Chapter Six
After what may have been two hours or thirty-seven days, Cassie and I head back to work. My trunk is full of shopping bags containing more dresses than I have ever owned and some sort of torture device called Spanx, which I have never owned.
Cassie offers to drive so I can catch up on the emails I’ve missed playing dress-up. I reply to a request to be a guest lecturer at a conservation seminar before I see an email from Mr. Benson.
Dear Ms. Lambert,
To be clear, you cannot be on the show without signing the MANDATORY paperwork.
Respectfully,
Andrew Benson, Attorney at Law
I sigh heavily and open my electronic signature app. I’ll sign the paperwork, but I don’t have to be happy about it. When I’m done, I attach the documents to an email back to him.
Dear Mr. Benson,
Please see the SIGNED paperwork. I now have a cramp in my hand.
As a lawyer, could you please advise whether I can sue for pain and suffering.
Respectfully,
Grace Lambert, PhD
Cassie must notice my self-satisfied grin. “Are you messing with the lawyer again?”
“No,” I say quickly. Cassie raises her eyebrows. “Okay. Just a little. He’s just so easy to rile up. It’s kind of entertaining.”
Cassie shakes her head but I turn to her and say sincerely, “Hey, thanks for coming with me today. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you there reeling my mom in. To express my gratitude, I shall gift you all these small scraps of clothing when I’m done.”
Cassie smiles. “You don’t need to thank me, Grace. We all appreciate what you’re doing. I know being on Love Shack goes against everything you believe in—”
“That’s an understatement.”
“But you really did look great in those new outfits,” Cassie says sincerely. “I wish you could see yourself like we all do.”
I shrug off the sentiment. I hate it when Cassie gets mushy. “They weren’t all horrible,” I finally concede as we pull into the nature center.
It’s after five but Alec and Eliza are still there, picking up the slack for Cassie and me. I immediately dive into work and at least an hour passes before I hear giggling. I shudder because I know what that sound means.
I walk out to the lobby to see Matt flirting with the Fox Girls.
That’s what we call the biologists who work with the San Joaquin kit foxes.
They’re tiny and super-cute, with big ears.
The foxes, not the girls. We have an unspoken rivalry with the Fox Girls since we’re constantly vying for funding with them, but I will always support other women in science.
So it’s my duty to warn them off my brother.
“The inflated-ego clinical trials are down the block,” I say to him as I approach. The Fox Girls look up at me in confusion. “This is my dumb brother. Dumb brother, these are the Fox Girls.”
“Yeah, they are,” Matt says as he openly checks them out.
“Great, we have to go,” I say as I pull him toward my corner of the lab.
“Buzzkill. How was shopping with Mom?” He gives me an innocent smile.
“How many layers of hell are there?”
Matt laughs, then pulls out his phone. “I thought these three dresses were the best,” he says as he scrolls through his photo gallery.
“She sent you pictures?”
“And video. It helps me get an idea of how to shoot you.”
Yes please, someone shoot me.
“Also, I made this hilarious gif of you trying to walk in heels,” he says as he shows me his phone.
I push it back at him. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Let me consult my shot list,” he says as he looks at his notes app.
“Okay, we’ll start with the navy wrap dress, hair up, holding a frog.
Let me just check the light in here.” Matt taps his phone a few times, turns me so the sunlight streaming in through the window hits me in a different way, and snaps a pic.
Then he swipes on it and says, “Adding a filter to soften it a bit and enhance the color.” He shows me the final product.
And wow, it’s not bad. My normally hazel eyes look really green. Huh, maybe he is good at this.
Cassie walks over and takes a look. “Oh my gosh! That’s already the best picture I’ve ever seen of Grace.”
“Don’t encourage him. If his ego gets any bigger, it’ll need its own Instagram account.”
Matt taps away at his phone and a second later shrugs. “‘Matts_Ego’ is available.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m dressed in one of my new outfits and standing in my lab, holding one of my amphibian babies, as Matt snaps pictures.
“Now kiss the frog,” he orders.
“Not happening,” I say, shaking my head. Then I look over to the bullpen where Cassie, Alec, and Eliza have been watching the photo shoot and lobbing comments like they’re watching a fashion show. Cassie gives me an encouraging look as Alec mouths, Do it. Eliza is eating popcorn.
I sigh, discreetly flip them off, and pretend to kiss the frog.
“Okay, now give me more pout, less grimace,” Matt says, as he photographs me from different angles. “Better. Okay, now one where you look coy.”
“Like this?”
Matt snorts. “I said coy, not constipated. Just put on the fake glasses and we can fix it in post,” Matt says with an impatient hand motion.
“Are we done yet?” I whine.
Matt scoffs. “You think we’re only doing one outfit? Also, can we get some cuter animals in here? You got a wolf or sea turtle or something?”
I take off one of my heels and am about to puncture his aorta when Cassie, Alec, and Eliza jump into action.
Eliza grabs my shoe-weapon as Alec valiantly steps in front of Matt.
Cassie calmly whispers to me, “I know we like to hate on the charismatic animals, but there’s a reason why they get all the attention. And we need attention right now.”
Another twenty minutes later, I’m in a new dress and fake glasses holding a tiny kit fox.
And goddammit, it is cute and cuddly, and I totally want it on a poster.
Matt takes a million pictures as the Fox Girls ooh and aww at either the kits or my brother.
Then someone from the raptor department comes walking over with a Swainson’s hawk.
“Oh good, the hawk is here,” Matt says, as if he were hosting a dinner party. “Can you put it on her shoulder?”
“It’s a bird of prey, it has talons,” I say, shaking my head.
“Ooh, I love that,” Matt says, and I roll my eyes. I give the little kit fox back to the Fox Girls before the hawk gets any ideas and put on the leather raptor gloves.
“Well, aren’t you beautiful,” I say to the hawk as she climbs onto my gloved arm. She just gives me a look that says, I know, bitch. Respect.
Matt starts taking pictures. “Look fierce, Grace. You’re a bird of prey.”
“No, I’m really not.”
“Whoa. This is actually working,” Eliza calls from her prime viewing location. She shows Cassie my phone.
“Holy cow, how do you already have over five thousand followers!?” Cassie asks.
“I made a reel of the photo shoot and posted it to all my accounts,” Matt says. When is he doing these things? He’s like a multitasking social media ninja.
Cassie reads the caption Matt posted: “I may be the brawn, but my sister is the brains.”
“Aww,” Alec says with cartoon hearts in his eyes. Cassie has the same look. Eliza is still eating popcorn.
“Five thousand is weak sauce. You can’t even get a start-up makeup brand sponsorship with five thousand followers. And a quarter of those are probably bots,” Matt says, bringing us back down to earth.
“What’s a bot?” I ask, and I swear the hawk rolls her eyes at me. Everyone else ignores me.
“How many followers do you have?” asks Eliza.
“Seven hundred forty-five thousand, three hundred and eleven,” Matt rattles off the top of his head.
“Wow, your abs must be really nice,” Eliza says.
“They are,” Cassie, Alec, and Matt say at the same time.
I give the hawk back to its handler and look at the Instagram account Matt set up on my phone.
He’s already posted a bunch of pics from our photo shoot.
And they’re surprisingly classy. Like an educational wildlife brochure meets a women’s magazine.
And there are already a ton of people commenting on the picture of me kissing one of my frogs.
Angela516 even wrote, Aww, these little guys are sooo cute!
I immediately have two thoughts: Suck it, sea turtles.
And: Holy shit. This might actually work.