And maybe this’ll make me expand my social sphere outside Tickled Pink enough to actually meet someone who won’t make me feel like the first thing they’re wondering is if my kids will turn out to be hellions just like I was.
Maybe this will work.
“Lola Minelli came in here this weekend and asked Ridhi and me to do some Tic Tacs about making coffee,” Anya says with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Bridget takes the bait. “TikToks, Aunt Anya. NotTic Tacs.TikToks.”
Tavi’s nose twitches. “Aw, that’s so great that Lola wants to help too. It’s, like, double the positive attention.”
“That wasafterwe gave her coffee worse than the coffee we served Phoebe when you all first got here,” Ridhi says. “We’re not doing videos. None of us.”
“Unless they’re with you,” Bridget adds to Tavi.
“No. Videos,” Ridhi repeats.
“But we’re not telling Lola no until we figure out what she’s really up to,” Anya adds. “I feel like she has an agenda.”
“That’s really smart.” Tavi beams at both of them. “You, like, never know what people like meactuallywant.”
My phone vibrates as I try to stifle a snort ofstraight from the lying social media influencer’s mouth to your ears, which isn’t something I need to judge anyone else for, and I suddenly don’t know if this is relief or more indigestion I’m feeling.
I check the incoming text message, and my shoulders hitch. “Gonna have to wait,” I tell Tavi. “Got a garbage disposal emergency.”
“Fantastic! I’ll ride along!” And now that beam of hers is aimed at me.
It’s so fake I can practically taste the plastic in it.
Shouldn’t make me mad. This is herjob. But I’m irritated as hell that the woman who’d eat tomatoes off the vine with me at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning while telling me she didn’t think nice guys like me could ever be real is fake-smiling at me.
“Gonna get dirty.” I’m cranky. I’m never cranky—not these days—but I can hear the crank in my own voice.
Her smile doesn’t falter. “The first rule of social media—be real.”
Any other day, that would amuse the hell out of me. “Be real, huh?”
Her round cheeks take on a pink hue, but she lifts her chin as if she can’t feel the blush spreading over her face. “Yes.Be realis thebestrule.”
“And that’s worked for you?”
I don’t like being a dick.
I don’t. Not anymore.
Totally serious that I used up my allotted dickishness already in my life.
But the woman in the bunker the other morning who I swore was going to gnaw my arm off to get to my breakfast sandwich, and the woman sitting with me at the lake the next morning, and the womanwho chases ducks out of the road and runs for hours every morning, and the woman who pets and kisses her dog like it’s so automatic to spoil the little pup with love that she doesn’t always realize she’s doing it, and the woman who gets this gleam in her eyes before she steps up to bat during our snowshoe baseball games this summer, are not the same woman who’s standing here telling me I have to “be real” if I want to be on social media to help my town get a little “organic publicity.”
Tavi’s not budging. “Not everyone can have my level of success, but you don’t need to beüberfamous to help Tickled Pink.”
Anya, Ridhi, and Bridget are watching us like this is a tennis match.
“Huh,” I say.
“What are we doing standing here?” Tavi asks. “Don’t we have some pipes to unclog? Chop-chop! Water emergencies wait for no one!”
“Except the plumber,” Bridget offers.
I eyeball the three of them. “Don’t,” I say.
