What is happening?
Still half-asleep, I clicked play on the video Nathan sent me. It was one and a half minutes of clear footage of Macey and me arguing at the airport.Shit.I had noticed a few people listening in, but the size of the crowd was well above a few. It had hundreds of thousands of views already.
God, of course the argument had to be with Macey. She knew how to rile me up enough that I blacked out my surroundings. A problem, considering I always needed to care about what people saw when they looked at me.
She was a nuisance that I had planned to avoid for the rest of our lives, but the persuasive part of me screamed its protest. I wanted to argue more. I wanted to prove that everything she said was wrong. I wanted to see her defend herself.
Macey Monroe. How good was she at hiding things under the surface?
If my manager wanted a phone call, I’d need coffee to keep up. My ankle throbbed as I hobbled to the kitchen and switched on the coffeemaker, but icing it could wait.
Once drops of coffee started to fill the pot, I called Ezra, who immediately answered.
“Who the fuck is that girl in the video with you?”
Ezra had been in social media management for far longer than I had an Instagram account, but he always said he could never be an influencer himself. That warm greeting again exemplified why.
“Good morning, Ezra,” I said patiently, pouring a cup of coffee into my mug that said#1 brother.
Ezra’s Boston accent really came through when he was fired up. “You know, this morning did not start off good. I woke up to a viral video of one of my clients yelling at a pretty girl.”
“She yelled at me first.”
I could almost see Ezra pulling at his black-and-blue striped hair.
“Semantics.” He brushed it off. “The point is I thought that video was going to be the worst thing to happen to us this week. This month, even. But in a rare turn of events, I was wrong.”
When was the last time I went grocery shopping? All I had was eggs, eggs, and…more eggs.
Eggs for breakfast, it was.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, pulling the carton out of the fridge.
“Noah, we’ve got brands lining up for deals this morning. Since you’re the rep for VelocityGear, I was thinking you and the girl could get matching outfits or something.”
The egg cracked beneath my hand when I tapped it against the counter. “Huh?”
“Oh! I haven’t even told you the best part yet.” If social media management didn’t work for Ezra in the long run, he should consider a career switch to theater. So dramatic.
“Which is?”
“Opal Serenity, a brand-new five-star resort in Aruba, reached out and wants you there for the resort opening next week.”
I put Ezra on speakerphone, exchanging the bowl on the counter for my phone. I held the bowl close to my chest with one arm, the other hand whisking the eggs in it.
While I’d been to a few hotel openings before, they were nothing as luxurious or expensive as a resort in Aruba. “Seriously? That’s huge.”
“Sure is,” he said, then his voice lowered. “There is one catch, though.”
Of course it was too good to be true.
“What?”
“They want you to attend with the girl from the video.”
“Macey?” The bowl fell out of my arms, scattering eggs across my kitchen and my feet. “Absolutely not. I won’t go.”
Ezra sighed for the second time in this conversation. “I don’t recommend that. You know how you’ve been moaning about wanting to take a three-month social media break to road trip the country with your sister? Which, by the way, I also don’t recommend.”
