In a New York Minute(15)

“Of course you do.” Cleo immediately puffed up into scholar mode. “But you actually have no legal recourse here. As we’ve discussed.”

“Just go out there, set the record straight, say thanks, and drop the mic, Fran,” Lola said, pausing her endless phone-tapping. “In and out, easy-peasy. You’ve got this.”

I exhaled, feeling a little bit more at ease. In the past forty-eight hours, we’d discussed my “rip-cident” at length. That’s what Teen Vogue had called it. I called it mortifying, with no chance of going away anytime soon.

“You’re right. I can do this.” I paced a few steps, as if moving my body could stamp out the nerves.

“You also said you wanted to see Hot Suit in the flesh again,” reminded Cleo, in between bites.

“To say thank you!” I protested. “That’s it.”

“Oh, come on, we all want to see Hot Suit in the flesh,” Cleo said with a smirk. “Look, sometimes the universe does provide, in the form of a hot piece of ass.”

Lola shrugged at me. “Okay, she’s not wrong there.”

I twisted my hands together, wringing my fingers. “Seeing him again seems like a terrible idea now. Especially in front of, I don’t know, a gajillion freakin’ people?”

Cleo’s eyes followed me as I fidgeted around the room—sitting down, standing, unsure of what to do with my body. “You should eat something,” she said.

“What, and barf all over him after I’ve already wiped snot on his shirt?” I said, smoothing my dress, an old standby red sheath purchased at Zara a few years ago. “I’m sure he’d love that.”

There was a knock at the greenroom door, and Eliza, the producer in charge of my segment, strode in, with Priya, the makeup artist who had done my full face an hour earlier, at her side. “Hey, just giving you a ten-minute heads-up,” Eliza said matter-of-factly, as if appearing on TV were the most normal thing in the world. She was one of those people who talked at you but was always busy looking somewhere else. Priya gave me a sweet smile and began dabbing powder across my nose with a giant brush.

“We’ll have the jacket out onstage, to the right of your chair, so you can give it to him when he comes out,” Eliza said, eyeing something on her clipboard.

“And will someone tell me when to, like, hand it to him?” I asked, nervously shifting on my heels. I hadn’t mentioned it to Eliza—or Lola or Cleo for that matter—but I’d slipped a thank-you note inside the front pocket of the jacket. Nothing elaborate, but in case I was unable to clearly express myself on TV, I wanted to make sure I said thank you. Because if I took away the weirdness of this situation, all that remained underneath was gratitude, and—if I was being honest—the lingering memory of his touch, which still sent electric shocks through my body every time I thought about it.

“Pete will cue you with a question,” Eliza replied before briskly exiting the room.

Priya reached into a giant pouch attached at her hip and spritzed my hair deliberately with hair spray. “All set, honey.” She winked at me and followed Eliza out the door.

“Promise me,” I said, turning to Lola and Cleo, “that we’re going out for mimosas after this, no matter how it goes.”

“Fran, I called in sick for you,” Lola said, offering me a loving smirk. “You’re stuck with me today whether you like it or not. Also, worst-case scenario, we can discuss the gorgeous woman I met in the bathroom earlier. I’ve already slid into her Insta DMs.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” Cleo shook her head at Lola, but she was smiling too. This was classic Lola: confident, unabashedly brave, ready to flirt even while peeing.

“Maria, my TA, is handling seminar prep,” Cleo assured me. “First round is on me.”

“I love you guys,” I said, my heart racing.

“And we’ll start figuring out your new life plan,” Lola said, reaching over to grab something out of her bag. “I got you a present that we can all do together later.”

She passed a small white box to me, and one to Cleo. “A DNADiscovery kit?” I asked, reading the delicate black font across the front.

She nodded, all-knowing. “Remember when you said the other night that losing your job felt like losing your identity? Well, now you can get to know more about the rest of you. And we’ll do it with you. It’ll be fun!”

She said this with a shrug of her shoulders, as if spitting into a bottle alongside friends were a typical bonding activity, like a night out playing pool.

“I’m pretty sure I know my results already,” Cleo said with a scoff. Both sets of her grandparents had emigrated from Korea.

“And I’m going to be, like ninety-nine percent Ashkenazi,” Lola said, laughing. “But you never know! One of my interns found a whole set of cousins they didn’t know about.”

My stomach churned at the thought of digging into my ancestry. There were some things we just didn’t talk about in my family, the main one being my birth father.

“Or we could just focus on the fact that she’s a Sagittarius with an Aquarius moon and Leo rising, and get her chart done,” said Cleo, who yesterday had very studiously asked me for the exact time and location of my birth.

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. “We’re ready for you,” Eliza said with a wave of her hand forward. “Pete will lead the interview, but Jenna, our traffic reporter, is onstage as well. She covers subway delays, so it’s a perfect tie-in.”