‘No, Jimmy. Wait. You can’t do this!’ Fee screamed. ‘I’m your sister!’
He shook his head, turning the other way, while the three of them were physically escorted from the room.
Silence fell once more, and my friends and I glanced towards one another – our job was completed. We had done everything we’d set out to do, and so we, too, headed for the door. As I walked out, I turned back and locked eyes with Jimmy. He gave me a slight nod of appreciation, but I wondered if finding out the truth would actually end up hurting him more in the long run. We wandered back through the building at a much slower pace than we’d entered, in complete, crushing silence.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ella
We found ourselves sitting in the Tick Tock diner a few blocks down from the office, and within twenty minutes, we were surrounded by cookies & cream milkshakes and a giant plate of fluffy buttermilk pancakes. The food looked amazing, but I wasn’t even sure I could eat. I couldn’t believe what had just happened, what Fee had admitted to. Zola was texting Ethan, trying to gauge the aftermath of it all, while Katy sat shovelling warm pancakes loaded with strawberries and Nutella down her gob.
‘How could Fee do that to her own family?’ Katy said as the pancake pile diminished, shaking her head.
Zola agreed, taking a long slurp of her milkshake. ‘She’s one crazy ass bitch.’
I nodded. ‘Did you see his face? Jimmy was devastated.’
‘She really thought she’d get away with it,’ Zola said.
I scooped a chunk of ice cream out my milkshake. ‘She almost did!’
Zola sniggered. ‘Yeah, thank God for Ethan! He’s the best.’
Katy agreed, still munching. ‘Oh my God, literally. He’s got this whole hyper clever, obnoxious thing going on, but it’s like so fucking hot.’
I screwed my face up at the thought of Katy being attracted to him, noticing Zola’s cheeks flush.
‘I just wish we could launch the app.’ Katy had moved on again, as a new thought crossed her mind. ‘We’re not going to get paid now, which means we’re going to head back to Glasgow completely fucking skint. Do we even have enough in the business account for flights?’
I felt my head fall onto my hands. Not having to worry about money for so long with the Flirtify company credit card had allowed me to avoid reality. Now it was crashing back as I realised my own financial vulnerability. Since launching our own business, our income had never been dependable, and we were only scraping by before.
‘Probably, just enough for flights.’ I sighed. ‘We should start advertising for jobs on our socials again.’
Zola shook her head. ‘It’s so shit how it’s all turned out. So unfair. We have been wrongly accused of so much because of Philip fucking Khan. People are slating us, when in fact we have been the ones who have saved an international company from collapse.’
I nodded, frustration and sadness warring inside me. As unfair as it all was, I took comfort in the memories – at least we’d lived the most exhilarating, wild few months of our lives together in New York, side by side.
Katy was still munching through her pancakes. ‘We should make a TikTok about it. Make a plea to investors?’ She shrugged.
I glanced up at Zola, knowing her idea wasn’t a bad plan.
Zola was swaying. ‘But what would we say, if we were to do the TikTok? There is so much shit that’s happened here,’ she replied.
I sat up, feeling my brain firing into action. ‘Well, we can’t mention that Fee was the stalker; she could sue us, and we all know how Americans love to go to court. But we could say we’ve created this great dating app to make dating safe again and the media has spread untrue stories about us .?.?. That .?.?. I don’t know .?.?.’
‘That have made investors pull out. We play it like a conspiracy,’ Zola added. ‘Americans love to go to court and they love a conspiracy theory. We play it off like,Why are they trying to stop this app from launching?’
Katy was grinning, Nutella covering the sides of her mouth. ‘Then we make a plea for investors!’ She clapped her hands. ‘It’s worth a shot? I mean, Flirtify own the rights to the app? So, we can’t sell it.’ She shrugged.
I smiled, knowing that it was probably our only shot, but I hoped Jimmy wouldn’t mind. I hoped it wouldn’t paint his company in an even worse light.
We finished off our meal and headed back to the apartment to set up and rehearse our TikTok.
We dressed in plain, modest clothing, keen to rebrand our image from the money-grabbing whores that the media had painted us as, and I set up my phone on a tripod facing the sofa.
The three of us sat close, ready. We’d thoroughly gone through who would say what, careful not to blame anyone outright, but to be suggestive enough that it wasn’t our fault.
My phone pinged from the tripod, and I stood up, wondering if Jimmy might be reaching out.
