Right. She probably already heard it all from her new bestie, Josh.
“Since when are you his confidante?”
“I dunno, Ari, at least I get the occasional spiraling text from him. Talking to you lately is like having a conversation with a brick wall. Do you have any idea how bad that feels? You’re the one who left. I thought we were going to work on these pop-ups together. You left me, too.”
“What do you need me for? Everyone loves your food. People respect the shit out of you. You’ve always been the successful one who has her life together, which is fine because one of us has to be the fuckup, right? It turns out all you were missing in this whole equation was Josh.”
Ari didn’t even realize this sentence was inside of her.
“Is this about jealousy?” There’s a tightness to Radhya’s voice, like she’s barely holding something back.
“No!” But Ari’s not actually sure that answer is definitive.
There’s a beat of silence before Radhya says, “A best friend is the person who can call you at any hour and say, ‘I have all this bullshit happening in my life and I need you to listen to me vent about it.’ And the other person is supposed to unconditionally respond, ‘That is bullshit and you’re right’ and then offer to fight someone. We used to have that.” A toilet flushes in the background, slightly undercutting the sentiment. “I’m really proud of the pop-up.” Ari stops pacing. “Josh is aggravating but he’s more than pulling his weight. The location is iconic. And I feel excited about it. The menu, the logo, the social media Briar is doing. All of it. And I’m so fucking sad and angry that I had to tell you while I’m standing in a public bathroom.”
Ari feels the blood drain from her face. “Rad—”
“I just wanted to tell my best friend that I’m excited. I wanted to tell you all the mundane details that no one else would care about. The stuff that my husband would be forced to listen to if I still had a husband. But I don’t. I had you. And I wanted you to be excited and ask me a thousand questions and sleep over at my place and eat every test dish. I wanted you to be here for the opening. I wanted you to be part of it.”
“I want to be there,” Ari says, grasping for a lifeline. “I’ll fly back for the weekend. We can stay up all night. You can tell me everything. I’ll eat everything. Please.”
At that moment, a pair of rambunctious twins in matching swimsuits cannonball into the pool, drenching Ari in chlorinated water.
“I don’t think we can, Ari. Not right now.” Radhya sighs. “I should let you go.”
There’s just empty silence with no sense of finality when Radhya ends the call before Ari can say anything to keep her on the line. Her chest aches: the same pain as when the reality sunk in that Cass wasn’t coming back. She wants THC and maybe a Xanax. Anything to keep that argument from replaying, louder and louder.
Ari wanders back to the ideation session in a daze and a damp blue shirt, standing out of the way in the rear of the banquet room that smells like stale coffee. Derek’s leading the meeting at the podium and a woman is writing on a large whiteboard with neat, looping penmanship. Even at the executive team level, it’s up to the woman to take notes.
As Derek describes a system in which Hustlers will have the “opportunity” to offer certain services for free in exchange for better placement in the NeverTired search rankings, something in Ari’s brain splinters.
After a year of doing everything humanly possible to succeed on this app—keeping up with tactics on the NeverTired forums and the subreddit, sending humiliating messages begging for five-star ratings from clients, responding to every single message, even spam and harassers—it’s clear as the chlorinated pool water drying on her button-down shirt.
No one is ever going to make a living at NeverTired.
“Our Hustlers are dynamic, intrinsically motivated entrepreneurs who want the flexibility of working for themselves,” Derek says. “They determine the value of their own work. When the least productive Hustlers drop out of the system, the laws of supply and demand create favorable conditions for our hardest-working Hustlers.”
The woman at the whiteboard checks her Apple watch, glances at Ari, and says, “Let’s circle back to that. We have a hard stop for our first improv session.”
Swell.
Ari walks to the front of the room, avoiding eye contact with Derek as he leaves the podium. This young woman has something fun planned, he must be thinking. Maybe I’ll bang her after happy hour.