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There is nothing I can say that will salvage the situation. I don’t know if I even want to salvage the situation. It feels like it’s as far beyond salvageable as any situation can get. Right. I need torecalibrate my goal. Move away from trying to convince Liv that she’s wrong, and lean into finding out what she wants and how to get rid of her. Because, clearly, Liv is fucking insane.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Liv,” I say quietly.
Liv shakes her head. “Oh my god. Spare me the Gaslighting 101, okay? None of that ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ crap. No, you need to be sorry thatyoumade me feel that way. Understand?”
Hidden behind the island counter, my hands ball into fists. It’s been a long time since anyone’s talked to me this way. Well, anyone who isn’t Ben. But this isn’t the time for me to lose my temper. I need to play this smart. I force myself to nod. “You’re right. I’m sorry I made you feel that way. What can I do to make it…” I hesitate. What I really want to say is:What can I do to make you go away?But I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over well. “…okay?”
Liv snorts. “How about giving me the last seven years of my life back? Give me the last seven years where I’m not desperately chasing after this unachievable life that you’ve made me think is a realistic goal? How about that?”
God, it’s a struggle to keep a straight face. I want to smack this immature brat. “Well, as much as I would love to be able to turn back time, unfortunately, I can’t do that. So maybe we can come up with something else?”
Liv narrows her eyes at me. How have I missed how truly ugly she is? Beneath the impeccable makeup and the vibrant clothes, she is repulsive. “How about I tell your followers the truth about you? How you pretend to dig up potatoes from your own garden?”
I make myself shrug. “And what will that give you, exactly?”
“Satisfaction, for one,” Liv says.
“Okay, and that’s going to last you about two seconds. Then it’ll fade away, and you’ll be left exactly where you were before.”
Think fast, I hiss silently at myself.There is a way out. There is always a way out. You are a survivor. You do not admit defeat here, not to this little upstart. I look at Liv. Really look at her. Seeing her in her entirety. I put myself in her sad Payless shoes. What does she want?
Then I find it. My way out.
“I have a better idea,” I say.
Liv gives me a skeptical look, but I’m not so easily deterred.
“I know what you want. And I can give it to you.” I smile at her, then I offer her dreams back to her on a silver platter. “Followers.”
20
Liv gapes at me. “I—Idon’t understand.”
I resist the urge to laugh in her face and call her a moron. “It’s simple. I have six million followers. You have…” I wiggle my hand at her.
“One hundred and fifty thousand,” Liv mumbles.
“Right.” I purse my lips. “Well. So I have a lot to offer you.”
“You can’t give me your followers.”
Oh my god, how is it that this bumbling fool thinks she can be an influencer? “No,” I say patiently. “But I can help to promote you. We can do cross-promo content, where you’re in my videos and I tag you…”
Liv’s face lights up as the idea takes root in her slow-moving mind. “We can cook together!”
“Yeah, exactly,” I say with an encouraging smile. “We can do everything together. We can cook, like you said; we can do videos with the kids together, that would be really cute; we can—”
“We can do TikTok dances together!” Liv cries. “Oh my god, I’ve always wanted to be part of a dance duo. Those videos do real numbers on TikTok.”
I wince. I’m good at pretending to garden and cook, less good at dancing. But it’s not like I have much of a choice here. “I’m game, we can definitely try a few dance moves, yeah.”
For the next few moments, Liv is quiet, though her fingers drum the countertop as she mulls over my proposal. “And you’ll do cross-promo videos with me every day?” she says after a while.
I nod. “Sure. If you want.”
“For as long as I want?”
“How about until you reach half a million followers? That should give you enough momentum to strike out on your own.”