Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
My relief quickly turning to irritation, I demand, “What’s wrong? Why were you screaming?”
She looks up, blinking fast, as if she’s only just realized I’m here. We’re definitely going to have to work on her situational awareness. Otherwise, she’ll be a sitting duck for Wimpy and every other predator down the line for the rest of her life.
And I won’t always be here to help get her out of trouble.
“My grandmother,” Nora wheezes, holding the phone screen out toward me. “Look what she did. She did this. Without asking me. Without even warning me!”
Frowning, I take the phone and glance down at an online article from the Bad Dog Daily Darling, the local paper. In it, a grinning Nora carves a pumpkin in a sexy green minidress above a headline that reads “Why the Younger Generation is Saying No to Intimacy.”
“And by ‘intimacy,’ they mean sex, Matty,” Nora says, beginning to pace back and forth across the gravel again. “My grandmother didn’t just talk to her friend Debbie about my sex life, or lack thereof. She talked to a reporter. And now the entire town is going to know I haven’t gotten laid in over two years!”
I quickly skim the story, understanding her hysteria as I glean the content of the well-written, but breathlessly condescending, article and realize she’s been cast as the poster child for sexually dysfunctional twentysomethings everywhere. The line, “women like Nora perform sexuality with ease on social media, but when it comes to real-life relationships, she seems to lack the skills to move past swiping and into real life connection,” is especially vicious.
“And now I’m going to have to kill my grandmother,” Nora says, shaking her head as she continues to pace. “I love my grandmother. She means everything to me. I don’t want to kill her, but now, I have no choice.”
“You’re not going to kill Gram,” I say, nodding toward the phone. “You don’t even know if she’s the one who talked to the reporter. They just cite ‘a family member’ as the source.”
“What other family member do I have in town?” she asks, answering the question before I can speak. “None. And even if my brother were around, he wouldn’t talk to a reporter about me. Aaron’s trying to move up to the NHL from a feeder team. He knows the importance of the press. He wouldn’t throw me under the bus like this, especially when I can’t remember the last time he had a steady hook-up, let alone a serious girlfriend.”
She pauses to bury her face in both hands. “Oh my God, no one’s going to want to buy my clothes or accessories now. My business is going to be ruined. Ruined! Everything I’ve worked so hard to build.”
“I think you might be overreacting.”
Nora’s face pops up, her cheeks red and her eyes shining. “Fashion is all about image, Matthew. My brand is sexy sophistication with a touch of Mid-Century American Girl Lost in Paris. My brand is not timid homebody who’s afraid to date and only looks hot online.”
“You’re plenty hot in real life,” I say, scowling.
She scowls back. “Very convincing. Thanks for the pep talk. But sadly, even if you were telling the truth, it doesn’t matter. Once this article goes viral, I’m done for. I might as well start the fifty percent off sale now and try to move as much product as I can before the fallout starts.”
I arch a brow. “And why do you assume an article from a small-town newspaper is going to go viral? Who’s even going to read this?”
“Well, aside from the thousands of local subscribers who will get a copy on their doorstep tomorrow, and flip past this on their way to the Black Friday sales section, I expect my competitors will jump on this faster than a horny squirrel after a messy bun,” she says, making my lips twitch. At least she hasn’t completely lost her sense of humor. “I have enemies. Petty enemies who love nothing more than to put my name on a google alert and have their minions share every bit of negative press that comes my way. When Foxy Fashion, the top fashion blogger of our generation, called my heart-cutout knee socks a miss last season, less than twenty-four hours later, it was all over the internet. Along with posts wondering if Bonjour Baby is ‘over’ now that I’ve hit all the major Parisian tropes in my first few collections.”
She jabs an indignant finger toward the sky. “But I have not hit all the major tropes. Paris has a vast and storied fashion history. No designer in the world could thoroughly explore the highlights of that history in just a few collections. And I didn’t just hit the tropes, anyway, I reimagined them. I’m like a DJ sampling a track. Yes, there are some familiar elements incorporated into the presentation, but the song and the voice are uniquely mine.” She brushes her hair over her shoulder and crosses her arms with a determined clench of her jaw. “And if they think they’re going to take me down over a stupid article written by a reverse slut-shaming boomer with an axe to grind with my generation, then they are going to be very disappointed.”