THIRTEEN
“And then I told him I didn’t deserve this, and that he needed to apologize,” Mama said as I was sorting my laundry, phone on speaker on the side of my sofa. I’d had an exhausting day and the last thing I needed right now was more parental drama. But at the moment, my mother was on a high from demanding even the most basic respect from my father.
“Good for you,” I said, then paused. “And did you talk to him about the house?”
Silence.
“Mama, I don’t want to push, but . . .”
“You’re right, you’re right, of course. You need to know if he agrees to the money you’ve offered, I know, sweetheart. And I so appreciate what you’re doing for me. For us.”
Which “us” was she talking about? Me and her, or her and him? She didn’t want to ask me how I was getting the money, she didn’t want to know if I was draining all my savings. She just wanted the problem solved.
“Oh, I saw Dylan in the magazines at the supermarket!” Mama said, redirecting the conversation somewhere less dangerous. “Was that your work, clever girl? Surely they’ll have to give you that promotion now.”
“Maybe,” I said lightly, “it sounds like I’m nearly there.”
My mother paused. “Do you think if you don’t get it, it’s worth looking somewhere else, darling? You’ve spent so many years of killing yourself for this company. Work is your whole life. How are you going to meet anyone? How are you going to get the chance to fall in love?”
My first thought was, If it looks like what you have, no, thank you. But I couldn’t tell her that.
But I didn’t say anything. I called Tola and drank a glass of red wine whilst she filled me in on the impact of the social takeover. Thousands of new followers, the updated website had new hits, and Tola had even set up a way of signing up testers for the app, so they’d have real-world data to take to the pitch. She was so good at this. And she was willing to take more risks than I was. She could be so much more than this.
“Have you given any more thought about us making the Fixer Upper a real business? Making it something more?” she asked, and I just sighed.
“Yeah, yeah, I know you want your title and your pension and a pat on the head from a man at the top table.” I could hear her rolling her eyes, frustrated with my lack of vision. I didn’t want to take a risk, that was all. I had a plan, I was sticking to it. “But you could be the man at the top table.”
“I want to be head of branding.” I heard my mother’s voice: Work is your whole life. But it was the only part of my life that was nicely ordered, that made me feel like I had everything together. I was good at work. Beyond the Fixer Upper, the rest of my life didn’t work like that. Love didn’t work like that.
“You can be Super High Sorceress of Branding for all I care,” she huffed at me. “Think bigger.”
She hung up before I could argue any further, and I didn’t blame her.
I’d had a very clear idea of what my life was going to look like—I was going to get the branding job and the money that came with it. I was going to be respected by my colleagues, I was going to push for creativity, and I was going to bring up the other women in the company. The smart ones who got overlooked in the face of loud, ballsy incompetence. I was going to buy a cute little ground-floor flat with a garden and give the finger to everyone who said you had to be a couple to buy. And then . . .
Well, after that it got a bit harder to see. That had been my goal for so many years, I wasn’t really sure what came next. Putting the effort into meeting someone who didn’t need fixing, I guess. Someone I could take home for my mother to fawn over. Someone I could trust to look at my fucked-up family and not judge them, or me.
I had a text from Eric, a blurry photo of some tapas on a table. On a date!
I laughed and replied: You’re always on a date.
The response was immediate.
Not like this one. This is the real thing. x
I smiled to myself.
Just as I was crawling into bed to watch TV and fall asleep with my face in a bowl of ice cream, the phone rang. I assumed it would be my mother again, but it wasn’t her.
It was Dylan.
“Hi,” I said, surprised. “Is everything okay?”
He coughed awkwardly. “Hi, um, yeah. I just wanted to say thank you for today. I guess you saw all the numbers? Ben was losing his mind. Priya’s spent the evening mocking up test environments and sending me text messages in all capitals. It’s the happiest they’ve been in ages.”
“And how about you?” I asked, snuggling under the covers. Curled up in bed, Dylan on the other end of the phone, this was like a jump back in time.
“I’m pleased, obviously. It’s all . . . happening.”
“Hmm,” I said.
When we were fifteen, Dylan got accepted to a national art show, and he’d spent weeks working on his final piece, putting every spare minute into it. The day before he was meant to deliver it to the exhibition, it was found destroyed in the art room. The head teacher was horrified and gave Dylan such a heartfelt apology. They thought it was a bunch of younger-year kids messing around, but I knew. Dylan didn’t handle pressure. And he’d rather miss out than risk failing. Which was probably why his start-up had been stalling out for all these years.
“What, hmm?” he demanded, and I laughed.
“Might have fooled everyone else with that smile, but you don’t fool me,” I said softly.
“I think that’s my line,” he replied, tone matching mine. I didn’t like how my stomach flipped when he whispered.
“How was everything with Nicki?” I switched tack before this got too messy and heard him sigh.
“She got a journalist to give her a front page on one of the glossies revealing her emotional eating habits. They get a nutritionist to assess her diet and tell her what to eat instead. She’ll be switching the pancakes for banana protein waffles. Or something.”
“Wow.” Genius, really.
“She said she’s not mad at me, that it’s her fault for not explaining how this all works.” He paused for so long that I wondered if he was still there. “What does that say about me, that the thing I love most about someone is the thing they want to hide from the world?”
I snorted. “Dylan, it wasn’t about the pancakes. The pancakes were just something she did without pretense, not shown to her followers, something real she shared only with you.”
He made a “huh” sound that I took to mean our tentative truce was still in place.
“And I’m guessing you apologized, too?”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “What do you think, Aresti?”
“I think you probably sent her a painfully huge bouquet of her favorite flowers, took her hand, and looked into her eyes as you gave a heartfelt apology and then made the disgusting banana waffle things for her to show you understand her.” I waited. “How many did I get?”
“Spot-on,” he laughed, “but I put whipped cream on the waffles.”
“Of course, rule breaker.”
“Well, I take my role as leading man very seriously,” he said, but as the laughter started to seep from his words, we stayed on the line, letting the silence sit between us.
“Dylan?” I whispered eventually. “Are you still there?”
He replied in a whisper. “Just trying to figure out if I fell through some sort of wormhole back to the early 2000s. This all feels very familiar.”
My chest tightened into a knot, tied with a bow.
If I didn’t acknowledge it, we didn’t have to have the conversation. He’d started this game of pretend, but it was easier that way. Because if he asked me why I left, I’d have to ask him about that night, I’d have to remember that he hadn’t been who I thought he was. Right now, I just needed him to be a project. He wasn’t Dylan James, the boy I’d once loved. He just had to be something necessary to sort out, so I could save my mother’s home. That was the only way I could justify it to myself.
We stayed silent on the phone for what felt like an eternity, whilst I pulled that wall up, painfully putting each brick in place, stamping down on those memories.
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow, Mr. James.”
“Good night, Miss Aresti.”
—
I woke to my phone ringing at five a.m.
“Hello?” I croaked, my heart racing and already conjuring thoughts of the worst.
“How’s my favorite little romance guru?” Nicki crowed, and I held the phone a little farther away from my ears. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Oh, no, I was up doing my sun salutation and drinking my green juice,” I said as I slipped on my aging dressing gown with the crocodiles and shuffled to put the kettle on. “What’s up?”
“Well, Dylan, obviously, it’s Dylan.”
“I thought the Insta takeover went so well, didn’t you? And it looks like the couples photo had great engagement. Your fans love him.” I kept my voice encouraging because it was clear the KLP was not a happy kitty.
“Yeah, that part all looks good. And he’s agreed to smile into the camera when I’m doing my thing. He’ll wave like a little nerd. He took a selfie in bed with me this morning. He’s never done that before.”
I hadn’t realized he’d been at hers last night on the phone. For some reason that made my stomach contract.
I tried to erase that vision, the two of them, curled up together laughing without any of the realities, like morning breath or cold feet or farting under the covers. Just picture perfect.
“So what’s the problem? Sounds like he’s trying really hard.” I put her on speaker so I could stalk her social media feed.
“Yes, thankfully he made up for that debacle with the pancakes! Imagine, all the things I’ve achieved, and he liked that I used to stuff pancakes in my face when no one was looking!” Her laughter was high, like one of those bells above shop entrances—warning: attention needed.
“Thankfully I’ve been working with Dr. Karen, a nutritionist, to help me deal with my cravings and emotional eating. She’s an absolute genius.”
It had been less than twenty-four hours and already she’d crafted this into a new narrative. Her team were impressive.
“It looks like he’s really making an effort with the social media thing, we’re on the right track. And the prep for the presentation has come along so well,” I trilled, fearing some sort of issue was going to arise.
“Well, the thing is . . .” There it is. “I just think he’s so busy working on the presentation he’s not going to feel romantic enough to propose, you know? Men just can’t multitask like women can.”
“But we . . . he’s literally doing everything you asked for. He’s more involved on social media, he’s working on pitching his business, being successful. He went to your event . . .” I trailed off. “We’re on track.”
“And what about the proposal?”
I cringed. Even hearing her say it sounded awful. So demanding, like I was refusing to sell her a pair of shoes she thought she deserved, even if they weren’t in her size.
“Did you see that photo, how he looked at you, how he held you? That’s romance! Most people would kill for that!” I trilled, all enthusiasm. Give me a fucking chance, lady. I’m a hustler, not a miracle worker.
Nicki sighed. “He . . . there’s things he doesn’t share. And I share everything!” Except for the fact that you’re paying to fix him.
“Well, maybe that’s part of it. He probably likes the parts that are only his, the parts of you he doesn’t have to share . . . Nicki, we are getting shit done, okay? You don’t have to worry about a thing, we are on this.”
“I know, I have complete faith. I just wish . . . I wish there was more time for romance in all of this.”
I was going to murder this woman. This was how my career ended, not with a burnout-induced breakdown, but shaking Nicolette Wetherington-Smythe, yelling what do you actually want? until they locked me away.
“Didn’t he send you flowers and make you food?” I asked, and her voice took on a hard tone.
“He told you?”
“He did.”
A weird silence hung in the air, and I felt the need to apologize but held my ground.
“Well, I know that sort of thing might impress the average woman, but for me, getting flowers is just another Tuesday, you know? I require a little more va-va-voom for my grand gestures. Maybe keep that in mind when it comes to the proposal.”
At this moment, I absolutely hated her.
“Nicki, if you’d rather take my original advice and organize a proposal with someone who has their own team of assistants and agent and PR company to make it an event that’ll sell papers, then you just let me know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her tone was breezy again, and I started to wonder if I’d imagined that coldness altogether. “Just . . . encourage him to think big, right? A big public declaration of love.”
“With a decent Instagrammable backdrop?”
“You’re getting it,” she said. “I’ll check in soon.” Please don’t. “I’ve got a preliminary meeting with Celebrity Wedding Wars next week, and they already said they love our coloring together. They can really visualize, like, a winter-themed wedding, all cool colors and ice bars. A big sculpture of a polar bear, can you imagine?!”
For Dylan, who soaked up the sun like a battery, his skin turning caramel at the first touch of sunshine? Who had booked up our summer weekends with camping trips, festivals, and days on the beach with the sole aim of smiling at the sky and getting a tan, quietly begging summer to never end? A winter wedding for that man?
I downed the rest of my coffee, and thought only of my mother’s drawn face, my father’s smug grin.
“I’ll see what I can do.”