TWENTY
I woke up with Tola next to me, clutching my arm like a determined koala. I wondered why she hadn’t slept in her own king-sized bed, but when I peered over, I saw it was piled high with clothes.
She looked so sweet, gold shimmer eyeshadow smudged across her face, wearing an oversized Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. Like an angelic child who’d crawled into her big sister’s makeup case. I extracted myself and changed into my running gear, unzipping the tent carefully and finding Nicki already up in full makeup, taking selfies outside the tent.
“Good morning!” she stage-whispered. “Just getting some shots.”
I took a breath. She looked so normal, suddenly. Like any other woman who’d come to me because her boyfriend didn’t see her, or make an effort for her, or want to grow up. But she had someone who did all those things, who tried harder than anyone, and it still wasn’t enough.
“Nicki, actually, I was hoping to catch you—”
“Of course, darling, it would be so lovely to have some one-on-one time, but I’ve just got to get this done, okay?” She knew what I wanted to say, and she was going to put me off for as long as she could.
“It really won’t take long,” I said, smiling my shark smile. “Why don’t we go and get some breakfast, just the two of us? Catch up on where we are with our projects?”
That caught her interest. She smiled, a little confused, and nodded.
“Very well, twist my arm. I’ve given the chef my nutritionist’s recipe for buckwheat waffles, so let’s hope he knows what he’s doing!”
We settled in the garden at a table, Nicki smiling and waving at everyone like she was the bloody queen.
“Sorry, it’s so embarrassing, but it comes with the territory.” She smiled, eyes back to her phone. I put my hand over the screen, and she looked at me in shock.
“I was hoping we could have a little chat.”
“About Dylan?” she asked, placing the phone on the table but continuing to look at it like it might hold the answers to the universe.
“About Dylan.”
Nicki finally nodded and gave me her full attention.
“You’ve made good progress, I’ll give you that.” She sipped her green smoothie thoughtfully. “When I saw how much he hated you at the beginning, I had my doubts, but it seems as if the two of you found some common ground?”
“I don’t . . .”
“I mean, he’s been so loving and attentive recently, so I have to credit that to you.” She smirked at me. “All those long sessions working on the presentation, and I thought he’d be exhausted, but he’d run over to my place, so suddenly enthusiastic, so . . . passionate.”
She knew what she was doing to me. How obvious must I be to her, the woman who fell for her mark? A server arrived with our food, and I offered a polite smile as she placed the plates on the table. Nicki didn’t even acknowledge the young girl, but paused to take some photos.
“Well, anyway, darling, I’m not really sure we need to continue with our arrangement anymore. I think I can take it from here.” Her face was a mask. “You can keep the money, of course, I understand that you really did help with the business side of things. Clearly that’s where your skills really sit.”
“I don’t understand. You want to call this off?”
She adjusted herself, flicking her tresses over her shoulder. I wondered how early she had to get up to straighten her hair, if she ever resented it. She picked up her phone again, flicked through absentmindedly, smiling at the number of Likes she got. I’d never realized how much of a junkie she was, how you never got her full attention. That must be why it was usually so alluring when she offered it, like a gift. Like you were special. I wondered if that was how Dylan felt.
“It seems in working together, Dylan has developed . . . an attachment to you.” She threw up her hands like it was ridiculous. “I mentioned setting you up with a friend of mine, kind of like as a thank-you for all your help, and he got all annoyed. You can’t just organize people’s lives like that, Nicki,” she mimicked, then rolled her eyes. “Ironic, right? And then there’s all the in-jokes.”
“In-jokes?” I wracked my brain. Nicki looked at me like I was a moron.
“In the car? He knew you were carsick!”
“That wasn’t a joke,” I said, trying to laugh it off, “and I looked pretty green. I must have mentioned it at some point.”
Nicki looked at me, really staring, as if she was trying to siphon the truth out of me by sheer force of will. I’d seen her do this on reality TV, staring for an uncomfortably long amount of time. I’d always assumed it was just an editing trick to try to eke out the drama, but now I figured some producer had told her it was powerful.
“Look, I agree. I think we should call this quits,” I said. “You can take the money back, the whole hundred grand—I won’t charge for my time spent. But I just don’t . . . I don’t feel right about it.”
Nicki nodded like it was what she’d expected: weakness.
“It’s a shame. If you could have delivered what you were promising, you’d be a millionaire. An icon,” she laughed. I wanted to scream. “I thought we were on the same page here. Men need to be sculpted a little, encouraged. Reinforce good behavior. We all do it, try to train them. But it’s just so time-consuming, so exhausting.”
The server stepped in to clear our plates, carefully averting her eyes as she leaned past. Her body was rigid, her eyes wide as she recognized Nicki. I thought her hands trembled a little. I smiled and mouthed a “thank you” as she left.
I turned back to Nicki, shaking my head.
“I just . . . I don’t understand why he’s not enough for you the way he is,” I argued. “He’s attentive, he’s sweet. He cares about you, he respects your career, he pays attention to what you need. He’s tried really hard, going to the events, being that person you need him to be. Why isn’t it enough?”
Nicki looked at me again. “Because it would be enough for you?”
I tried not to wince. “We’re not talking about me.”
“I think we are.”
She let the silence sit again, and this time I refused to be bullied. I sipped my coffee daintily, taking my time, and then I put the cup back on the saucer and smiled. “I’m going to go. We don’t have to talk about this ever again.”
She gave me a look like she knew she didn’t have much time left. One well-aimed shot was all it would take.
“Darling, I say this because I don’t want you to get hurt. But you realize you don’t have a chance with him, right? I mean, you’re lovely, don’t get me wrong, but you have a certain . . . unpolished quality. He might feel protective toward you, like a sibling, he might even like you as a person, but Dylan is, through and through, just another guy. He likes his women toned, tanned, waxed, and wearing lingerie. He can pretend he’s not into all the effort I put in, but believe me, when we’re alone he makes his preferences clear.”
I took a sharp breath and smiled, leaning in to whisper to her.
“And I’m saying this because I don’t want you to get hurt, Nicki—if you have to manipulate him into proposing, you’re going to need to manipulate him into every decision for the rest of your lives, and he’s going to resent you.”
“As long as he can hold out until after my TV deal, that’s fine with me,” she bit back, and I looked at her in shock. “When we get home, the flat will be set up with a hugely romantic backdrop, with all of his favorite foods, good champagne, and a photo montage. All the fantastic holidays, all the wonderful times we’ve had. And when he turns around, he’ll find me holding a pendant on a chain, a replica of the one his mother gave him, but in twenty-four-carat gold. A proposal gift.”
I closed my eyes, it was so painful. “Nicki, come on. Did you get him a puppy, too?”
“I know him,” she argued. “I know what he likes. What he cares about. He wants the beautiful apartment and the sharp suits and the big office and the perfect wife.”
“So that’s why we came on this trip? So your assistants could set up the proposal?” I laughed, not even surprised anymore as I scraped back my chair to leave.
“Alyssa . . .” She widened her eyes, sweet as pie. “If you tell him about any of this, you’ll look just as bad as me. Stick to the script or get off the stage. I don’t want to see you again after this.”
She assumed a sweet smile. “Okay, darling?”
Don’t give her the satisfaction, Aly. You know how to play the game, so play it.
I smiled as if we’d had a perfectly lovely conversation. “Thank you for such a memorable experience, Nicki. It’s been mind-blowing. I’ll see you at the car for our journey home.”
“I’ve booked you all a separate car,” she said cloyingly, thrilled to get that final win. “After all, Dylan and I have somewhere important to be.”
As I walked away, I comforted myself that I’d done what I set out to do. It was over. No more fixing, no more lying or trickery. And no more Dylan. I had to trust that there was still enough of him in there to make the right decision. The Dylan who would look at a more expensive, fancier version of a gift from his mother, and wince.
But either way, it was done now. It wasn’t my problem to fix anymore.
I had more than enough problems of my own.
—
The drive home was muted: Tola quietly dozing, Ben and Eric wrapped around each other, and me clutching a bottle of water and trying not to imagine what would be happening a couple of hours from now. I’d watched as Dylan waved at me as we left, one arm around Nicki, not a care in the world.
I looked down at my phone to find a text from Priya:
How was the nightmare group trip? Did you all have group massages and bond? Is everyone Team Nicki now? P x
I wanted to laugh at the timing of it. I wanted to think that Priya’s feelings and Ben’s tense looks and that nagging bit of doubt were enough for Dylan, but they wouldn’t be.
There was no doubt about what he’d do. I knew exactly how this was going to play out.
I was going to watch as they announced their engagement online, and I was going to trawl through the pictures and the articles and let myself have one night crying and drinking. Just one night to say good-bye. Enough now.
And then I was going to find another job and stop fixing things and people.
I had a plan. I kept repeating it in my head. I have a plan, I have a plan. It’s going to be okay because I’ve got a plan.
When I got into the flat, nearly running in without a backward glance, calling my thanks over my shoulder, I shut the door and gave a sigh of relief. No lies, no pretense, no feelings. Just quiet. I fell into bed and slept for the rest of the afternoon.
A few hours later my phone rang, and I searched for it under the duvet, discovering I had eighteen missed calls. Tola, Eric, and Mama. Tola was calling.
“What’s happening, is everyone okay?” I asked, panicked.
Tola sighed. “Thank fuck you’re answering, where have you been?”
“I was asleep! What’s the emergency?”
“Go to Twitter and look at what’s trending,” she said.
“Social media? So I can assume no one’s dead or maimed?” I put her on speakerphone and opened the app.
“Not yet,” Tola said darkly.
There were two things that concerned me:
#theKLP
#fixerupper
“What the fuck am I looking at, Tola?”
She sighed. “Read the articles and call me back. We need to do damage control.”
FIX UP OR STITCH UP?
kitty litter heiress pays one hundred grand to get “fixer upper” tech boyfriend to propose
The old saying goes that money can’t buy you love, but heiress to the Happy Kitty fortune and reality TV show royalty Nicolette Wetherington-Smythe is not going to let that stop her. Nicolette has been in the public eye consistently since the fifth season of Posh London aired, but it’s only more recently her tech entrepreneur boyfriend Dylan James has been seen in the limelight.
A source has informed us that was all part of an elaborate plan to make Mr. James a more worthy partner for the influencer, increasing his audience in preparation for a big tech deal and a proposal.
But unlike most women, the KLP isn’t a fan of waiting, so she hired self-professed boyfriend fixers Alyssa Aresti and Tola Ajayi, aka the Fixer Upper, to speed up the process. Under the guise of business support, Aresti and Ajayi have been prying into Mr. James’s personal life and attempting to fix him up to Wetherington-Smythe’s high standards. As you’ll remember in season four of Posh London, the KLP dropped biscuit billionaire and heartthrob Landon Hawthorne for failing to see her “entrepreneurial vision.” Well, no one’s missing it now.
I scanned a few other sites, looking to see how much people knew:
Aresti and Ajayi have been running the Fixer Upper for almost a year, and their website promises a range of packages, from career support and general hand-holding to commitment and communication. Hidden on a website accessible only with a password, there are real secret-society vibes here. Plus, we love their kick-ass tote bags and sassy badges. Ladies, we salute you!
So what do we think, girls? Would we pay someone to fix up our men, and is it worth a hundred grand alone to get them to use a washing machine correctly?
I threw my phone on the bed and put my head in my hands. Shit.
I immediately called Dylan, but it rang once and then went to voice mail. I had to find him, I had to explain. But what could I say, except It’s true, I’m sorry?
Tola rang back, but I didn’t answer. She kept texting about making a plan, preparing a statement, trying to talk to Nicki. But I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face any of them.
The server, the one at the restaurant that morning at the glamping site. She hadn’t been rigid and nervous because Nicki was famous. It was because she got hold of some gossip that she knew would be worth something.
I pulled the covers over my head. Oh god, the office would see. All the people who had used the Fixer Upper would see. Nicki had a whole PR team to spin this, but we were toast. We were done.
Dylan would be so hurt.
I tried one more time to call Dylan, still no idea what I’d say, and this time it didn’t go to voice mail, it simply said: The number you dialed has not been recognized.