Me:Valid.
Zola:if leveraging your dating fails gets me one step closer to a promotion, it’s your sisterly duty to support that. I bet Eliza does it at my review this week when she hears what I’m working on next.
Of course, I support her, I just can’t get excited about the same mythical promotion Zo’s been chasing since I left for school four years ago. Being loyal to a job for this long without any upward movement is the saddest sort ofpick mebehavior. Zola stays pressed, professionally. I’m sure she has her reasons, but since none of those reasons are reflected in her paycheck, I don’t ask.
Dating fails?I type instead.Who’s dating?
Zola:Precisely.
This bravado is exactly why you shouldn’t be allowed to stay with your high school sweetheart beyond high school. Zola’s never been out in these streets, dodging the litter and oncoming traffic that ismen.Picking a forever guy off the class roster in homeroom doesn’t exactly constitute expertise.
At least, he wassupposedto be forever. Smith comma Jason played us all. And after more than a decade together, his parting gift to Zola is a lifetime spent picking up the pieces of the thing he blew up from the inside.
Me:How’s my favorite nephew doing in there?
Zola:Already using the baby to get yourself out of trouble?
Me:is it working?
The nextpingto my phone is accompanied by Zola’s latest ultrasound images. I send a flood ofheart eyes,with the hope Zo’s maternal instincts will override the hating big sister ones.
Me:Ah! He has my nose.
Zola:His face is currently smashed against my pelvis.
Me:His face is perfect and so is he. I thought you were gonna facetime me into the 3D one! can’t believe I missed it.
Zola:You weren’t the only one.
Her text bubbles have my full attention as they repeatedly appear and vanish, until finally Zola’s face, not her words, fills the screen.
Before my phone completes its first ring, I’m already answering the incoming call.
“You okay?”
“Damn,” she says through a laugh that’s noticeably humorless. “Who’s got you all eager in the middle of the night?”
“Right now, you,” I say, attempting to sound as earnest as one possibly can with a heel slung over a porcelain sink. “I can’t remember the last time you were up past dusk, and now you’re calling at”—I pull the phone from my ear long enough to check the time and ignore theOMWtext from Lawrence. “Almost threea.m.”
I briefly consider, and promptly decide against, dry-shaving my bikini line. I’m working way too hard for a guy who communicates exclusively in three-letter shorthand.
“What’s going on?” I ask, plodding over to my underwear drawer.
“It’s nothing. I’m being dumb.”
But I already know she’s not.Dumbhas never been Zola’s style.
“It’s just that scan,” she says. “It was the one thing I really didn’t wanna do alone. And Jason knew it. I set it for the ‘only time’ that worked for him. Had to call outta work and everything. But, of course, he still canceled. Who knew you could be a single mom before becoming a mom at all?”
Her words stop me in my tracks. Zo was never supposed to be a single mother. It’s not the kind of thing anyone plans on, but Zola didn’t just doodle boys’ names in the back of her notebooks, she brainstormed LLC’s. Her vision board didn’t end with “I do.” That’s where it began. But no matter how meticulous her five- and ten-year plans, Jason was Zola’sXfactor. The one thing she couldn’t control for. And because his shit didn’t add up, Zola’s now the thing she swore she’d never become.
Before I can metaphorically cock back to light his deadbeat daddy-to-be ass up, Zola rushes on.
“And Mom’s being newly ghosted by some guy with terrible plugs and transition lenses who failed to mention he’sunethically nonmonogamous, and not looking for anything serious. So, of course, that’s her entire personality now.”
And I knowthat—not the Jason stuff—is where Zola wantsthe conversation to remain. It’s why she’s led me to our forever favorite rabbit hole: Mom.
We’ve all got that friend who’s more committed to her chronic fuckboy drama than anything else in the world, certain the key to her very happiness is singular and man shaped. She’s got her breakup script down to a tear-filled monologue about how she’s going to die alone, and you have to be all, “He never deserved you. Ain’t nobody checkin’ for him.”
