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We stared at each other in stunned silence. Deja and I had never fought before. I didn’t know how to proceed, and she didn’t look real sure, either.
One of us had to say something. I supposed I should take her advice and stop being the victim. “You’re right.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I do make myself the victim,” I went on. “And I’m not doing right by you here. I’m stepping down, effective immediately—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t pull this passive-aggressive bullshit where you’re going to leave because I said something mean to you.”
“It’s not passive-aggressive bullshit. I promise.” Not that she had any reason to believe me. Because I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t have pulled exactly that passive-aggressive bullshit before now. But she was right. My life wasn’t like anyone else’s. At the moment, it was filled with so much bullshit that my mind was constantly going in seventeen directions at once. The difference between me and everyone else was that I had the means to step back from some of them. “I’m not trying to get you to beg me to stay. If I wanted to be here, I would be here. But I’m never here. So, clearly…”
“You don’t want to be here,” she finished for me. She put her head in her hands and blew out a long breath.
“It’s nothing personal,” I rushed to assure her. “But you’re right. I do want to run off and have adventures and write books. I’ve been trying so hard to have something other than what I have, without giving anything up. But I can’t be the Sophie I was when we started this place. She doesn’t fit me.”
“She didn’t fit you the day we met,” she said, looking up to meet my eyes with a sympathetic, but ultimately fed-up expression. “She probably didn’t fit you, before.”
“I’m not sure she did,” I admitted. “I probably didn’t notice it because I don’t ever want things to change. Sometimes, we want things we can’t have. No matter how much money we’ve got.”
“Or ambition,” she added. “I don’t think you realize how…well, insulting you can be about the opportunities you have.”
“Insulting?” How had I insulted anybody? “I really try hard to act like everyone—”
“Like everyone else,” she interrupted. “That’s the problem. You’re not like everyone else. Everyone else doesn’t have billions of dollars. And you’re super bad at pretending you don’t. You’ve got that rich-people removal from reality, where you think you can be on equal footing with everyone else. And you just can’t.”
Man, did I ever feel that in the pit of my heart. But she was right, again. “It’s hard. I’m not saying that to sound like a victim. But I never thought it would be so hard to adapt. Or that adapting would take this long.”
“You’re trying to walk with your feet in two worlds. It’s not working out,” she stated, far more gently than before. “That doesn’t mean you can’t still love the people you loved before. But it’s not fair to expect us to love the fake you that you put on to feel less guilty about the advantages you have. You have to let us accept you for who you are. You have to trust that we can do that.”
I looked down at my feet in my crystal-embellished Miu Miu flats that I’d bought without worrying a bit about my credit card debt or if I really needed them in the first place. I thumped my toes on the carpet of the office that I visited rarely because my entire life didn’t depend on the success or failure of this magazine. Then, I faced the woman who’d taken our idea and actually made something of it, when I probably never would have been able to. The woman who wanted to have a child and not be constantly worried that her coworker was dragging her and the business she depended on down.
“Deja…I want to give you something.” I took a deep breath. “I want you to have Mode.”
Her sharp laugh was cut off by her own realization. “You’re not joking.”
“I’m not.” I shrugged helplessly. “You agreed—this life doesn’t fit me. And I’m not doing anything here but being in the way. I don’t need this place, anymore. So, why don’t I just hand full control over to you?”
“Because what happens if I decide to sell this place in a year, make mad profit, and you missed out, and it spoils our friendship?” she asked.
“It won’t,” I promised. “I’m not stupid. We’re going to involve lawyers and make sure neither of us gets burned. But Mode is yours. Sell it if you want to. Just not to Elwood and Stern.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t think they’re going to be very interested, anyway.”
We smiled at each other in silence for a moment, until she looked away and said, “I’m sorry for being so tough on you.”
