And I don’t want complications.
Even for just one night.
2
Ziggy Barnes, aka a woman who’s sure that her gloomiest days are over and she’s back on a positive life track
The chickenby itself was a bad idea.
It looked good in the moment.
It smelled good in the moment.
It did not settle well though.
I’d say it’s morning sickness—which is totally misbranded, by the way, because it happens all damn day—but I suspect I’d be sick tonight even if I wasn’t pregnant.
Why?
Because my first night at my first job after unexpectedly moving back home when I decided that I wanted to carry and raise this baby involves serving my former best friend’s father-in-law and brother-in-law.
Abby Nora Ewing—now Abby Nora Ewing-Harrison—saved my life when I was thirteen.
While I wasn’t in physical danger, my mental health andself-confidence weren’t so great. My mom had raised me solo since my father died when I was too young to remember him, but when I was thirteen, she married Roland Keating, one of the richest men in Copper Valley, and we moved into his mansion in his fancy upscale neighborhood.
And I didn’t belong. I felt so out of place.
But Abby Nora—the girl next door—took me in and made friends with me and didn’t mock me for my lack of knowledge about makeup and fashion and what the symphony was playing this season.
We started high school together. We planned our class schedules so we’d have as much overlap as possible. We went to football and basketball games and dances together. After graduation, we went to culinary school together.
We both sobbed until we couldn’t sob any more when I left the East Coast for sommelier training and my subsequent first job in Napa. And then we texted constantly and talked on the phone at least once a week.
It slowed down when she met Josh, her future husband, but we still talked all the time.
She got engaged. Then married. And until two months ago, when she didn’t realize I’d called in over video to her baby shower and said some highly unflattering things about me while I could hear, I thought we were still besties.
She made it crystal clear to everyone at her baby shower that we are not, in fact,besties.
And tonight, her in-laws are among the guests I’m serving on my first shift.
This.
Is.
The.
Absolute.
Worst.
Event.
Ever.
Sad, really. The aquarium is beautiful. We’re in the ocean room, a viewing area with a cavernous floor-to-ceiling window into a wide, deep, seemingly endless pool, where sharks and stingrays and schools of fish and even the occasional whale shark float by. The water casts a blue glow into the room, creating an ambiance that the cruise line I used to work for tried to recreate in one of their dining rooms.
The ship’s Blue Lagoon restaurant came close, but this has a magic that can’t be emulated.
