38
BUT IS THIS SCARY SCARIER THAN THAT SCARY?
Bea
This isthe week that willnotend.
It’s a mixed bag of good and bad.
The good—I’ve sold out every single day, and it’s not because Jake posted about me on socials.
It’s a combination of Daphne’s protest outside of JC Fig every day this week with the reputation I have for being associated with Simon.
And the customers who tell whoever’s manning the window in my bus that they’re checking me out because of Simon don’t say it’s because I’m his girlfriend—washis girlfriend.
They say it’s because he personally told them my burger bus is his favorite place to eat in town.
Or that they heard from a friend that he and his boys were always eating here.
Or that they saw pictures of him in a Best Burger Bus T-shirt on his socials.
That’s crazy.
We don’t evenhaveBest Burger Bus T-shirts.
Daphne takes Friday off work and joins Hudson and me to work the bus. And she’s as agitated as I am, though I don’t know if she’s agitated because she’s sleeping worse and worse, or if she’d be agitated regardless of her own issues.
“I’m not mad at him anymore,” I tell her as we work. “So you don’t have to be mad either. I’m not saying I know if I want to try again with him, but I’m not mad.”
Daph and Lana have become pretty good friends, and Lana relayed the information that, as someone in Simon’s circles with more than a passing understanding of intellectual property and defamation laws, plus a vested interest in him continuing to provide for the twins, she’s read the final draft of his script that was based on my life and it is actually nothing like my life.
It’s now about four people—two men, two women—who grew up together under the care of a woman they called Aunt Zelinda, and who are now operating a honey stand and solving murders at the farmer’s market.
The ultimate inspiration he drew from my life was about found family and how much he wanted to murder Jake on my behalf.
And also apparently that honey fantasy that we never tried, which I would know, but no one else would.
Lana also reiterated that Simon had told the studio he was wrong, the script was trash, and he was going to miss his contracted deadline for new material.
She didn’t say he felt terrible.
Or if she did, Daphne didn’t pass that part along.
“It’s not Simon,” Daph grouses. “I have to go home.”
“To the apartment?”
“No. To New York. The Hamptons, actually. Margot’s about to do something really, really, really stupid, and I can’t stop her, so I have to stophim.”
I open my mouth, then close it again.
Daphne hasn’t been back to the city or to her family’s summer home in the Hamptons since her parents cut her off.
It’s not that I want the money, she told me once.It’s that I want to belong, and I don’t. I never have, and now I know they don’t want me to.So I’m done, and I’m never going back.
And she hasn’t.
“Daph—”
