I’m broke and getting broker by the minute.
“Let me make some phone calls to some people that I have a lot of dirt on.” God, I hate this life.
And I hate worse that I’m saying these words to Naomi.
Ever since we met, she’s believed in me. Evenwhenwe met, in those awkward moments as she was lying in the stairwell of my bus, her legclearlybroken after she’d tripped trying to get away from me, she was all, “You’re so nice to worry about me,” and then she told me she was so glad that I actually ate real food that tasted good, because she’d always hoped my life would be better than lettuce and beans and sit-ups, because no one should suffer like that, and then she didn’t tell anyone my secret.
Not even when she went viral six months later for proposing to a clownfish as she came out of anesthesia after having her tonsils removed, and a reporter discovered she knew me, but no matter how much anyone pressed, she kept her cool and never once even hinted at the gossip that could’ve destroyed me.
Not. Once.
Instead, she was all over doing interviews, graciously calling me kind and pretty and her favorite celebrity that she’d ever met.
I pinged her to congratulate her on her five minutes of fame after seeing her on theTODAY Show, and she replied that she’d rather have her tonsils removed again than be internet famous for five more minutes, and she was just so funny and honest andreal, while still keeping my secret, that we ended up becoming friends.
I crashed her birthday party a couple of months before my Costa Rica trip, mostly because she’d made a joke on email that her grandma was my biggest fan, and I wanted to know what a normal grandma was like.
Turns out Grandma Clementine was a hoot.
And so I invited both of them to join me for my shoot in Costa Rica and a little touristy stuff afterward.
And then the cacao farm happened.
While they were with me.
Grandma Clementine took the secret to her grave entirely too soon afterward, robbing me of more time with the woman I’d started to wish were my real grandmother.
Naomi has kept the secret ever since. She even used the small inheritance she got from Grandma Clementine to quit her job and move to Costa Rica.
“I’m young, single, and it gives my parents indigestion to think that I’m throwing my life away,” she said cheerfully at the time.
And even through the hard times, with stuff like fungus and mice and otherI never even knew that was a thing on cacao farmsincidents, she hasn’t once said she regrets the three years she’s lived in Costa Rica.
I’m wondering if that’s about to change.
“Do you know anyone who would help you because theywantto be associated with you and who would agree to invest in our business without planning on stabbing us in the back eventually too?” Naomi asks.
That she would have hope that a person like that actually exists is one more reason I love Naomi.
I mentally flip through my contacts list, eliminating person after person, consider asking Teague for help, and immediately squash that idea too.
I hate being used, and so the last thing I’d do is use my sister’s boyfriend when Teague’s made it so very, very clear that he hates that he, too, comes from money.
Plus, asking favors from family is complicated.
See also: me trapped here in Tickled Pink because I tried to save the world in my own way with the family money. “I still have a few ways to keep my name out of it.”
“Maybe we could use your name.”
“No. That won’t work. It really won’t.”
“Then we need Samantha.”
“Oh,hellno.”
“Tavi—”
“The last time we did that, I almost got caught.” I’m running, and I’m puffing, and I’m whispering, because I donotwant to talk about Samantha.
