Chapter 16
We’d been at it for a couple of weeks, and money was already starting to roll in. Good money, too. Quit your job and become a full-time content creator type money. Not that I had a job to quit or anything.
Dash seemed to be taking his newfound popularity in stride. I, however, had acquired a newfound habit of losing my shit, oh, at least three times a day.
’Cause here’s the thing. If anything, this was proof that I wasn’t a total fuckup.
I mean sure, most of our success was due to Dash’s talent and good looks.
But this whole thing had been my idea in the first place, and it was my scripts that had the Duke of Harding subreddit more active than a gymfluencer.
All of a sudden, there was pressure. And there were stakes.
And we all know how well I deal with those.
I wasn’t about to give in to the urge to bolt, though. Not this time. I was going to see this project through, if only because we were finally starting to see some real money from subscriptions, enough that we’d put in our first order for all the merch Dash had designed.
It wasn’t all perfume and roses. We’d gotten our share of trolls and a couple of people who kept trying to initiate some Discourse with a capital D. Takes of all temperatures aside, though, the Duke of Harding was proving to be a success in every way that mattered. And I…
As sad as it sounds, for the first time in my life, I was starting to feel like I was a success. Like I was finally doing something right. Like things were falling into place.
It wasn’t that I didn’t notice how long it took Yaz to respond to my texts, or that her daily calls had turned into harried weekly check-ins, it was just that my phone was bursting with so many notifications that I was able to pretend like I didn’t feel her absence deep in my bones.
There was so much to do outside my phone now, too. Late nights on the floor of Dash’s living room, or his bed, working on Duke of Harding stuff. Dropping off sweet treats at Aria’s and hanging around her store and watching people wander in from the bar next door for late-night tarot sessions.
And there was all the stuff we were doing for Second Chance, like the treasure hunt.
Dash and I weren’t the only ones reaping the benefits from being internet famous.
The link we’d added to our profile that led to the page on the Second Chance website where we’d outlined the rules for the scavenger hunt had gotten over half a million hits.
On the morning of the Kate & Leopold screening, my phone buzzed with a text from Shy.
They’d sent me a video of the store, which was the busiest I’d ever seen it—which wasn’t saying much, to be honest. Still, there were a solid half a dozen people looking through paperbacks, which made me smile when I saw that Shy had captioned the picture Getting mobbed.
I think you mean “We’re winning at capitalism,” I texted back, and set my phone down to attempt a few calming breaths.
It didn’t work, but that was probably mostly because Dash was standing two feet away from me, half naked and covered in a thin sheen of sweat that made the muscles on his back gleam in the morning light peeking through the gap in my curtains.
He’d skipped his workout to come over for an early-morning hookup because I had been very careful about avoiding sleepovers after the first night we’d spent together.
My thoughts were already too prone to wandering in dangerous directions without subjecting myself to the sight of a sunshine-drenched Dash on the pillow next to mine first thing in the morning.
A girl can only take so much, you know?
“Cream cheese and jelly on your bagel?” Dash asked from the kitchen, which was so close to the bed that I could almost graze his boxers with my fingertips if I stretched.
“How’d you know?”
“It was either that or Nutella, and I don’t see any in your cupboard.”
“That’s because I finished it last week and I haven’t had time to grocery shop, what with our demanding production schedule.
” He didn’t need to know that I’d eaten the last of the Nutella by smearing it on a spoon and then dipping said spoon into a box of Cap’n Crunch while watching Meg Ryan be adorably ditzy. “We’re recording again today, right?”
“We have a couple of the Central Park videos cued up, but yeah, we should probably start on some new content.”
The smell of coffee, admittedly not as unpleasant as its taste, filled the air as it bubbled over into the top portion of the greca I’d forgotten I owned until Dash fished it out from the back of a cabinet. He opened the lid to peer inside, then, satisfied, turned off the stove.
I could have spent hours lying there, watching him navigate my cramped kitchen with the grace of a ballet dancer. Kicking off the sheets, I put on my robe, which was on the short side and printed with pink leopards.
“I kind of wish I had a murder robe,” I remarked as I stepped over to the patch of tiles that separated the kitchen from the rest of the apartment.
Dash blinked. “A what?”
“One of those extravagant, silky or gauzy things trimmed with feathers that women in movies wear before they kill their rich husbands.” I paused. “Or maybe after. I’m not quite clear on the logistics. They don’t seem all that practical to do the actual murdering in, to be honest.”
Dash poured his coffee out into my cloud-print mug. His hair, adorably rumpled after the exertion of the past couple of hours, flopped onto his forehead. He flipped it back, raising an eyebrow. “Should I be worried that you want a murder robe?”
“I’m not planning to commit homicide at the moment—and I don’t think you’re rich enough to warrant being offed by your spouse. Yet, anyway.”
“That’s something to aspire to, I guess.” Without letting go of the steaming cup, Dash hooked his thumb through one of my robe’s loops and pulled me closer. “You ready for today?”
“Are you? You’re the one who’s going to be standing in front of millions—okay, like, dozens—of people being sexy and fake British at them.”
“It shouldn’t be a huge crowd,” he said, shrugging. “No pressure.”
“Tell that to my galloping heart,” I muttered. “Wait, we can do something with that. Let me write it down.”
Reaching for my phone, I opened my Notes app and got to tapping. When I glanced back up, Dash was looking down at me with this little frown between his eyebrows.
“Did you stop working on your screenplay?”
I pulled away, reaching for the bagel he’d prepared me. “Where’d that come from?”
“I don’t know, I just feel like I haven’t heard you talk about it in a while.”
“You mean, I haven’t been complaining about it.” The bag of fresh-made bagels he’d brought over earlier was sitting on the counter, smelling warm and yeasty.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dash take a sip of his coffee. “You haven’t given up on it, have you?”
I shrugged and licked a smear of cream cheese on the side of the bagel. “So what if I did? It wasn’t like it was going anywhere. And anyway, who has the time with Duke of Harding taking off like it is? I might actually pay my rent on time this month.”
Dash didn’t look disappointed, not exactly. But as he looked down at the inky liquid in his cup, something in his expression made defensiveness swirl up around me.
“Look,” I said briskly. “Our fan base is growing. We’ve got more subscribers than ever—paid ones—and our merch is selling and…
and we’re doing numbers. Why would I waste my time on some kind of New York fantasy where everyone dresses in unrealistic outfits and has wildly implausible careers when we’re living in one? ”
“You don’t have to do anything you think is a waste of time,” he replied.
“I guess I kind of thought that your screenplay was like my wanting to design store windows. Something you thought of as a pipe dream, not really realizing that it could be real.” He ran a hand through his hair and gave me a crooked smile. “I want it to be real for you.”
“You know what’s real?” I pointed a jelly-sticky finger at him. “Rent money. Grocery money. I don’t have to ask my cousin to help me make my credit card payment this month money.”
He raised a hand. “I hear you. The happiest moment in my life was probably when I told my dad I didn’t need his help paying my bills.”
“I thought you guys got along,” I said.
“We do. It’s just that…” Dash lifted his bagel to his lips, taking only a nibble from it as he considered what he was about to say.
“Asking my parents for anything just feeds their competitiveness, and that gets uncomfortable for anyone involved. Plus my father… he means well, but his help, financial or otherwise, comes with a lot of strings. And pretty early in my life, I decided that I didn’t want to be tied up.
Not in that way,” he added as I opened my mouth.
But it turned out that Dash didn’t know me as well as he thought, because what actually popped out was “I wish I had strings.”
Shit, I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Dash cocked his head. “What about your family? And your cousin?”
I hadn’t brought up the subject of Yaz or her visit again, even though at that point it was less than a handful of days away.
Avoidance, thy name is Mariel. And anyway, the truth was that while Yaz and Tía Nena gave me plenty in the way of strings, I hadn’t been thinking about them when I’d wished for some.
I mean, I hadn’t been thinking at all is the point.
Because the last thing I wanted to tell Dash was that my own parents couldn’t be bothered with me.
And that the thought of parental help, even if it came tangled with strings, sounded kind of nice to someone who wasn’t really sure of what her mother’s zip code was at any given moment.
I waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Oh, there’s more strings there than at a craft store. But I didn’t mean to make the conversation about myself. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard you say much about your father.”