“Of course it will,” Ellen said. “I feel it right here.” She pointed to her gut.
“That probably just means you’re hungry,” Rae grumbled, but it made her feel better anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CIRCLING BACK
“Has it really been a whole year since the Scramblettes were last together?” Ellen asked Rae, Mina, and Sarah one night a few days before Christmas.
They were sitting around Ellen and Aaron’s circular kitchen table in matching bamboo chairs, eating vegan Santa Claus omelets (bean-based egg replacements stuffed fat with veggies and cashew cheese), cooked by Aaron, who was now doing the dishes and pretending not to listen as the Scramblettes pretended having a guy around didn’t disrupt the dynamic.
Rae had been scheduled to fly back to Indiana today, but she was on a deal that was closing December 23, so her departure date had been pushed back to Christmas Eve.
She’d had no excuse, then, not to attend the Scramblette reunion, so here she sat, still in her suit, with her old Santa hat draped on her lap like a napkin. She’d planned on wearing it, but none of the others were dressed in theme, and it felt like a metaphor for forcing something on that no longer fit.
“Feels like it’s only been three weeks,” Mina said, scooping faux eggs with one hand and swiping dating app profiles on her phone with the other. She was fresh off another surge-then-crash relationship.
“I think it feels like threeyears,” Sarah said, back from Austin for winter break with short hair and an extra shot of confidence. “Business school is just so busy. A classmate invites you on their yacht in Croatia, and you can’t really say no, since it’s a networking opportunity. So hard to balance with studying.”
“I can only imagine,” Rae said, only half trying to keep her eyes from rolling out of their sockets.
“Sounds exhausting,” Ellen agreed, nudging Rae’s foot under the table in a symbolic chortle.
“Not as exhausting as this summer will be,” Sarah said, missing the sarcasm. “During my venture capital internship.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go back into finance,” Rae said. What she thought, but didn’t add, was,Wasn’t that the whole point of business school? To pivot careers?
“Venture cap is so much different than investment banking,” Sarah said. “You can’t even compare the two.”
Deeper than Rae’s resentment was a sad kind of pity. Sarah, too, was stuck on the hamster wheel that was the financial industry. Even those who tried to leave ultimately sprinted back into the cage of their own volition, addicted to life’s riches and indifferent to its richness.
Rae poked her omelet with her fork until it more closely resembled a scramblette. “Got it,” she said.
“How about you?” Sarah asked. “Still plotting your Wall Street escape plan?”
“No,” Rae lied. “I’m pretty happy with how things are going.”
“Rae’s crushing it,” Ellen said. “Putting all the guys in their place.” Ellen had been more supportive of, or at least more sympathetic to, Rae’s masochistic attachment to Wall Street after she’d been passed up for the promotion.
“How’s the wedding planning going?” Mina asked Ellen without looking up from her phone.
“The planning is pretty much done,” Ellen said. “Just finalizing the cupcake lineup.” She grinned at Rae.
“I’m iterating based on learnings from the beta batches,” Rae said. She’d been filling her Saturdays testing recipes, having decided to make them all from scratch rather than outsource to a bakery.
“It’s too bad the wedding is in June,” Mina lamented. “Since it’s in DC. Because I’ll be out in San Diego by then, so I’ll have to fly all the way back.”
Rae didn’t even try to disguise her eye roll at Mina’s self-centered approach to Ellen’s big day.
“You’re not actually moving to San Diego, are you?” Sarah asked.
“Of course I am,” Mina said. “I’m interviewing for jobs, and I’ve already changed my dating app geography settings. Hot surfer guys are the SoCal equivalent of New York’s boring finance bros. Massive upgrade.”
She tilted her phone toward them so they could see her pipeline of long-haired, bare-chested, surfboard-holding prospects.
“What happens when these guys find out you actually live in New York?” Sarah asked.
“We’ll FaceTime for our first few dates, obviously,” Mina said. “Then once I know he’s my true love, I’ll move out there.”
