Silas sits at the foot of her bed. “You’ll make it beautiful.”

Obviously, she wants to say. She wants to throw the word across the room like her wadded up face mask. But with Silas feet from her, the air feels thicker. Nothing she throws will get far now. 

I have a job opportunity in New York City, he’d told her, and I’m going to take it.

She gives the memory a cold shoulder and picks up her phone. Ignoring has always been her bliss. “I had a meeting last week with Angler and floated the possibility of a collaboration. I was thinking about my birthday, but I bet if I offered an exclusive they would make this weekend happen.”

Silas’s smile peeks through, the small gap between his two front teeth softening her anger. “Do Michelin-starred restaurants cater?”

Ramona opens her text thread with Darcy and types, Need a call with Britton at Angler. Move whatever appointments I have to make it happen. 

In a second text, she adds, & have that contract I did with Marc Jacobs handy. I have ideas on how to tweak. 

Darcy’s response pops up almost immediately. I’ll send over an updated schedule for tomorrow within the hour.

She opens Instagram and sends out a few direct messages before returning her attention to Silas. He’s looking wistfully at a set of pictures framed on her wall—a foggy shot of San Francisco from across the bay, and one of Ari and Ramona jumping off a pier at Lake Tahoe, both taken by him. 

He’s genuinely one of the easiest people to love she’s ever met, and if she respected herself even the tiniest bit less, she would’ve made the move a long time ago. Now she’s facing the reality she saw coming miles away; her mood doubles back.

“Go home, Si,” she says, sharp. “Go pack.” 

There’s a flash of hurt across his face. “Moving on so easily?”

“Ew, playing the victim doesn’t look good on you.”

“I’m allowed to be sad about leaving,” he replies, brows pinched.

“And I’m allowed to ask you to remove your pity party from the end of my bed.” The bite in her voice is too obvious; Ramona presses her lips together in defeat as Silas adopts his understanding expression.

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Not to me.”

Ramona doesn’t blink, too focused on not lashing out at the condescension she swears she hears. But Silas isn’t her mom.

She makes a noise of frustration. “I don’t know where you fit now. Now that…” A flap of her hand in Silas’s direction finishes the sentence.

“Now that you can’t have me?”

Ramona bobs her head to show she’s reshaping the words. “Now that I’m losing you on a timeline, and knowing it’s best for the both of us.”

“We can’t be each other’s crutch anymore.” Silas’s hand rests on Ramona’s foot beneath the covers and squeezes. “It’s quite the adult move for us.”

She scrunches her nose. “Fuck adulthood.”

He smiles. “I fit like I always have. For another couple weeks, at least. Let’s enjoy it. Please.”

Ramona twirls a piece of hair around her finger. “For Ari?”

“And for me. And, I hope, for you.”

***

She enters the code into the keypad and tugs open the door with one hand, typing out a reply to the picture Adam just sent with the other. 

The navy one. 

Then: Did Darcy call you about the salon?

Then: You’re taking Friday off yes? 

She’s calling Ari by the time she reaches the elevator and presses the up button. Ramona gets four taps of her boot in before the doors part, five before Ari picks up. He doesn’t get a chance to say hello before she snaps, “If your cousin gets so drunk he ends up on the roof and the cops have to come like they did at New Year’s two years ago I will cut your dick off before it gets anywhere near Adam.”

She hangs up and gives the elderly couple a polite smile as they step around her.

Everything is coming together for the reception, shockingly. Ramona runs her fingers through her ponytail before shaking it out. She would make a killer party planner. In fact— She holds her phone up and snaps a picture. 

When the doors open onto the eleventh floor, she’s posted the selfie to her story. Lowkey think I could plan the Met Gala at this point, she’s written on the photo, which especially flatters her cheekbones. 

Her dad is at the two-seater bar table against the panoramic kitchen windows, reading a newspaper and sipping from a mug. It’s her largest victory since everything went down: that instead of continuing his seeming indifference to her life, he reoriented his relationship with her to attentive investment. Investment she didn’t realize she needed.

“Camomile?” she asks, heels tapping against the parquet flooring. 

He dips the corner of the newspaper, then sets the entire thing down and smiles as she sits across from him. “Like the doctor ordered. Busy day?”

“Planning Ari’s reception.” Ramona sets her phone face down and rests her folded arms on the table. “And setting the stage for future career opportunities.”

Her dad sips from the tea as she takes stock. The sunshine isn’t giving him the most flattering angle, and she abruptly realizes how much his work—and no doubt her mom’s political show—has dragged him down over the years. He’s fifty-nine, but looks a decade older.

He smiles when he catches her looking, and it’s with what looks like honest-to-god curiosity that he replies, “Care to share?”

She does, a relatively new development that still surprises her. Ramona walks him through the podcast series she and Ari are brainstorming in her free time: behind the scenes at castings and shoots, the illusions of effortless beauty, parasocial intimacy. 

“We’ll call it Behind the Gloss,” she says. “Podcasting might be cringe, but I honestly think it’ll be cathartic for Ari. Less intensive than a docu series or whatever. Hopefully it’ll, like, humanize me a bit, too.”

Her dad’s response is a stern look. “Will it keep middle-aged men at Burning Man from taking advantage of your sphere of influence?”

Ramona can’t help the withering look. “Ew, you say that like I’ll trust anyone I meet ever again.”

He reaches over to pat her hand. “I think it’s a brilliant idea. I do. I’m sure I’ll learn quite a bit about your day-to-day. You remember Clara, my former communications manager? She works for a production company, is my understanding based on her LinkedIn updates. Shall I make an introduction?”

Never one to skirt an opportunity, Ramona says, “Send her contact to Darcy. He’ll make it happen.” She flicks her ponytail and adds, with a coy smile, “Please.”

Blond eyebrows high on his forehead, the famous negotiating glint in his eye, her dad waits. 

Ramona covers her face with both hands and shakes her head, sinking lower in the seat. “Noooooo, don’t make meeeee!”

She hears him push his chair back, then the light drag of his mug across the table. “You’ve both spent too long waiting for the other to become more palatable to your preferences.”

Ramona opens her eyes in surprise. He’s so rarely disapproving about her mom.

“At the same time,” he says with a meaningful look as he heads for the sink, “you continue to show up for each other—her campaign dinner, your fragrance collaboration launch last month. You’re much more supportive of each other than you realize. I think love comes in different shapes for different seasons, and one day you’ll recognize this time was about being frustrated but showing up anyway.”

“I’m pretty sure she’d prefer an endorsement over love,” Ramona mutters. She sits up and reaches for her phone, scrolling through a panicked text from Adam (Sorry, but I thought you meant hair salon? I don’t know if I feel super comfortable with this, to be completely honest); an annoyed text from Ari (jfc he doesn’t need a spray tan. stop stressing him out); and an update from Darcy (Invitation from Meta for you to join their Met Gala table).

“Ramona, darling.” Her father doesn’t look up as he washes out his mug, and it’s that act—stupidly quaint but heartwarming, that he always immediately washes his dishes after use—that tips the scales from constant annoyance over her mother to growing devotion for him.

“Fine,” she says. “Breakfast on Sunday. Here, not out where she’s going to vomit her purity politics where everyone can hear. And just us three. No major funder getting an exclusive inside look.” She taps her nails rhythmically twice on the table. “And she can’t comment about it publicly, before or after. No photos or videos or fucking Facebook posts about ‘brunch with my baby girl,’ I swear to god.”

When her dad looks up and meets her eye, there’s cheerfulness in his expression. “Democrats and Republicans could learn a thing or two about negotiating from you.”

“I’d rather have everyone just agree I’m right,” Ramona says, allowing a one-sided smile at the sound of her father’s laughter.

***

There’s Ari’s bachelor party—a boisterous affair with mostly Banik cousins crowding three bars and a club, and then there’s the true last hurrah: Ari, Silas, and Ramona.

 They aim for the city’s ocean side, grabbing a booth at a mostly locals dive bar off Forty-Sixth. Ramona swallows her complaints over the amount of stickiness across every surface, instead keeping her cropped cape coat from touching the seat in any way.

Ari’s choice of food is a trough of tater tots, a veggie tray, and a bucket of beer. Ramona keeps her thoughts to herself about that, too.

“Stop looking so bitchy,” Ari tells her after a long swallow from his bottle.

“I am bitchy,” she replies.

The bar gives big-time Millenial energy, she decides, after taking her fiftieth visual sweep of the room. Mismatched furniture, Edison bulbs strung everywhere, an inordinate amount of forty-year-olds wearing denim jackets. Sunday brunches are most definitely done to acoustic covers of Beyoncé. 

Ari’s foot beneath the table hits her shin. “Seriously, stop.”

“Ohmigod, I can’t help my face!” she hisses.

He and Silas are across the (very sticky) table from her—the former in his usual henley and ballcap, while Silas continues to make her proud with his ever-fashionable albeit thrifted wardrobe (tonight a toffee cardigan buttoned over a white t-shirt and olive green slacks). Both give her slightly disapproving looks.

She reaches for a carrot stick to appease them. Ari narrows his eyes in an I’m watching you way before turning at Silas. “Are you gonna be living on the, like, fortieth floor of some high rise?”

Silas shakes his head. “East Village is more low- to mid-rise based on what Raoul told me. I’m in a third-floor studio with zero closet space.” He and Ramona exchange disappointed looks.

“What’s your game plan for socializing?” Ari asks through a mouthful of tater tots. “Like, how are you gonna make friends?”

Silas grimaces. “Look, tonight isn't about me. We’re here to celebrate your impending nuptials. Any last wishes for bachelorhood?”

“A more expensive speaker system in your car?” Ramona suggests. “Adam has penny-pincher written all over him.”

Ari waves her comment off as he sits back against the seat, looking contemplative. “No last wishes, really. Maybe a dog? I dunno. I do wish I had a next move figured out with my career. Feels kinda irresponsible.”

“Pretty sure falling in love is irresponsible like sixty percent of the time.”

Silas tips his beer toward Ramona in salute, then adds, “Life rarely matches up all its edges. Take the joy where you find it.”

“Well, I’ve definitely found it.” Ari briefly lifts his hat to rub his head. “And not just with Adam. Dunno what I would’ve done without you guys. I can’t imagine life without you around all the time.” 

The last sentence is directed to Silas, whose gray eyes suddenly seem bottomless. “I don’t anticipate finding friends as good as you two in New York,” he says. “So, y’know: life, edges.”

The pause that follows is long enough to become emotional. When Ari knocks back another swallow of beer, there’s a shine to his eyes. Silas rotates his bottle in his hand, head bowed. Ramona takes in the pair of them, and thinks back to what her dad said about the different shapes love can take at different times in life, and how this friendship will take on a new shape very soon. Then she pulls out her phone and snaps a photo. Not for posting, but as a nod to the end of an era.

“For the record, I’m happy for you both,” she says. “Like, so incredibly happy. And proud. And Si, even though you’re going to build a new life across the country, I think that’s what the, like, lifey part of life is. Constantly building and finding ways to fill it up. You’re already so good at supporting others in that way; you just have to do it for yourself for a bit.” 

Ari snorts into his drink, cutting short the grateful look Silas shoots Ramona. “Remember that naked dude from Bay to Breakers like five years back? The eighty-year-old who fell in love with you because you walked with him up Hayes Street?”

“He was about to keel over,” Silas says, eyebrows raised. 

“Didn’t he have a massive dick?” Ramona says, munching on another carrot. 

Ari nudges Silas. “Someone swore he didn’t notice. But for real, you totally changed his outlook on life. It looked like he dropped twenty years by the time you finished talking to him. Like Ramona said—turn that shine inward, buddy-boy.”

“Speaking of which,” Ramona continues, attention swinging to Ari. “You are the constant in the joy you’ve found with Adam, Si, and me. You’ll find it again in some sort of job, too, because you carry it with you in your, like, soul or something. Modeling always asked for only half of you—like, literally. You’ll find something that’s entirely Ari, every—and I mean every—ounce.”

The other two watch her with what looks like amusement, fondness, and relief. She doesn’t let herself feel embarrassed. “I know, I know,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender. “I stole Si’s morale booster talking stick. But somebody had to. You guys were on a runaway bummed out train.”

“Mostly I’m shocked that you were talking so nice while looking like such a bitch,” Ari says. 

“Fuck off,” she and Silas say together.

Then, she reaches for the remaining bottle of beer in the bucket and lifts it high. “To Ari,” she says, “finding his happily ever after. And to Si—” He lifts his gray eyes to hers, mouth half-kicked up. “—having his best days ahead of him.”

They clink their beers with hers. “I love you both,” she adds.