See, this was the trouble when you blocked certain keywords from your social media. You missed out on things. Like the fact that your ex – fake ex? Whoever – had done a public interview in which he’d likely had to talk about you.
Fun.
‘What did he say?’
Laura sighed heavily as she took off her glasses. ‘He was being asked again and again, far as I can make out, what had happened with the two of you. If you were together or not, and if you’d broken up, whether he was back on the dating apps.’
I pulled my knees up to hug them. ‘Great.’ Exactly what I wanted to hear.
‘The prick should have kept his damned mouth shut,’ Anna said darkly, shifting over to sit next to me, her arm slung around my shoulder.
‘Again – what did he say?’
My sister’s dejected look worried me. She took a breath before saying, ‘He said he wasn’t on any of the dating apps. Not even Butterflies.’
Ah. I winced.
Yeah, that was definitely bad. The whole point of me doing this thing was to promote Butterflies.
‘Users have started to delete their accounts,’ Laura said, dropping a finger into the ice cream tub, swooping it around and bringing it to her mouth. ‘Now there’s absolutely no chance of matching with their favourite pop star. Not that they would have been able to, with the two of you dating. But in their minds they must have thought they were in with a chance. Especially after everything in the press.’
‘But what are you going to do, Laura –’
My sister’s snort halted me in my tracks. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me – your little chat with Dillon has proven that I can get funding from a wider group of people. But, yeah. Not super helpful.’
We fell into silence, sitting there on the kitchenette floor of a hotel suite that I could absolutely not afford and would most definitely have to move out of soon.
I felt awful. Butterflies was everything Laura had worked for, everything she’d sacrificed for. This had been her dream: to start apps and make money, make millions – change the world with a foundation, invest in our local communities, open a centre where we’d grown up.
Be one of those people who did something.
‘Talk to me about your job,’ my twin said quietly. ‘You said it’s over?’
I slipped my phone out of my hoodie pocket. ‘Yeah, I got a call yesterday. Karun very kindly recorded it as per GSR Financials policy and sent it to me. As an audio record. To, and I quote, “prevent any later misunderstandings”.’
Anna swore under her breath and handed me back the wine she’d so recently confiscated.
‘Wow, big corporates are really something, aren’t they?’ Laura screwed up her nose. ‘Let’s give it a listen, then.’
I pressed play and my little recorded voice started up. Oh, it was even worse hearing it the second time around.
‘I really wanted to have this conversation in person, Ms Donovan, but as we’re nearing the end of the month and the paperwork has to go through today –’
‘Paperwork? I sent you the deck on Monday for the –’
‘I am afraid we are terminating your position at GSR Financials, Ms Donovan.’
Yep, listening to it a second time was so much worse. I still couldn’t believe it. Seriously, did I break a mirror or upset the heavens or something?
Laura spoke over the end of the recording. ‘But you’d done everything they wanted!’
‘I mean, I did take like a five-week break from my grad job,’ I pointed out, not quite sure why I was defending Karun or GSR Financials. ‘I’m just relieved I recorded it so I couldn’t trick myself into thinking I’d dreamt it. All I could hear was a buzzing as my pulse grew in volume andthump,thump,thumpedin my head.’
‘You poor thing,’ Laura said sympathetically, her face a picture of concern. ‘But you don’t look … devastated.’
‘I just got fired,’ I said, taking another swig of the insanely sweet wine. ‘But, you know, I’m strangely OK about it.’
Because the panic … still hadn’t come.
