Page 21
“That’s bullshit! Mom, you said I can’t read them! If Zach can, why can’t I?”
Kerry turns to me. “Please get off social media, you’re the talk of the fucking high school and I’m trying to keep her innocent.” I had no idea this would be an issue in my life. I raise my hands in surrender. “Wasn’t me, Dion said he could, I said no.”
“Fuck this, I’m going to read with Zach,” Willow says.
“Hell fucking no, you are not reading my books with a boy, upstairs in a room. I’m not that old or stupid. Not today — go play games.” I shake my head. “Or watch the girls, but no reading.” She stomps out the kitchen, but I suspect she’s gone straight to Zach’s room and ignored my suggestion about rather watching Dion’s girls, Nelly and Holly-Anna.
“You know they’re going to read it, right?” Kerry says. “All her friends are talking about is your new book.” Oh, Lord, kill me now. It’s not meant for teenage girls. Amelia is scrolling her phone, already sucked into the rabbit hole, giggling to herself and missing all of this. She’s supposed to be my best friend and she can’t even see me dying over here.
“Why though?” I mean there’s Netflix, and HBO with movies that are R rated for them anytime, and they want to read — it’s just weird. Not bad, but their choice of books is going to get me in trouble.
“Remember being in high school?” Okay, she has a point. “Sex is all they think about.”
“No way!” Amelia says, scrolling her phone, getting our attention. “Liv, isn’t this hotel guy?” She slides her phone across the countertop to me. These videos have been trending all week — this is my brother, he’s sinlge, he needs a girlfriend, he’s probably a cheating asshole, but he’s cute —
Oh, God, it is him! I watch it twice without saying a word, making a very clear mental note of the account that posted it.
“Your silence is deafening,” Dion laughs.
“It’s him, that’s him.” I slide the phone back, internally freaking, and externally pretending it didn’t affect me at all. That vision of dessert and orgasms are not flying around in my head right now. I worked hard to get the thoughts of him out my head, to stop obsessing over a taken man, and now I know he’s single and looking and totally over me and our one night of chocolate indulgence and sex. For me it wasn’t so easy, he’s all I’ve thought about. Amelia looks at me, she knows I’m not reacting because internally I’m having a meltdown.
“Well, you can find him now, I know this bakery. They make the best fucking cheesecake ever,” Kerry says, watching the video too. “The owner is his sister, this is so cute. I hope she gets tons of business. I love that place.” I need to change the subject, I’m not ready to talk about this.
“Where’s Char?” I ask, because she’s not normally this late.
“On a date,” Dion says. “Poor, poor man has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. It’s some new lawyer at her firm, doesn’t know her yet.” We all laugh, but there’s a slight twinge of jealousy churning my gut. I wish I was on a date. There’s a bigger part of me every day that wants that other — a person to bring me coffee or take me out to dinner. The loneliness of my job is wearing me down.
“How long before she calls us to save her?” Kerry asks.
“No, she likes this one. He’s wealthy, intelligent and doesn’t irritate her. He’s probably gay, but I wasn’t going to burst her bubble,” Dion says, and we all sit and stuff our faces with sushi and wine, while joking about the many men Charlotte has chewed up and spat out over the years.
“Okay, you guys, this charity thing for the animal shelter. I have tickets for all of you — no fucking excuses. Olivia, could you donate some signed books to the auction?” I nod, I don’t mind helping the animals. I do mind some hoity-toity fancy ass New York charity event because it has anxiety attack written on the invite in gold embossed letters. “I can see you trying to come up with excuses in your head, you’re coming. No one is going to bite you.” They know my social anxiety is an issue, Amelia knows I’m dreading this thing. With my new book being so popular, the event invites are coming in thick and fast and it’s giving me hives. New York Times Bestseller is the dream and it’s not the first time I’ve made the list, but when it becomes a reality over night, all the people that go with it can be a nightmare for someone like me. Poor Holland has had me on the phone almost every day for a month now, and it’s not getting better.
“I’ll be there,” I say, knowing they’re never going to let me escape this one. Nor will they ever understand why being around too many people makes me feel physically ill from anxiety.
“So, what are we wearing?” Kerry asks, because I know she’s worried. This isn’t her crowd at all and she’s terrified she’ll stand out in a bad way. “I don’t have anything that fancy, and I have like twenty dollars to my name, so we need a plan, please.” I can see she’s embarrassed to admit she’s struggling financially, but it’s not like we’re going to excommunicate her from our group because of it.
“I’ll take you to get something, if you’d like? It’s almost your birthday, so it can be your gift from me?” She won’t just accept me buying her something to wear but if I say it’s for her birthday she might just bite. Kerry’s smile is brittle, but she nods, and blinks before anyone else can notice her watery eyes.
“I’d love that, thank you. It’s been stressing me out like crazy.” I know it has, which is why I offered. To some extent, giving is my love language, especially when it comes to my friends.
“Let’s all go together,” Amelia says. “Because my sister said I can’t wear anything ‘slutty’ and I have nothing that is suitable for an event like this.” I laugh at my friend because I know what’s in her closet and it’s all whore-ishly inappropriate for this sort of thing.
“Tomorrow?” I ask, because I have a lot going on this coming week so that’s about my only gap. “I already have an appointment with my friend, Oakley Thorne. I doubt she’ll have a problem dressing all of us.”
“I’ll ask Mika to watch the small human army for us, I’m sure Char will join us too,” Dion says, shooting her man a text. Not for the first time, I find myself wishing I had a man to text, but I’m quick to remind myself of some of Holland’s most profound yet simple advice: a thought is just a thought, and when you acknowledge it as such, it doesn’t have to trigger an emotion or provoke an action. So it’s a just a thought, nothing more, nothing less.
I’m itching to open my phone and find @bakerbabe on TikTok so I can watch Harlan’s boyfriend application again, but I stop myself. I’ll do that at home when I’m alone, and not under the scrutiny of my closest friends.
The evening is spent chatting about the charity dinner, and making arrangements for tomorrow’s shopping trip to Oakley’s studio. I send her a text at some point in the evening and ask if it’s okay to bring my friends, and being as gracious as what she is, she tells me it won’t be a problem. Kerry is excited, this isn’t something she would normally do. I know she works really hard to take care of herself and Willow, and Willow always comes first. The more we talk about this thing, the higher my level of anxiety about it gets. I’ll write them a check and stay at home — why isn’t that an option for me? Dion knows I hate this shit, that it makes me ill. I mean, I nearly had a mental breakdown over a blind date, never mind a ballroom full of strangers. It’s like my friends want me to die because just thinking about it feels like I might.
Maybe shopping tomorrow is a good thing, otherwise I’ll be all up inside my head again. I call an Uber around one in the morning, having laughed until my belly hurts, and go home. We had enough wine to kill off a drunken sailor and then some, but these girls are good for my soul. They balance out the isolation of my job and remind me that their level of crazy matches mine. I fit in here, a feeling I don’t have anywhere else — not even amongst my peers and other people in my industry. They calm my chaos, and are the only ones who can genuinely make me smile. My apartment is quiet except for the fish tank pump, which buzzes at a steady rhythm. There’s just the glow from the lamp in the corner of my living room that is on a timer, or I’d just sit in the dark for days because stopping to turn on a light won’t happen if I’m writing.
I sit down on the enormous, puffy, oversized sofa that I bought because it swallows me whole in cushions. Swipe to open my phone and open TikTok. I enter @bakerbabe in the search bar and wait for her feed to load. My heart is in my throat, something about knowing he is single has my insides doing things they shouldn’t.
The montage of videos and photos is only three minutes, but is shows so many sides of Harlan, and in just one picture he’s smiling. He smiled at me, just a small half-smile, but damn if I don’t see it in my fantasies every night. Harlan Waters has infiltrated more of my filthy thoughts than I’d like to admit, even to myself.
In a moment of absolute madness, I follow her account with my author profile. It’s my photograph, but it’s not my name. That’s the other me — the one the world knows and sees. She doesn’t have crippling anxiety, she isn’t lonely and no one knows how hard she has to try to put on the smile they see in her pictures and videos. That person is a New York Times bestseller, and she’s perfect — I am not.
I talk to a goldfish, have a serious case of imposter syndrome, have my therapist on speed dial, and a crush on a man I’ll probably never see again. I never imagined that this would be my life. But here I am.
