Page 11 of Sweet Ruin

She “did interiors” with her friend Yvette for a while, then some kind of “fashion consulting,” whatever that is, then a gig managing a tanning salon. Some kind of party planning nonsense. Mostly, it seems to involve getting dressed up and drinking lots of dirty martinis.

“Oh,” she says. “Busy, actually. Like stupidly busy.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s the end of the year, so everything’s due at once.” She scrolls. “Everyone’s just, like, panicking.”

“Doing what?”

“The brand stuff.” She waves the phone in a little circle, as if that’s self-explanatory. “It’s a lot of decks. I was out at a thing all weekend for it and I’ve barely slept.”

“Sounds fun.”

“You wouldn’t like it. It’s a lot of meetings. Face-to-face stuff.”

It’s actually a marvel how she can make such a meaningless sentence still come off like an insult.

Don’t get baited.

Don’t get suckered.

Do not, under any circumstances, let her rile you up.

I tape the first box. “You in the office much?”

“When I have to be.”

“Where’s the office again?”

“Midtown.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“God, no. Nobody interesting. Nobody I’d bring to Christmas, anyway.” She grins at me wickedly. “You’d hate him.”

My heart feels like it’s about to rip out of my chest. “‘Him’? Who’s ‘him’? Why, what kind of⁠—”

“Pause. Hold that thought.”

She’s back to typing away in a flurry on her phone. She grabs another one of the display cookies, holds it up to snap what I’m sure is a highly aesthetic shot, and then dunks that one in the trash can just like her first.

“Ugh, finally!” she cries out suddenly.

I look up in alarm. “Everything alright?”

“It is now.” She waggles her phone. “I drowned my old phone when we went skinny-dipping in Tulum.”

“You brought your phone skinny-dipping?” I ask dubiously.

But she ignores me. “And anyway, this new one is taking for-fucking-everrrr to sync all my shit. Four years of camera roll went straight into the cloud again, and my storage has been screaming at me ever since.”

I close my eyes and breathe through my nose for a minute. I repeat my mantra silently while I do.

Do not get baited.

Do not get suckered.

Do not let her win.