“You really think you can sell ten thousand dollars of skin care product to your friends?” Jess glanced at her and then back to the road. Jamie’s friends didn’t have money, either.

“Yeah, that’s not going to be a problem, seriously everyone loves this stuff. But I might need you to loan it to me so I can get her off my ass—”

Tearing her eyes away from the road again, Jess cried, “What in the world makes you think I have that kind of money lying around?”

Jamie studied her shrewdly. After a long pause, she said, “I figured you could ask your new boyfriend.”

Jess felt like she’d been punched in the chest. “What?”

“I saw the Today show.” Jamie had the nerve to appear wounded when she looked back over at her daughter. “The guy who started that company that’s going to be such a big deal?”

Jess had to push the words up her throat. “I don’t know if he and I are—”

“You weren’t even going to tell me. Probably because you assumed I’d just come to you looking for money.”

She gaped at the black asphalt ahead, at the mile marker she passed, the speed limit sign. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“Not for a handout! Jesus Christ, Jessica, I’m talking about paying it back within a month! I only need it now because fucking Trish has me backed into a corner! Hasn’t she ever been late on a bill? Haven’t you?”

Glancing into the back seat, Jess was relieved to find that Juno had fallen asleep. She turned and stared straight ahead, blinking back tears. Jess had the money. She’d been holding it for braces and insurance and a rainy day, but she still had it.

Why can’t you just be my mom?

“It’s fine,” Jamie said. “I’ll figure something out or I’ll go to prison, but either way it’s not your problem.”

Jess blinked up to the mirror again. Juno’s mouth was softly open, her head bobbing gently with the tiny bumps in the road. Jess couldn’t keep doing this anymore.

“I’ll give you the money.”

Jamie’s face whipped to Jess. “You will? I’ll pay you back with my first check. I’m telling you, Jessie, before all this happened Trish said she’d never seen anyone sell like me.”

She pulled into the apartment complex that made her own look like a palace and parked in the first empty spot she found. “Don’t pay me back,” Jess said flatly. “I’m giving this to you. But after I do, I don’t want you to call me anymore, and I don’t want you to come by.”

“What? Why—”

“I’ll transfer the money, but that’s the end. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

The car idled, and the silence stretched between them. Jess had no idea what else to say. Would Jamie even pay her debts, or would she take the money and run?

It honestly didn’t matter. Jess was done.

Jamie looked at her granddaughter in the back seat, and her gaze seemed to sober as it moved over Juno’s sleeping face.

Resolved, she turned back around. “You still have my account number?”

Sadness and relief braided hot and painful through Jess’s limbs. “Yes.”

Her mother nodded and slowly faced forward again. “Okay.” Her fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Okay.” She pushed it open and stepped out into the darkness.

TWENTY-FIVE

SURPRISINGLY, THE WORLD didn’t stop turning when Jess cut off her mother.

Juno and Jess got up the next morning, and got ready in a sweet, easy rhythm. Juno seemed to know to be tender with her mom, and didn’t need to be reminded to get dressed or bring her dishes to the kitchen or brush her teeth.

She held Jess’s hand all the way to school.

“I was thinking we could go out to dinner tonight,” Jess said, “just me and you. Somewhere special.”

With an enthusiastic nod, Juno stretched, kissing Jess’s cheek, and then ran off to meet up with her friends.

Jess watched her until the bell rang and Juno disappeared into her classroom. After transferring the money, Jess had to remind herself that she was still better off than she’d been before all this craziness began. She had new clients, new visibility. She could rebuild.

She was much better off than she could have been, she knew. Plus, she had a pretty fucking awesome kid.

SIX DAYS LATER, Fizzy whined plaintively into her fancy headset: “This setup doesn’t feel the same.”

Jess looked at Fizzy’s glowering image over Zoom on her iPad. “Well, it’s the best you get. You said you didn’t want to go back.”

“I know, but … don’t you miss Daniel?”

“And good coffee and reliable Wi-Fi?” Jess replied. “Yes, of course I do.”

Other things Jess missed:

Her boyfriend.

Her good mood.

The ten thousand dollars that had been in her checking account a few days ago.

The possibility that her mother would change.

Fizzy growled again and disappeared from view as, Jess presumed, she left to make herself another cup of mediocre coffee.

Three things Fizzy reminded her of constantly now that they’d stopped going to Twiggs:

1.She hated drip coffee but was too lazy to get even a basic Nespresso.

2.Her Wi-Fi sucked.

3.The lack of people-watching killed her meet-cute mojo.

But even though Jess’s coffee was also less satisfying than a Twiggs flat white, and she had a hard time focusing on work at her dining table, she couldn’t find it in herself to go back to Twiggs and pretend like there weren’t a million memories imprinted on every scuffed surface. Twiggs was where she met River, where she first got the notification from DNADuo, where she saw him last, and—most importantly—where she absolutely did not want to risk running into him at 8:24 on a weekday morning.

Though to be totally frank, it might be harder if Jess found out that he wasn’t going to Twiggs at all anymore, either. That he’d erased every bit of their shared history completely.

And it wasn’t like Fizzy was genuinely pushing to go back. Rob had spread his gross cheater vibes all over their table before Fizzy doused him with ice water. God, Twiggs had been tainted by the ghosts of their carefree former selves. The ones who, two months before, happily ogled Americano, gossiped with impunity, hadn’t had their hearts broken. Jess missed those women.