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There. It was done. Sally knew that compared to the courageous things countless other people have to do on a daily basis, this confession paled in comparison; yet to her, it felt like she had just done the most frightening thing she had ever done in her life.

And it was the right thing to do, even though she knew it might very well cost her.

Oh, and that Max was going to kill her.

Chapter 13

What the fuck just happened?

Amy was having a hard time wrapping her brain around this.

Sally wasn’t Jillian? The whole thing had been a lie?

Was this a joke?

But no matter how hard she scrutinized Sally’s features now, Amy could detect no sign of mirth or humor. Sally was telling the truth. She wasn’t Jillian. Even weirder than that: a man was Jillian!

She stepped away from Sally again, farther this time than when she had asked if Sally already had a girlfriend. Right now, she was compelled to give this…imposter the finger, tell her to fuck off and leave her standing here on the beach. But first, there were things to get off her chest.

“You came on my show!” she screamed, the volume of her voice somewhat tempered by the sound of the mighty Pacific’s surf. “Do you have any idea how important that show is to me?”

Sally mutely nodded.

“Fuck, Sally!” Amy threw her hands up in the air and started pacing in the sand. Eventually, she stopped and stared at this woman who less than five minutes ago she had been kissing and had wanted to take home to fuck her brains out.

I still do.

She shook her head. She needed her brain to do the thinking now, not her vagina.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why did you do this?”

“I told you!” Sally said. “It was just going to be this one interview! Maybe a few others just to get people off Max’s back and show them that, yes, Jillian Ashley really exists.”

That made sense. Amy knew from various sources—Twitter, Facebook, comments made by readers of her blog and listeners of her podcast—that Jillian Ashley’s Salinger-like reclusiveness, once part of her appeal, was beginning to make people suspicious. The question that was out there was, “Why wouldn’t Jillian show herself?”

The theories about that were far-ranging. Most believed Jillian wasn’t the seemingly young, shapely woman seen from behind in her author photo but was instead far older and heavier. Others considered that maybe Jillian had been disfigured in a horrible accident. More than one person—unbelievably—had even speculated that all of the Jillian Ashley novels had in fact been written by an AI computer secretly developed by the government.

Amy’s eyes went wide as she suddenly remembered someone starting a thread on Twitter, postulating that Jillian might in fact be a man. The original poster had been shot down rather quickly and brutally for even suggesting it. Some of the comments could have even been categorized as bullying. Jillian Ashley had legions of devout and fiercely protective fans.

Another thought came to her, this one so frightening that she knew her legs would no longer support her and she quickly sat down on the sand before she fell down on the sand. She pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. After a moment, when her nerves felt steady enough to allow her to speak, she looked over at Sally.

“Do you have any idea how many lesbians I just lied to?”

Lesbeing—the Podcast may not be on par with something like This American Life but it also wasn’t small potatoes anymore. Twenty-five episodes in and she was already over ten-thousand subscribers and the interview with Jillian Ashley had increased the rate of new listeners signing up almost exponentially. She expected to break the fifteen-thousand mark by the end of next week. And her subscribers weren’t just SoCal women—not anymore. Amy’s podcast had listeners in Japan, Russia, Australia, and other countries, even Liechtenstein! Amy had had to Google that one. And now she was faced with telling all of them—even what had to be the only lesbian in Liechtenstein—that her exclusive Jillian Ashley interview had been a farce.

“Oh god,” she groaned, resting her head on her knees and shutting her eyes.

Eventually—minutes later?—a voice said, “You don’t have to tell anyone.”

Amy opened her eyes and saw that Sally was also sitting on the sand. Despite everything, Amy almost laughed when she noticed that Sally had chosen a spot presumably out of her striking range, about fifteen feet away.

Little does she know how cat-like I can be.

“Who else knows about this?” she asked quietly.

“The whole story? Just me and Max.”

Amy thought about that.