Page 26 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

Deep breath. Here we go. I spot a man in his forties walking out carrying a tote bag no doubt with free books, and I approach him. “Um, excuse me, sir?”

He doesn’t even slow down, just brushes past me with a muttered, “No, thanks.”

Okay. There’s that famous New York City attitude for you. I’ve lived too long in the Bay Area, have become soft. Still, I straighten my back and look around for someone else to approach. A middle-aged woman walks out with the same tote bag, and I walk up to her, but before I even get close, she barks, “Not interested.”

Jesus. What the hell is going on? And now it’s bad because this woman was loud enough to attract the attention of one of the security guards at the door, and he comes toward me with his hands on his belt. Why do guards always walk like that? I guess because it makes them look even more intimidating. I take a small step back, my mind zipping everywhere, wondering what the hell I’m going to do if he asks me to leave. It’s not like I can tell him that I NEED to see Thalia. I doubt he’d understand.

“Ma’am, do you have a ticket to this event?” he says.

“I—well, actually, I was trying to get one—” The words sound so wrong, so shady even to my own ears.

He’s already shaking his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but we don’t allow the sale of tickets here.”

I take another step back.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to—”

And another, and my back bumps up against somebody. Warm liquid pours down my butt and the back of my thighs and I jump with a yelp.

“Dammit!” someone says in a brusque, high-pitched voice. A voice that’s painfully familiar.

I turn around, an apology already halfway out of my mouth when I see her face and forget what I was about to say. The woman in front of me is busy dabbing at her pantsuit. She still hasn’t seen me.

It takes a while for my brain to get a hold of my mouth again, and I say, “Ani?”

She stops dabbing and looks at me over the top of her huge Gucci sunglasses. Her eyes narrow, then widen, and her mouth drops open. “No. Janice?”

“Jane.”

“Jane, of course! Oh my god!” She opens her arms wide and covers me in a hug where no part of our bodies touch and she kisses the air near my face. When we part ways, she gives the guard a once-over. “What’s going on here?”

“I was just letting her know that she can’t be here unless she’s got a ticket,” he says.

“Oh!” Ani pouts at me. “You don’t have a ticket? Then what are you doing here?”

“I—” My insides are writhing, and I’m sure my face is ablaze.I want to find a hole I can jump into and die, because this is the worst outcome I could have imagined. “It was a mix-up,” I say lamely. “My ticket got lost in the mail...”

“Oh, you poor thing!” Ani cries. “Not a problem. I have VIP passes, obviously.” She rummages in her huge Louis Vuitton bag and fishes out a lanyard with a card that says “VIP” in huge gold letters. She holds it up to the guard, who waves us off with a grunt, then she hands it to me. “Here you go. Nobody wants them anyway. Who wants to come to these things, am I right?”

I’m not sure what to say to that, since I clearly want to come to these things. I make a show of being very focused on putting the lanyard on so that I won’t have to answer that weird question. Speaking of weird questions, what the hell is Ani doing here?

Then Ani says something that wrenches me from my thoughts. “Hey, that’s a nice necklace you’re wearing.”

My mind goes blank. Shit. SHIT. I’m wearing the necklace. But of course I am, because I never thought, in a million years, that I would bump into Ani, of all people. I catch hold of the pendant, the infinity symbol made out of diamonds, and slip it under my top. “Thanks, yeah. I just—my husband gave it to me. Last year. For our anniversary.”

“Yeah? It’s cute. He’s got good taste.” She smiles at me, and I can’t tell if she’s seen through the lie. She must. She must recognize the necklace. She—what is she thinking? I can’t read her, never could.

“Yeah, anyway, it’s so great to bump into you. I mean, of all people!” I say, desperate for a change of subject. We walk through the entrance and are swallowed up by the huge building. Inside is a mad bustle of chaos. There are crowds everywhere, panels and booths with bright colors, and large bannersannouncing their lead authors and most exciting titles. Definitely not a place for my humble books. “What brings you here?”

Ani pushes her sunglasses up into her hair. Her makeup is flawless—her eyes smoky and lined to a sharp point, her skin aglow from years of a meticulous skin care regimen. She is as beautiful as I remember. She gives me a sidelong glance and smiles, as though she can read my thoughts. “Thalia, of course.”

“Thalia?” My voice comes out choked, which makes sense because Ani’s answer is basically a gut punch. She’s here because of Thalia? She got VIP tickets because of Thalia? But that would mean that they’ve kept in touch all these years. No, that’s not possible, not when Thalia’s disappeared from my life so completely. I spent years looking for her and finding only a ghost, and here is Ani, telling me oh so casually that she, a nonwriter, is at SusPens Con because of Thalia?

“Yeah, I basically promised her I’d post about it on my socials or whatever. You know how it is.”

No, I do not know how it is.

Ani grabs two tote bags from a booth as we walk by and hands one to me. She must see the confusion on my face because she says, “I’m an influencer. You must’ve seen my socials? I’ve got, like, over three hundred K followers on Insta.”

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