
“Oh, my god, did my sudden confrontation of my financial reality come with a tattoo that says ‘ATM’ across my forehead?” I snapped my fingers as I reached toward the cardboard six-pack of bottles.
Mom leaned over and grabbed one then handed it to me. “I don’t know about all that, but I did say that I hoped my kid would be richer than I was, so I could live out my golden years in peace.”
“You’re in your forties, Blanche Deveraux,” I reminded her.
“But you won’t be forever,” Holli said. “You better start making those wedding plans.”
“I know, I know.” Mom sighed. “I promise we will. But I haven’t been in a relationship for so long, it’s nice to just savor this one.” She paused at the sight of me taking a drink. “Like you better savor that. Because you’re not having more than one.”
“Uh!” I protested in as petulant a voice as possible.
“You’re diabetic, Sophie Ann. You have to start taking care of yourself,” Mom scolded.
“I am! I’m going to the doctor—”
“Before you go to the doctor, you can start.”
The problem with having a mother who used to work in a hospital was her insistence on butting into my medical life.
“Speaking of doctors,” Holli said, smoothly segueing to a topic that wouldn’t cause a huge mother-daughter blowout, “how’s the thing with your sister going?”
“Slowly.” Slower than I would have liked, but I was fast learning that what I liked and what reality was wouldn’t always reconcile just because I had money. “They’re talking a
bout a donor chain, now. Someone donates to someone, they get someone to donate to someone else, pay it forward, that whole thing. I’ve got a full-page ad running in the Times and in the Detroit Free Press. And in basically any Elwood and Stern publication going to print this month. Neil hired a publicist, so we’re really hoping people will contact the donor registry.”
“I hope they get flooded with kidneys!” Holly exclaimed, then made a face. “Not literally. Can you imagine how wet and gooey—”
“Gross!” I shrieked.
Mom raised her voice to be heard over the mini-splash fight that ensued. “I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing for her.”
I wiped water away from my eyes. “I think it’s what anyone would do. If they could. I think we would all move the moon for our families.”
“That’s the truth,” Holli agreed.
“Well, let’s hope no further moon-moving is required of any of us for a while,” Mom said, raising her bottle as if in a toast. While nobody was close enough to clink, we all made the made the noise.
Epilogue
Six weeks in, and the best part of being unemployed was spending time with my family. Even if we couldn’t all be together. Neil and Olivia and I were about to spend a quality dinner together when my phone made the tinkling noise I’d assigned to Facetime.
Neil brought our plates to the table, pausing to kiss Olivia’s head as he passed. “What happened to no phones at the dinner table?”
“It’s El-Mudad!” I shrieked, flapping my hands excitedly.
Neil pretended to be disappointed as I answered. “I suppose we can break the rule, just this once.”
“Sophie!” Just the sight of El-Mudad’s gorgeous face was enough to bring an entire species of butterflies to my stomach. The excitement in his voice was just icing on those butterflies.
Which would probably kill a butterfly. But I couldn’t think straight during the “new love” phase.
“I’m here, as well,” Neil called, pretending to be hurt.
“I knew you would be. You’re the inseparables,” El-Mudad joked. I spied the rear window of a car behind him, and the fact that he was in transit somehow drove our separation deeper, as though he were driving even farther away from us.
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