“Oh my god, I can’t even keep track of them anymore,” Keely says.
It doesn’t matter which show. What matters is that if she’s competing on reality TV for a husband, she’s hot. And has a personality.
It’s a rule. You can’t be on TV if you’re not hot and don’t have a personality.
And if she wants Tyler—would she go to reality TV lengths in real life to get him?
My heart is fluttering into a panic. Stay calm, Muffy. Stay. Calm. Tyler knows who you are. He likes you for who you are. He’s not going to dump you just because someone he had a thing for way back when is suddenly into him and available and hot.
“Mimosa?” I croak to the server as she pops in and smiles at me. “Maybe skip the orange juice part and substitute vodka for the champagne?”
“She’ll have a salted caramel hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, with a shot of Baileys,” Tyler corrects.
Swoon, my vagina sighs.
I’m not mad at him for changing my order. I do like his idea better. And not just because he had it.
He drops into the seat next to me and drapes his arm over the back of my chair. “Ignore them,” he mutters.
Which isn’t I don’t love her anymore and I’m not interested.
I force a smile and reach for my water with clumsy hands.
But he knows me, and he’s steadying the glass almost before the ice clinks against the side.
Be cool, Muffy. Be. Cool.
“How’d everyone sheep last night?” I blurt.
Sheep.
Oh my god.
I asked them how they sheeped.
“Like the dead,” Allie answers.
Tyler grabs a straw and throws it at her. “Shove it.”
“What? That wasn’t a zombie Grandpa joke.”
“Definitely not,” Keely agrees.
One of the kids—I swear I knew all their names yesterday—spills a lidded cup of what I sincerely hope is apple juice, and another sticks a crayon up his nose. “Look, Mama, I gots a booger!”
I love these people. I truly do.
I steal a glance at Tyler.
He turns a soft smile my way, and that’s all it takes. One slight hitch of his lips, and my pulse pulls back on the throttle and my panic chills.
He likes me.
He really, really likes me.
“Oooh, brunch time!” Daisy and West stroll into the room, West holding Remy, who pumps his feet when he sees everyone. He sets the little boy down, and he toddles straight to Britney.
“Favorite aunt!” she crows.
Daisy slips an arm around May Ella and kisses her cheek, and I swear she whispers something that makes May Ella’s nose twitch.
They both look at me, and there it goes again.
The doubt.
Things have been too good for too long. Tyler’s sexy, attractive, talented ex-girlfriend still pines for him. His family is giving me weird looks.
“What the fu—udge is going on?” Tyler asks.
“Nothing,” his mom says.
“It’s never nothing.”
“Tyler, are you related to the most amazing woman on the planet or not?” Daisy asks with a grin. “If it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
“It’s possibly not nothing nothing,” West says.
“Optimism, Westley.” She pats him on the ass. “We’re having optimism.”
“About what?” Tyler asks.
And now the family’s sharing more looks again, and I’m trying to pretend I’m not on the verge of hyperventilating.
Be confident, Muffy. This is okay. Tyler’s not the same guy who fell in love with a woman who’s not a klutzy professional disaster. He’s into you despite all that. He won’t leave, even if he stays out of guilt for telling you he liked you better before he knew all his options.
Apparently Allie loses their silent, mental rock-paper-scissors game, because she’s the one who speaks up. “Ty, you remember this summer when we had our family reunion at the lake, and those gossip reporters showed up and thought that kid who kept collecting rocks in his pockets was with us, and then there was that massive local story about how we were hanging out with a woman who was once investigated for tax fraud at a local nursing home since it turns out she was the kid’s mom, which wasn’t funny but we all thought it was weirdly funny since it was the first time we really saw the full Daisy effect in our lives and we joked about how we all might as well admit now to all the weird things we’ve ever done that might be interesting because we’re in the Daisy Halo now?”
While my stomach suddenly cramps, making my hot chocolate feel like it’s an angry hurricane in there, even though it hasn’t arrived at the table and I haven’t actually drunk it yet, Tyler gives his sister the same flat glare he uses on the ice. “No.”
“Well, this isn’t nearly that bad,” she finishes.
“Not even close,” Britney agrees.
Keely’s nodding. “It’s actually really heroic. At least, it is to me.”
“What is?” he asks.
I want to echo the question, because his sisters aren’t very convincing here. Whatever this is, it’s bad.
But I also kinda don’t want to know.
“Muffy?” a new voice says from the doorway.
I turn, and Brianna’s standing there.
With Steve.
Who’s squinting at me in confusion. “Octavia?”
“Oh, good, you made it!” Keely says, making it clear why they’re here.
They got invited last night after I skipped Chester Green’s.
My face erupts in flames, but unfortunately, it doesn’t take out the witnesses around me who will forever be able to swear by what happens next.
“Who’s Octavia?” Brianna asks.
Steve points at me. “That’s Octavia. We had a date two weeks ago.”
I don’t look at Tyler.
I don’t have to. I told him I was Octavia the night that he came through the Cod Pieces drive-thru.
“Date?” he says, and I feel the chill in his words all the way through my bones.
Brianna lifts her phone. “Forget the date. Did you really auction off your virginity to pay your medical school bills?”
My vision narrows to a pinprick, and everything goes so silent, I’m not sure the world exists anymore beyond the weird gaspy noise that suddenly explodes in my ears.
It’s me.
I’m a gasp. That’s literally all I am.
A horrified gasp.
But is that really what I want to be? A horrified gasp living in the shadow of fear that my boyfriend, the man I love, will leave me now that it’s public knowledge how much of a fuck-up I’ve been, and that his original true love, who’s successful and undoubtedly gorgeous and coordinated and capable of not just walking in stilettos, but also of looking like she belongs on them, would take him back?
No.
No, it most definitely is not.
I suck in a breath and order the inky blackness to get the fuck out of my eyeballs, and as soon as the roaring in my ears subsides, I order my knees to work too.
“Yes,” I announce. “I tried to auction my virginity to pay for medical school. And I go on dates. I’m on dating apps. Because it’s how I find men for my clients. I cheat to find clients, because so many men are assholes. Do you know how many men I’ve met who only want to stare at my chest or tell me I should lose weight or mansplain how stupid things work? I refuse to let my very favorite people in the world be subjected to that. And if I sit down and talk to a guy as me, representing Muff Matchers, they don’t take me seriously. The one thing I succeed at is failing. I am a massive success as a failure, and I don’t care who knows. I am who I am. I do what I do. And I am so tired of feeling like that’s not enough.”