“Liana and Ari are practically sisters; Lee wouldn’t give it the green light if she thought Ari would be upset. Trust me.”
Akiva had a point there. If Liana’d agreed to host Mira, it meant Arididn’tcare. At all.
Fine. Good. If she didn’t care, then he shouldn’t either. “Okay, well, please thank Liana for me, I guess. I’ll run it by Mira.”
“Sounds great!” Akiva said cheerfully. “Unless you’re still worried?”
“I’m not worried about anything,” Judah lied defiantly. “I see what you’re doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response. And by the way, if this Shabbosdoeshappen, I expect you’re going to be on your best behavior.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“No. And stop fluttering your lashes as if I’m going to be charmed by that.”
“You can’t even see me.”
Judah rolled his eyes. “Did you or didn’t you?”
“Not the point.”
“I’m serious, Akiva. No clever commentary or snide remarks. This is to be a nice Shabbos for my brother to meet my girlfriend.”
“And your ex meeting your girlfriend.”
Judah exhaled exasperatedly. “Forget it. I’m not subjecting Mira to this.”
“I’m kidding! Judah, come on. You know I’ll behave when Mira’s actually here. I’m just getting it out of my system.”
“Uh-huh. See that you do. Now shut up and let me call Mira before I change my mind.”
Chapter Twenty
“Ari? Everything okay?”
At the sound of Liana’s concerned voice, Ari blinked at her laptop screen, which was mostly black from her video chat with leadership that had ended anywhere from two minutes to two hours ago. Was everything okay? She had no idea. She was still trying to process whether that conversation had actually happened.
“Ar?”
Finally, Ari turned in her chair and looked up at Liana, who was standing there in a bathrobe, having scrubbed off a day of kindergarten. “I just had a meeting with the creative director and the head of KisStory, who are both, like, at my boss’s boss’s boss level, and—wait, did I mention I emailed them after Pesach to talk about promoting me since I basically do Erik’s job already?”
Liana was very familiar with the Legend of Erik the Terrible, but the rest was new to her. “No, you did not!”
“Okay, well, I did, and we went back and forth a bit, and I thought they were blowing me off, but apparently, they went to HR about it and decided to move Erik into this totally stupid bullshit position—because of course they can’t simplyfirethe wildly ineffective guy I’m sure makes twice what I do—and now you’re looking at the new editorial manager.” The words felt deeply strange on her tongue, but they also feltgood.
“Ari!” Liana swept her best friend up in a huge hug. “Oh, my God! I’m so proud of you! We have to celebrate!”
“I can’t believe it. I mean, I didn’t think anything would really happen. I was just trying—”I was just trying not to be the only onewho wasn’t moving on.But she couldn’t bring herself to say that out loud, even to Liana. Or maybe especially to Liana. Her best friend was the one who wore her heart on her sleeve, who made herself vulnerable without a second thought. But that wasn’t Arielle. Ari was supposed to be the one who braved the storms, not the one who got soothed through them by having someone serenade her with a guitar and spoon her to sleep.
Metaphorically speaking.
“Trying what?” Liana asked, heading for the fridge.
“To make things better for me, Naima, and James.” A half truth. Shewouldbe a better boss for Naima and James than Erik, and awkward as the new chain of command might have been, they seemed to think it was worth it.
As if on cue, her phone buzzed with texts from them both, full of celebratory emojis. Ari checked the company Slack, and sure enough, her promotion had just been announced.I guess it’s real.
