TWELVE
“Don’t you think the wig is a bit much?” I tugged at my newly light brown bob as it brushed my shoulders. Tola and I were in the toilets of the bar, preparing for my big entrance, and I stood in front of the mirror, suddenly nervous.
“Hey, if I get to be the boss, I’m creating the vision. Seeing is believing.” Tola laughed at me and adjusted my silver dress, handing me some lipstick. We’d been limiting the Fixer Upper sessions, what with solving all of Nicki’s problems taking up most of our time, but we had commitments, and Tola needed me.
She held up her phone with the photo of the latest project. Mark Jenkins, thirty-five, sales associate. His girlfriend, Lucy, had hired us for a motivation package. Those usually fell into one of three categories: career, commitment, or self-care. You’d be surprised how many grown men didn’t shower regularly. It was horrifying.
That night’s Fixer Upper challenge was an easy one—encourage Mark to finally step up in terms of his career. He’d been talking about it for eight years, and Lucy was basically paying us so she never had to hear about it again.
Luckily, Mark seemed like a man of simple dreams—he wanted money, he just needed to know someone like him could do what he wanted to. It was a comfort thing. After all, people are afraid of failure. Especially in front of a partner. It’s easy enough to just keep saying you’ll do something, because then you never have the chance to fail. And luckily enough, life will always find a way to get in the way.
But not anymore.
Tola nodded at me. “Eric’s at the bar. You know what to do.”
I nodded, swishing my hips a little. Tola followed me out from the toilets, then set herself up at a table nearby. I didn’t need her for this bit, but she just liked to “see the magic happen.”
Eric was already next to Mark at the bar when I stumbled over.
“Baby, baby, I want to drive the Jag home, please!” I threw my arms around Eric’s neck, and he smiled indulgently.
“You think I worked this hard to finally buy my dream car, only to have you crash it? You’re having a laugh, woman. I love ya, but you’re mad.” He watched as Mark made eye contact, so they could share a women, honestly look. That was why I needed Eric. It didn’t work without him. Turns out men don’t listen to women they’re not sleeping with. Shocker.
“Brand-new car I’ve been waiting half my life to buy, and she thinks I’m gonna let her drive it!” Eric exclaimed, having found his male audience. “Can you believe it?”
“What’ve you got?”
“Jaguar F-Type.” Eric smiled. “My pride and joy.”
I looked across and saw the bartender approaching Tola with a bright green cocktail on a tray. Someone had sent it to her. I never saw anyone do that in real life except for around Tola. And she always accepted them with a flirtatious smile and a thank-you, but never drank them because you couldn’t trust people.
I focused back on the conversation, waiting for my moment in our little play.
“You never would have been able to afford the car if I hadn’t nagged you about that accountancy course,” I said petulantly, hand on hip like I was perpetually ignored and underestimated. “If it wasn’t for me pushing you and getting that discounted training course, you’d still be selling shoes for minimum wage.”
Eric softened. “Aw, you’re right, petal, I’m sorry.” He put an arm around me, turning to Mark. Time for the big sell. “Been in retail all my life, no qualifications or anything, you know? And the missus is always nagging, You can do more, but I figure what can I do, really? But I started this accountancy course and now the money’s rolling in!”
“That easy?” Mark raised an eyebrow.
“Well, ya gotta study, mate, I won’t lie to you. But I’m not particularly book smart and I did okay! I like numbers, dealt with stock takes and stuff in the old job.”
“I work in a shop,” Mark offered. “Do you think I could do it? My girlfriend has been on at me, too.”
“Mate, you could definitely do it. In fact”—Eric produced a card from his pocket like a magician—“I got a half-price course when I completed it, as a gift to pass on to someone else. Have it, I think it’s fate.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, honestly. Spend a couple of months, stick it out, and get yourself a nice little number, too. The car, I mean.” He grinned, and I elbowed him sharply. Too much.
“Cheers, man, I really appreciate that.” Mark held out his hand to shake Eric’s, and the deal was done.
“Best of luck to you, every success, yeah?” Eric wrapped an arm around my waist and led me to the exit. I felt Tola following behind.
When we piled into Eric’s car (most certainly not a Jaguar) we roared with success, the same way we always did.
“Are you sure that’s all it took?” Eric said, the way he always did.
“Pshaw, he was an easy one, you could tell. Totally pliable. The girlfriend did a lot of the groundwork, she just needed someone to finally tip him over the edge.” Tola grinned.
“It would probably work just as well if you’d been the one with the fancy car,” Eric said, with little conviction.
I rolled my eyes. “Tola, what’s the one thing that stops a man who is persistently trying to hit on you in a club?”
“If you say you have a boyfriend.”
“And why is that?”
“Because they have more respect for a man they’ve never met over a woman right in front of them?” she answered seamlessly.
I made a buzzer noise and affected a show-host voice. “You win the car, the cash, and the holiday! Congratulations!”
Eric and I laughed, but Tola stayed silent.
“What’s up? We killed it in there.”
She sighed. “Okay, real talk for a second. Where are we with Dylan, because time is counting down, and I am severely doubting our abilities right now.” I was surprised to see the anxiety in her expression.
“Are you okay?”
“We’re off book, Aly! We’re never off book! We always have an exact plan of who the man is and how he works and thinks. We don’t have that.”
“Well, no, but . . .” I started, trying to figure it out.
“We have Aly’s history with the guy,” Eric added, “and he stopped hating her, it seems, so that’s progress.”
“Two and a half weeks!” Tola said. “Two and a half weeks is all we’ve got!”
I turned around to look at her in the back seat. “Tola, what’s up? This isn’t like you.”
Tola’s dark lipstick had rubbed off, and she put a hand through her hair, looking suddenly so exhausted. “We worked really hard to build something. And it’s going somewhere. But if we fail with the biggest client we’ve ever had, because it was impossible . . . we’ve just shot ourselves in the face. We’ve just undone everything we’ve achieved so far.”
I reached back and squeezed her hand. “I can do this, I promise. I’m just looking for the right angle.”
“To get a guy who thinks his girlfriend is shallow to make a lifetime commitment,” she replied.
“Hey.” Eric shrugged, eyes still on the road. “Men have done stupider things for access to an easy life and a nice pair of boobs.”
“You realize you’re allowed to get out of character now,” I bit back at him. “They just need to reconnect. There was real affection between them when we first met them, right? We just need her to put in boundaries, and him to step up. A balancing act.”
“So now we’re couples counselors, too. Excellent.” Eric hit the indicator a little too aggressively.
“You’re just annoyed that Ben didn’t pick up the hint and ask you out,” Tola teased gently, looking a little more like herself.
“He gave me his number!” Eric argued, loudly buzzing his horn as another driver cut him off.
“Yeah, for work stuff. ”
“Maybe he was being subtle.”
“A lot of that in the gay dating scene, babe?” Tola retorted, before turning to me. “I’m sorry, I just . . . I don’t want this to compromise what we’ve done. For you guys, working at the agency is the dream, and I respect that. But . . . I think what we were doing here could be my dream. And I don’t want it getting fucked up by an heiress and her grumpy boyfriend.”
“Okay.” I nodded, in problem-solver mode. “What do you need to feel confident?”
“A plan. And a promise that you really want this to succeed.”
Tola had this way of looking at you like she saw right down to the bone—X-ray vision.
“Believe me, you have no idea how much I need this to succeed,” I said, thinking of my mother’s house, remembering my grandmother beneath that magnolia tree as a talisman.
“So you have no feelings about the boy you once loved getting married to someone else, and being the one to make it happen?” Tola crossed her arms and arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“Love,” I scoffed. “I was a teenager, T. I loved Kurt Cobain and Barry M shimmer eyeliner and trousers with too many pockets. He was a boy I had a crush on once. And I knew him well enough to know he will want what this brings.” Is that true, really?
“Everybody wins. That’s the plan,” I told her, grasping her hand. “You’ve got to trust me.”
“Okay, then tell me where we start,” she said, and I paused, scrolling through Nicki’s social media feed.
I grinned as I turned the phone to her. “We start with proof that we’re on the right track.”
Because there Nicki was at the TV and Film Streaming Awards, standing on a red carpet in Leicester Square. She looked every bit the perfect starlet, her blond hair with extensions in, flowing poker-straight down to her waist, a pale blue sparkly fitted mermaid dress catching the light of the photographers’ flashes.
And right there next to her in a tuxedo was Dylan, smiling for the cameras.
Who’s the babe in the suit?
Uh-oh the KLP’s got her claws into another one!
Is that guy an actor? I think I’ve seen him in something.
The tabloid mentions and captions had been carefully curated: Nicolette Wetherington-Smythe in Givenchy, accompanied by tech entrepreneur boyfriend Dylan James.
“This is our shot,” I said to Tola. “We need to keep building momentum.”
“I know exactly how to work this, we just need to get Dylan on board.”
As Tola detailed her plan for a live Q and A with the couple, I could see Dylan’s scowl in my mind. Sure, he’d gotten all dressed up for a fancy night out and smiled in front of the cameras, but serve up his relationship online to be judged? It would be a hard sell. But we did have Ben on our side. Ben, who knew a few carefully timed questions about the name of the company and the projects they were working on could go a long way. And maybe, just maybe, if he was the same Dylan I remembered, he’d paste on a smile, say “of course!” and pretend he was fine with everything.
Which was how we ended up sitting in Nicki’s palatial Chelsea flat the next afternoon, setting up a tripod and a light ring. The flat was expensive based on size and location alone, but it was beautifully decorated, dripping with luxury in the way influencer design always did. A five-hundred-pound throw, so artfully draped over the sofa, as if it was constantly being snuggled under. A collection of coffee table books that had never been opened. Art that looked pretty but said very little about the owner. It was beautiful, but it looked like a showroom. It felt empty, even with the flurry of activity of assistants, makeup artists, and hairdressers.
“Okay, tell me again how this is going to help the app?” Dylan asked me as a hairdresser attempted to smooth his hair down, his cowlick seemingly incapable of lying flat. She gave up and tried to tousle it instead.
“We’re harnessing Nicki’s fame to benefit your company. People were interested in who you were after your red-carpet appearance last night. We’ve got to capitalize on that whilst they still care.”
He looked at me, long-suffering. “It feels exploitative.”
I shrugged. “Not to Nicki. She wants to help.”
He put his head in his hands, and the hairdresser looked at me questioningly. I made a sign for two minutes. When she’d left, I took her seat opposite him.
“Why is this so hard?” I asked.
Dylan sighed and sat back in the chair, opening his eyes. “Because it feels fake, Aly. Every day of Nicki’s life, she takes photos and makes videos and arranges her living space and rents dogs and cooks food she won’t eat. All for these nameless bozos on the internet who feel like they have a right to her. And now I’m going to be part of that.”
“You know how to do this, Dylan,” I said softly. “You know how to be the most charming, affable person in the room, how to give people what they want, what they expect. How to make them love you.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. “Well, I learned from the best.”
I felt a sharp pain in my chest and tried not to let it show.
“It’s just an extension of that. It’s not a lie, it’s just . . . presenting the parts of you they want to see.”
“Curating,” he said softly.
“I just wanted to make an app that would help people. And I want my team to be well paid for their time, so we can keep doing it. It’s the first thing I’ve made that has any value, Aly. The only thing I’m putting out into the world. We worked really fucking hard on this, and all it’s worth is a three-minute video as part of Nicki’s life, because we’re dating?”
I took a breath and just looked at him, our knees almost touching as he ran a hand through his hair again and then winced at the texture of the gel they’d put in. I laughed.
“You know, that’s the most honest you’ve been with me since we met again,” I said.
Dylan gave me a look, as if he thought I was trying to tell him something else. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to find it.
“Probably best not to go down that route right now,” he said quietly, looking down at his hands.
“Okay, so focusing on the here and now: You trust that I want this app to succeed, right? That I want every kid who needs access to counseling to reach it, in whatever form they prefer? That I believe in what you and Ben and Priya have built?”
“Sure.” He shrugged.
“And you trust that I’m good at my job and I know my shit?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“Okay, so trust me when I tell you that this is just how it works. It’s not a reflection on you, or Nicki, or your relationship. If you weren’t with Nicki, we’d be looking at other options to get the word out, but you are, and she wants to help. So let her. She believes in you.”
He almost laughed but not quite. Like I’d pressed on a bruise without meaning to.
“She believes in my potential. Just like they all did. Just like you did.” His eyes met mine, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe, then he looked away and it was gone. Dylan pulled at his shirtsleeves. “When we first started dating, I tried to go along with it, all the social stuff. But her followers tore me apart. It was in some of the glossies, too. Who’s Nicki slumming it with? A step down from her Chelsea roots.”
I closed my eyes, wincing.
“They’d take these awful photos and compare me to the guys she dated before.” Dylan shrugged. “That’s why I ended up going to the gym so much, because I was terrified they’d keep judging me. Keep looking at her rich, business-owning, trust fund exes with their South of France tans and six-packs and keep reminding her that I’m not enough.”
I smiled gently. “But Nicki doesn’t think that. She adores you.” And the bits she doesn’t adore, she’s paid me to fix.
“She supported me stepping back on social media whilst we figured out where this went. So we could get to know each other. But I know she wants me to be that person, to bring ‘value to her brand.’ ”
“You bring value to her life, surely that’s more important?”
He met my eyes. “I think the two are so linked for her, she’s not sure anymore. I know we need to do this for the business, but . . . Nicki got us this meeting with Silicon Valley; she’s promoting us today; she brought me you. It’s like everything I did was meaningless without her.”
I had two options here, and I didn’t like either of them. I could offer him empty platitudes. Or I could tell the truth. Make myself vulnerable like he just had and hope for the best.
I took a breath. “You remember when you failed history, and your dad said he wasn’t disappointed because he hadn’t expected you to pass?”
Dylan looked at me in surprise, his features softening slightly. “Yes.”
“And you remember what you did?” I prompted.
“I studied, and I resat the exam and proved him wrong.”
“You got ninety-eight percent. The highest in the year.”
“I did.” He grinned. “I guess being a stubborn bastard paid off.”
“Exactly. That’s the guy I need now. The guy who knows he has what it takes to prove them all wrong and is willing to do whatever he needs to do it. The guy who uses charm like a weapon.” I looked at him. “Can you be that guy?”
The smile he gave me was blinding. Something about it was so pure, so grateful, that it made me want to cry.
“I think I can do that, boss.”
—
“Hi, guys! We’re on a Hello! Insta takeover live, and we know after the awards you’re all going to want to know two things from our special guest: What was the afterparty like and who was the gorgeous guy on her arm?”
Tola switched so easily into her work persona that I almost forgot it was her, talking into her phone, before changing the view to Nicki and Dylan, seated casually on the sofa, his arm trailing along the top of it, her snuggled into his side.
How much of all this was a game, the way they looked at each other, curled around each other with adoration in their eyes? And yet, the way Nicki cupped his cheek with her hand, the way he tangled his fingers in her hair . . . that had to be real. It had to be worth it.
“So, Dylan, why haven’t we seen you online before now? You’re a bit of a mystery man!” Tola intoned, just as we’d planned.
He waved his hand like the idea was preposterous. “Honestly, I’m just really boring. And I see how much effort Nicki puts into this, being here for her followers, answering their questions, it’s a lot of work!” He smiled at her with affection, squeezing her shoulders.
“And what about your work?” Okay, here we go.
“Well, I’m an app developer—my company is called EasterEgg Development and we’re working on something big around mental health right now. We really want to help as many people as we can, otherwise what’s the point of it all?”
I gave Dylan a thumbs-up, and he nodded at me.
“And what’s your favorite thing about Nicki?” Tola asked, and Dylan froze. He hid it pretty well, turning to look at her with a smile on his face, but I could sense the panic.
“I guess . . . when she’s having a bad day, she’ll make pancakes and pile them up with whipped cream and not even take a photo before diving in. She just really enjoys this thing she’s made. I love that. And I love pancakes!” He smiled winningly, and Tola “awwed” appropriately, but I saw Nicki’s face tighten.
“And what about you, Nicki? What do you love about Dylan?”
“Oh, he’s just so fun”—Nicki smiled at him—“and he always puts me first. Booking weekends away and holidays and stuff to help me chill out. He’s always looking after me. Whisked me away to Barbados last year!”
“And he’s still paying it off,” Ben said quietly in my ear.
Tola moved on to Nicki’s favorite trends right now, and Dylan just sat and looked attentive. I could tell he was relieved.
Tola ended the chat, tagging a bunch of accounts for cross-promo. Just as Dylan was getting up, she said, “Hold on, we need a photo for the grid. Look all cute and coupley!”
Dylan wrapped his arms around Nicki, pulling her in close, and she looked at him with such adoration that I was left spinning. One thing couldn’t be denied: they looked perfect together. A beautiful couple. Two shiny, sparkly people.
But when they got up, Nicki turned on him. “I can’t believe you said that about the pancakes!”
“What?” He half smiled, as if he thought she was joking. “It is my favorite thing! It’s the only thing you eat that you don’t take a photo of!”
“That’s because I’m meant to be on a dairy- and gluten-free diet! They are going to skewer me for this! I knew I should have given you a preapproved list of answers!”
Dylan frowned. “I thought we were being authentic?”
Nicki closed her eyes as if she was asking for strength. “I have a multimillion-pound brand, Dylan. It depends on me hitting certain demographics. It’s just business.”
“Apologies, I should have chosen a more business-aligned thing to love about you,” he said stiffly and gave me a brief look before walking off.
Nicki turned to me and threw up her hands, as if to ask, Shouldn’t you be fixing this?
Tola shot me a concerned look as Nicki walked off to get a green juice from her fridge, and I wondered if we were making a terrible mistake.