Forty-Four
Through the beginning of November, I declined an onslaught of alphabet-soup-outlet media interview requests, at first via my team, and then by email, and lastly through direct messages.
“You should have waited to quit,” Chuck Wheeler said, his words seething on speaker. “Do you have any idea what kind of severance package I could’ve leveraged for you?”
I uncapped a spice jar from a glass set I’d had delivered that morning, combined the two vials of cinnamon I’d been using since before Wells and I moved in together. “No,” I said, trying to hide my sneeze to be polite. I would’ve thought of it as blood money.
They always say what goes around comes around, and I’d started to learn that anonymoustheyhad the tendency to be right. So even though I was the one who broke up with Wells, I was somehow caught off guard when my agent and manager both dumped me at the end of the phone call.
When it became obvious that I wasn’t speaking out publicly to anyone, the media pivoted to spinning rumors about my departure. Outside, leaves changed, darkened, then tugged away from branches, while speculation ran from me being angry about my salary (OLIVIA ADLER IS NO WAGE GAP VICTIM, a headline I didn’t mind), to Phoebe ousting me (OLD HABBITS DIE HARD) to the ever-present discussionof female mental health and/or shading my supposed illicit drug use, just like my sister’s. (OLIVIA ADLER: HOSPITALIZED FOR ‘EXHAUSTION’ ALREADY?)
Not really what I’d expected, but possibly what I should have anticipated.
My notifications didn’t stop. Every second, my phone lit with one. I left it plugged into a charger in the living room overnight, which helped, but every time I called my parents or checked in with Caleb or Natalie, my mind felt frizzy.
“I’m proud of us,” Natalie announced a week later. We picked our way down a narrow aisle in a tiny theater. Her ex, Danny, had bought them a pair of tickets to this play way back in the spring, and I gallantly overacted his part instead, holding doors for her.
Our seats were about thirty rows back. Natalie elbowed me. “Remember when we were going to do this once a month?”
“Don’t remind me.” We’d tried, until we realized how expensive great seats were and how much time a play took out of everyday life, and that quickly dwindled down to a handful of theater visits a year. It’d become a running joke between us.
“Wanna sleep over later?” Natalie handed me my Playbill. “The guest cove is yours.”
“Don’t say that too often. If I don’t figure out a new job, then you may have a new roommate after all.” I traced the letters against the taxi-yellow background. “And I have plans after this.”
“Night plans?”
“You could call them that.”
“Oooh,” she teased. “Sex plans.”
My insides buzzed at the thought of him. In the sparemoments when he wasn’t nose-to-computer grinding on The Longevity Project, we were either in bed or at a restaurant. We ate thin crust pizza and Buffalo chicken mac and cheese and Caprese salads that were said to be composed with ingredients imported from Italy. We both believed that restaurant was lying, but we didn’t care, mostly because now we were a couple that held opinions like that. “I’d like to say I wouldn’t kiss and tell, but I tell you everything.”
“Valid.” She sprang up. “Oh! Gotta silence my phone.” She produced it, flicked the switch, then paused. “Oh. Wow.”
“What?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Soulmails. They’re out.”
“Again?” I said, calculating. And now? It was a Friday night. “Didn’t they just drop yesterday? Early?” The only thing consistent about their timing was their inconsistency.
She scrolled. “Two days in a row,” she confirmed. “The news seems to be speculating a ton with no real information. As usual.”
“So now what? There’s going to be a new drop every day?”
“I don’t know. Did anyone, you know...” She wiggled her eyebrows and dropped her voice. “In-the-know reach out to you about it?”
I hovered my hand over my bag, then retreated. “I don’t want to look,” I said.
She frowned. “Why not?”
“My social media notifications have been destroying me. The only good thing I’ve gotten on this thing has been from Wells, ironically. He forwarded the confirmation of our wedding cancelation.”We’re sorry to see you go, Leila had written, as if I’d unsubscribed from a mailing list. This time, I’d taken the reins, emailing her back to thank her for her work. No stone unturned.
“Amen to that.” She put her hand on my arm. “Take a break from it, Liv.”
“I’m trying. But then I keep looking in the middle of the night. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“Let me change your passwords. I’ll be the steward of them for a week, and then you can change them back. Thoughts?”
