Page 5 of Independence Bae

“Take off is actually much more dangerous than landing,” I tell her, assuming she’s talking about the flight.

“No, Penn.” She laughed her Tinkerbelle laugh, as Raven called it. “I’m nervous about this meeting. About what this meeting means. About what’s going to happen at the end of it.”

“Hey,” Raven said. I never noticed what a soothing tone Raven took with Marley, almost mothering in a strange way. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s just lunch. We’ll listen to what they have to say, tell them thank you for the free weekend vacation, and whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.”

Marley sawed her lip between her teeth, her cheeks burning with a red flush, and her eyes filling with unshed tears, she replied, “I just get this weird feeling like this is the last moment before everything changes.”

Chapter Four

I love Chicago.As a kid growing up in Ohio, Chicago tended to be the biggest “fancy” city nearby. I always wanted to be a DJ there, but the cards never turned up with that outcome. Not that I could complain, of course. As the third largest city in the country, Chicago was radio market number three behind Los Angeles at number two and New York City of course was always number one. Clearly, I hit the jackpot DJing at The Skull in N.Y.C for as many years as we had. But, just as an aside, I bet Chicago would have been great.

We were all seated at the Aero Club, which was a bougie fucking restaurant right off the hangar. We’d all dressed comfortably for the flight, thinking we’d have a second to check into the hotel and freshen up before having any kind of formal meetings. Fucking figured we’d be escorted right into our meeting smelling like alcohol and processed snack bags, in jeans and leggings respectively.

“Are you okay, love?”

Marley was honestly starting to worry me. I felt like the wedding planning was getting to her. Her emotions switched on a dime, and today was no exception. She sat in the oversized captain’s chair to my right, looking out at the planes lined up on the runway preparing to take off, strangling a napkin between her hands.

“Like Raven said, nothing is going to change. We’re just here as a courtesy. They wanted us to meet in person to hear them out, and that’s what we’re doing. Nothing is being decided over Caesar salads and fancy cucumber water.”

Raven and Penn sat as close as two people could and still be in separate chairs. She looked deliriously happy. I honestly never thought seeing her like this would thrill me to my core, but it really did. Every time she smiled, or sighed, or got schoolgirl giddy, I felt like giggling myself. As if recognizing the feeling in her, amplified my own feelings of love for Marley.

“Tomorrow we’re gonna rock State Street, Marley. Vera, Pnina, Monique Lhuillier—they’ve all got anchor stores here in Chicago.” Raven came up for air and finally joined the conversation. “We won’t stop till we have a wedding dress in tow!”

“My wallet thanks you in advance, Raven.”

She rolled her eyes at me and flipped me the bird.

I honestly didn’t care what Marley bought while we were here. She had to be one of the most frugal women I’d ever met. I thought she was going to lose it when I bought her the ninety-dollar Toms that were on her feet at the moment. They had glitter and unicorns—but she had hemmed and hawed for a week trying to decide if she would get ninety-dollars’ worth of wear out of them and weighing that against the “cute” factor and also the “but they bring me joy” reverse Marie Kondo reasoning. She still hadn’t decided if she could commit to putting ninety dollars on her credit card when they arrived on our front stoop. Her excitement spilled over into an incredible evening of her showing me how grateful she was. And mother fuck if she wasn’t the most appreciative woman I’d ever known.

“The infamous Bear and Raven in the flesh!”

I looked up to see a full entourage walking towards us, led by a tiny sprite of a woman with a mane of strawberry blonde hair. Ivy Hursch was nothing like I pictured. She couldn’t have been more than thirty five, tops, and barely reached my chin—in heels.

“Ivy Hursch.” She approached me first and introduced herself before turning to Raven. “With me is my Chief Acquisitions Officer, Bert Morder, and my head of PR and Communications, Hillary Sloan Morder.”

“Bert Morder,” Raven’s head tilted as she shook his hand, “that name sounds awfully familiar. Did we do a stint together somewhere? Akron maybe?”

“Good grief! Eleven years!” Hillary laughed. “It’s been eleven years and it still hasn’t died. I swear I half expect Griffin’s teacher to ask us if we’re that couple.”

Hillary took hold of Raven’s hand and kept talking as she spoke, eventually turning her attention to me. “The name sounds familiar because we’rethatcouple. The YouTube couple.”

She must have seen the confusion on my face because she continued, “DJ XTC Sexcapade? The girl with the red soled shoe?”

“Oh my god! Yes!”

It all came back to me as well. Raven and I were already in New York when that story had broken. And, it was definitely a story. One that didn’t die for months.

“Hillary and Bert got caught having sex in studio of Bert’s radio station, while he was on the air” I explained to Marley and Penn who gawked at all of us as if we were a zoo exhibit.

“Except he’s leaving out the best part,” Hillary offered. “Bert had a live streaming camera in the studio, and so our little escapade was broadcast live to anyone who happened to be watching the feed.”

“And, it ended up on YouTube, Bert lost his job, Hillary lost her job for reasons related to but not a direct result of said sexcapade, and now we’ve all arrived here eleven years later. They’re married, and I now sit in my father’s CEO seat.” Ivy took a seat next to me, directing Hillary and Bert to be seated with a tilt of her head in the direction of the open seats.

Impressive. The way in which Ivy directed the flow of conversation while also managing to break the ice. Her control of situations was subtle.

“Look, I would rather lay the pitch on the table so we can actually enjoy lunch with everyone. So here it is,” she began, while simultaneously signaling the waitress. The woman dashed to the table with bottles of Pellegrino and chilled glasses, slipping away practically unnoticed.

“Bert has been keeping an eye on you two since you left Manhattan.” She grabbed a lime, then a lemon and finally a cherry from the communal bowl of garnish, not missing a beat between holding the discussion and creating the most complex glass of fucking water I’d ever seen.

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