The Cabo Chronicles, Vol. 8: It All Came Together. Eventually.

12:00 AM. It's confirmed. We're going to Cabo.

I want to sit with that sentence for a second because I have been waiting to say it with certainty for longer than I care to admit.

Tuesday night I was lying in bed staring at my ceiling with that specific kind of anxiety that sits right in the middle of your chest and won't move. The kind that shows up when you've done everything right and you still have no way of knowing if it actually worked. I had Jada's confirmation. I had Kendra's. I had Iman's — which she sent, clean and complete, because that is quietly who Iman is when it counts. And then I had Maya's word. Which I have learned over the course of this entire process means something. It just doesn't always mean it on a schedule. 😂

I followed up twice. Three times if you count Tuesday night. And every single time Maya was unbothered in the way that only Maya can be — completely certain she had handled it, completely unconcerned about finding the proof. Because to Maya the booking was real. The confirmation was just a formality. A detail. Something to locate eventually.

And then at 11:57 PM on Thursday — the night before the trip — she found it.

I stared at that confirmation number for a long time. Not because I was still anxious. But because I needed a moment to acknowledge what it meant. We are going. All of us. Actually going.

Here is what I know about this group after everything we have been through together. Jada will have a laminated itinerary and a backup plan for the backup plan. Kendra is going to walk into that resort and immediately become the life of everything and I am going to be genuinely happy to watch it happen. Iman is going to do her skincare routine and sleep eight hours and wake up looking better than all of us combined. Maya is going to arrive somehow simultaneously late and early and immediately have a drink in her hand and remind everyone why she was invited in the first place.

And Nia. My best friend. The whole reason any of this happened.

She texted me tonight. She doesn't know about the data breach or the poll that meant nothing or the week of silence or the conversation that broke us open or the confirmation that almost didn't come. She just texted me at 10 PM to say she couldn't sleep because she was too excited. That she felt so loved. That she couldn't believe she had friends who would do all of this for her. And she ended it with "I don't know what I did to deserve you but I'm so grateful."

I put my phone down and laughed for the first time in weeks. The real kind. The kind that comes from somewhere deep and surprised.

She doesn't know. And she doesn't need to. That's the whole point.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what would have made this easier. Not the people — I wouldn't trade this group for anything, chaos and all. But the process. The back and forth. The lost information. The polls that got hijacked. The confirmations scattered across a dozen different messages that I had to chase down one by one. The weight of being the only person who could see the whole picture at any given moment.

There should be a better way to do this. One place where everything lives. Where the organizer isn't also the researcher, the mediator, the accountant, and the emotional support system. Where the people you love can show up for each other without the logistics getting in the way of the love.

I don't have that yet. But I'm looking for it. And when I find it I'll let you know.

For now — I'm going to go pack.

Unbothered. Moisturized. Actually.

— Chloe