Chapter 23 #2
“At what?”
“Being… consumable.” I grimace as I say it.
Marissa goes still.
I laugh once. “I know how to make people like me.”
Pretty enough. Funny enough. Interesting enough. Sharp enough that nobody notices when I’m scared. Open enough to feel intimate. Closed enough to stay safe.
“It’s easy when people only want the shell,” I say quietly.
Her expression shifts. Oh no. Recognition.
“The shell?” she asks softly with an eyebrow raised. Then waits.
I hate her right now. I really do. Because suddenly the room feels too quiet. Because I know. I know exactly what she means.
The girl who turns discomfort into jokes before anyone can notice she’s uncomfortable. The girl who talks about sex for a living but panics when somebody looks at her too closely. The girl who knows exactly how to be wanted. And absolutely no idea how to be known. My throat tightens.
“I think…” My voice catches embarrassingly fast. Cool. I clear my throat and try again. “I think I’m terrified people will hate me if they know me.”
Marissa doesn’t rush to comfort me. Just sips patiently.
“I don’t even know who I am half the time,” I admit. “I’ve been doing the same thing for so long that I don’t know what will happen if I stop.”
A laugh escapes me.
“Like, what if underneath all the confidence and personality and whatever…” I shrug helplessly. “There’s just some weird girl who likes birds and dirt and conspiracy theories and cries when people are nice to her?”
“Oh, babe,” Marissa blinks, her own eyes getting watery. “That is who you are. The Daisy I used to know, at least.”
Now I might cry. No, I’m already crying.
“Did Miles only see the shell?” she asks softly.
I see flashes of Miles in my mind. Rain on the RV roof. The couch. Him holding me up. His tongue on mine. The way he noticed when I was cold. The way his hold on me tightened in his sleep.
You care in a way people can feel.
“No,” I whisper.
The word comes out broken.
“No, he saw me.” A tear breaks free.
Marissa nods once.
“So maybe,” she says, “the question isn’t whether people will hate it.”
I look up.
“Maybe the question is whether you’re brave enough to let them love it.”
“I don’t know,” I mutter.
“No, I think you do.”
She nudges my foot.
“You said something before.”
I squint. “When?”
“Like, five seconds ago, bitch.”
Helpful.
“You said you let you down… What does that mean?” she asks.
I look toward the window, as if the honking drivers below hold the answer. But I know exactly what it means. I just don’t want to say it. I pull the comforter tighter around me.
“I liked who I was there.”
The words come out small. Smaller than I expect. Marissa doesn’t move. Doesn’t interrupt. So I keep going.
“I know that sounds insane.”
“It doesn’t.” She snorts.
“But…” I stop. God. Why is this harder than the breakup? Because this feels like telling on myself.
“I wasn’t thinking all the time.”
Her brows lift slightly.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Frustration spikes. “Like—”
I gesture helplessly around the apartment.
“This.”
She glances around.
“Your terrifyingly expensive taste?”
“My life.”
The words come out sharper than I mean them to.
“The posting, the angles, knowing how everything looks, always being on. I gave myself space and time to just be.” My throat tightens. “I didn’t realize how loud it was until it stopped.”
Something shifts across her face then. She gets it. And that’s when I realize, Marissa sees me, too.
Another tear falls down my cheek.
“But I liked her. The version of me there,” I whisper. “I liked her. She cared about weird things.” A laugh catches painfully in my throat. “She got excited about thermal footage.”
“You?” Marissa says, scandalized.
“I know.” I laugh despite myself. “She wasn’t trying so hard. And I think fourteen-year-old Daisy would like her better than podcast Daisy. It’s just hard for me to believe anyone else could feel that way, too.”
The admission hurts. Because suddenly I can see it. Ten years. Ten years of angles and polish and jokes and confidence sharpened into armor.
Then came Miles. The woods. The Mystery Machine. A ridiculous group of cryptid weirdos. And I accidentally stopped editing myself.
Marissa’s gentle voice interrupts my thoughts. “So…”
I already hate the way she says “so.”
“What do you want to do with all of this?”
“Fuck if I know!” I laugh. It comes out sounding hysterical, my sad tears mixing with exhausted ones.
She starts laughing too, shaking her head.
I wipe my nose. “What if I make the podcast the way I actually want to?”
Her brows knit.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning honest.”
The word scares me.
“Like…” I stare out the window, toward a city I thought was my home. “What if it’s not really about Bigfoot? At least not all of it. What if it’s about belief? That’s what I was going for in the first episode.”
I really was. It was about people trying to matter. Trying to connect. Trying to understand the impossible because real life feels too small. Trying to feel less alone. Trying to be seen.
Marissa goes quiet again. The thoughtful kind. She sets her coffee on the bedside table and tucks one leg underneath herself.
“Okay, can I put my producer hat back on now?”
“Be my guest,” I say.
“I’ve been thinking about this. And it might sound crazy. But you know what this sounds like?”
I immediately narrow my eyes. “A trap.”
“A brand expansion. It’s always inevitable when continuing a growth trajectory. I just didn’t think it would come in the form of anything true crime-adjacent.”
I groan so loudly it rattles something in my soul. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Riss.”
“You’re treating this like it has to replace The DL.” My shoulders tense automatically. Because of course I am. Because The DL with Daisy is the thing. The thing I built. The thing that built me.
Marissa continues, “But it doesn’t. You built a network!
You don’t have to host every damn show forever.
You’ve done The DL. Cool, fine. But what if this move doesn’t require the board to weigh in on every move?
What if you took the ownership and respect you rightfully deserve and did your own thing? Full creative control.”
“I like how that sounds. But what is it, then?”
“A branch. Like, an arm of the network,” she says. “A storytelling division.”
Division. Sub-brand. Imprint. Series slate. Whatever corporate nonsense word we want. Suddenly my brain starts moving fast.
“What if,” I say slowly, “it’s about all of the unexplainable things? And the people who spend their lives dedicated to them.”
Marissa points at me so fast she almost spills coffee. “I love that.”
I sit up straighter. Energy flickering somewhere unfamiliar. Hope, maybe.
“What if it’s curiosity?” I say. “Curiosity, as in, openness and empathy. No skepticism.”
“Tell me more,” she has her phone set to record—something we used to do when we were in the zone and didn’t want to lose momentum.
“What if this wasn’t just Bigfoot? What if it was a series of stories about belief?
About obsession. About mystery. About people chasing impossible things because reality hurts.
” I shift on the bed. “Okay, I used to think people chased the unexplainable because they wanted answers. Now I think it might be the opposite. Maybe people chase mystery because life hands you questions no one can answer—grief, loneliness, heartbreak—and believing there’s something bigger out there makes the silence feel less brutal.
We explore that. We give people hope and permission to process in their own ways, on their own time. ”
Marissa’s nodding now, totally invested.
“It’s about humans seeing each other,” I continue, faster now. “And knowing they’re not alone.”
I think of Miles. Taylor. Jax. Maya. The unreal tenderness of people who believed hard enough to keep going.
“Hell yeah, fuck yeah,” Marissa says quietly, determination blazing in her eyes.
I blink.
“Yeah?”
“That’s good.”
The room suddenly feels bigger. Warmer. Something buzzes low under my ribs.
“Anything else, my queen?”
My next words come before fear can stop them.
“And I step down from The DL.”
Her face stills. She’s not shocked, but she’s curious.
“You sure?”
Am I? I look around the apartment. The life. The shell. The version of me that always knows how to pose. Then I think about Miles shoving me up against a tree and claiming me in the woods and never feeling more alive than that girl in that moment.
A laugh slips out of me almost in disbelief.
“I think,” I say slowly, “I want to see what happens if I stop trying so hard to be who everyone expects.”
Marissa reaches over and squeezes my knee, smiling.
“That sounds like the beginning of something.”
Outside, the city keeps moving. But for the first time since coming home, it feels less like a cage. Less like something I have to squeeze myself into. More like a place to launch from.
Somewhere between diner breakfasts, thermal footage, and a man who believes in impossible things, I started believing in them too.