33
Ani
It was twodays after the wedding. This morning in her apartment in Russian Hill, Ani found her bank account so full that she immediately paid off her personal loan, then made a credit card payment. She still had twenty thousand to go, a number which, after all that, should have been demoralizing. Would have still felt totally out of reach. Except…
Her inbox had been blowing up since Kami and Grace’s wedding, all the leaked photos, all the times she’d been tagged on Instagram. Grace had done her ahugesolid and given Ani a full-on shout-out on her social media pages, which absolutely flooded Ani’s DMs.
She couldn’t believe it. She was getting so many requests she couldn’t keep up with them all. All that negative press in theDaily Mailhad been for nothing. It had completely vanished after the wedding and concentrated instead on the happy couple. That photo of her and Raffi that the paps had caught had never materialized. Very strange.
Last night after Grace’s Instagram post and the subsequent rush of interest in Ani’s services, Ani wrote Grace and Kami aheartfelt thank-you email and sent best wishes for their honeymoon and life together. And she meant it.
So now she had it. She had exactly what she wanted. Credibility, the path to success, and the ability to charge more (and dig herself out of this debt hole probably much sooner than later). It felt good.
But she also felt like a dry husk of herself. She regretted, more than anything, that conversation with Raffi. Why had she sabotaged herself like that? Why hadn’t she let herself believe she deserved happiness and goodness? He’d proven himself to her over and over, and that was how she’d repaid him.
Then he said he didn’t think he’d ever want to get back with her. Those words had been on her mind for two days, and she’d shoved the framed photograph of them into the back of a busy desk drawer. She hadn’t heard from him since her sudden departure, and would she ever again? She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but would it just crush her further?
Ani pulled herself out of bed right as she got a FaceTime request from Talar. Oh God. She had sent Talar a quick “Talk later” text the day after the wedding, and she supposed today was technically “later.” She could just imagine how she looked. Well, her sister had seen her literally at her worst, so this wouldn’t be anything new. Ani picked up.
“Just waking up?” Talar admonished.
“ ‘Hello’ is customary,” Ani grumbled.
“It’s eleven a.m. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about—”
Ani wanted to face this head-on. She interrupted, “I messed up, Tal.”
Talar’s face immediately softened. “What happened?”
“I assume you saw the second article?”
Talar nodded. “And it’s bullshit, right?”
“No. Not really.”
Talar stared at her. “Which part isn’t?”
“I am—actually, I was—in about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of debt.”
“What the—”
Ani quickly recounted the story of the scheming Avedissian family.
“Ani,” Talar said angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have given you money. You should not be paying twenty percent interest. Do you know how insane that is? When I could have just helped you?”
“No,” Ani said, that old flame building inside her. The one of shame. “I needed to do this on my own, entirely. And I have. I’m almost out of it now, and if I just do two more luxury weddings, which I easily can now, I’ll be in the clear.”
Talar propped up the phone and clasped her hands together in a prayer position. “Ani. Please, please, please let melendyou whatever else you currently owe. I cannot in good conscience let my sister pay those fucking vultures twenty percent APR.”
“Twenty point nine nine, actually,” Ani smiled.
“No time for jokes! Let me. Please. An actual loan. Not a gift. Not charity, okay? Just good business.”
Ani thought about it. There was a time when she would have been too proud to even consider this. Bootstrap everything, earn it through hard work, or don’t earn it at all. But she had done so much. She’d dug herself out of the worst of it. Hersister was just saving her one, or at most two, shitty monthly payments. She wasn’t being pitied. Just helped. And that was okay.
“All right. Okay. Fine.”
Talar breathed out in relief. “Thank God. I’ll wire you today. Pay those fuckers off, I’m serious. Don’t give them another cent of interest.”
