For years, Kia had wanted her life on the road more than an address and a committed relationship (unless Sullivan decided she was desperately in love with her, in which case Kia had been ready to settle down… at least she could pretend that was true so she could enjoy her seeing-Sullivan-again fantasies). She met so many wonderful people on the road. It made up for not having a lot of close friends or a girlfriend. But now she was spending most of her time promoting sponsored products at name-brand restaurants and corporate-sponsored fairs. She wasn’t meeting lobster fishers in Maine or building community gardens in Detroit or watching grandmothers teaching their grandchildren how to make fry bread. She was making a ton of money promoting AmericanSpirit breakfast sausages. She was the person every aspiring influencer wanted to be.
Then she went back to Old Girl alone. She could charm her way into any after-party. No backstage bouncer was immune to the confident friendliness that said,Of course I belong here. But when it came to flirting—as she’d painfully illustrated with Sullivan—she was hopeless. (Probably hopeless in bed too, although she hadn’t had enough experience to know for sure.) And while thirty wasvery young, Aunt Eleanor had told her once when she was fretting about the approaching big three oh, she was almost thirty with one passionless relationship behind her. And now she had to tell Lillian that she was marrying her culinary arts school rival and crush to secure a land deal. She wasn’t ready for the lecture. Lillian might be all calm and happy in Paris with her lover, but she was still her mother’s daughter.This is an unorthodox way to conduct business. Have you considered other options, Kia?
Kia climbed the steep steps to her bed loft. Usually she loved being in Old Girl, which she had parked in an RV park outside the city. She crawled into her loft, where she could sit up, although not stand. (On a good day her Afro, Georgie, brushed the ceiling, but today it had deflated in the humid air.) Out of the back of Old Girl she could see snowcapped Mount Hood and airplanes crisscrossing the sky. It was a pretty park compared to some of the places she’d stopped.
Old Girl was her sanctuary, filled with plants, mirrors, jewelry, and books. Her kitchen and her bed loft vied for favorite space. Old Girl was where she collected herself at the end of a busy day, the place where she could channel the peacefulness of clear skies and open highways. But today, it felt like a vehicle, not a home.
Kia looked at Georgie in a little mirror that hung beside her bed. Her hair was lopsided in an unflattering way. She tried to pick it into shape, a pit growing in her stomach.Breathe.Shetook out the old digital camera she kept in a cubby in the headboard. Her favorite camera. With an actual memory card and no Bluetooth. A safe space. She pressed the stiff on button and scrolled through the pictures. They were all of her. Not selfies—she set the camera on a stand. But not self-portraits either.Portraitimplied art and planning. They were justher. Often naked. Never posed. No filter. Not trying to look sexy. She didn’t smile in the pictures unless it was a true smile. She hadn’t been smiling that much recently.
“I am me,” she recited.
No matter what happened or how many Kia Gourmazing selfies she edited, deep inside, Kia Jackson was Kia Jackson. She was a girl reading Sappho on the deck of her father’s yacht theSerendipity. She was sixteen talking to Lillian on the phone in the middle of the night. She was alone on a Montana highway towing Old Girl and blasting Beyoncé. The pictures calmed her. Everything was happening so fast, and it felt like it was happeningtoher. But deep inside there was part of her that none of this could touch.
“I am real.”
The Zoom chime sounded to tell her Lillian had logged on.
She opened her laptop on top of a pile of velvet pillows. She willed her facial muscles into her signature Duchenne smile and turned on the camera. Kia and her lopsided Afro had a job to do, a confession to make, a scolding to take. Lillian appeared in her tiny apartment, sitting on the fire escape. She held up her phone to show Kia the Eiffel Tower lit up behind her, visible between two buildings. Did it get any more romantic than that?
“Cuuuz! What’s up?” Feigning casualness was Kia’s bread and butter, but it felt impossible to slow the adrenaline coursing through her. She kept talking. “You look amazing. How’s the ballet school? Did you buy those Parisian tea towels you wanted?”
“Forget the towels. How was the meeting? Are you a land baron now?”
Kia nervously brushed her left hand through her Afro. Lillian froze. For a second, Kia thought the internet had stalled.
Then Lillian said, “Kiana Jackson, that’s not an engagement ring?”
“What?”
Kia was still wearing the ring.
“Did you getengaged?”
“I…” Kia opened her mouth, but a desert’s worth of sand swallowed her voice. This was like lowering a tursnicken into hot oil. You had to move carefully and with confidence. “I am getting married.”
“You didn’t even tell me you were dating someone.” Lillian sounded hurt.
Kia could hit her with,When would I tell you? It takes a week to schedule a call with you.But that wasn’t fair.
“It’s not what you think.”
“How can marrying someone not be what I think?” Lillian asked.
“I would have told you if I was dating.”
“Oh my god, Kia!” The reproach softened to amusement. “Did you meet her three days ago? Aren’t you supposed to be in the middle of a land deal?”
Right. Hadn’t her aunt Eleanor always called Kia and her fathercolorful parrots? They were fanciful. They didn’t make sense, and they didn’t have to, because it wasn’t in their nature. Lillian had to be perfect, but Kia just had to show up in her turquoise sunglasses and make everyone laugh. She wasn’t going to get a lecture, because Lillian expected her to do crazy things like getting married to a woman she’d just met while in the middle of the biggest business transaction of her life. But being a colorfulparrot wouldn’t save her from letting Me’shell down. Being fanciful and funny wouldn’t make Sullivan like her.
Kia felt Georgie droop.
“It’s all fucked up, Lillian.”
Even from across the world and through the screen, Kia saw concern fill Lillian’s face.
“I didn’t get the land deal, and now I might, but it’s not… it’s not how I wanted it.”
“And you got married.”
