49. Dani
DANI
The sun is rising by the time I get home, bedraggled, stiff, and still cold even though Finn had the heat on in the car.
I sit in the back seat, staring out in a daze at the snowy landscape, hoping Graham was all right.
Finn and I didn’t talk, but I heard him on the phone with his brothers. They found Graham. Finally.
I’ll go see him, I decide. After I take a shower. Eat.
Hopefully, Mom and Dad will be out so I can take a nap on the sofa without Mom acting like I’m wasting the day away because I dared to sleep while the sun is out.
“It’s awful.” Piper wrenches the door open before I can find my keys with my still-cold fingers.
“I will never get warm.”
“Yeah, I mean it was a shit show. I’m going to have to get rid of this jacket though.”
“What? No.”
After kicking off my shoes, I follow Piper into the apartment. The TV is on in the living room. There’s a half-naked man on the couch.
I strip off my jacket and my pants and lie on the floor. Lulu flops down next to me to lick her paws.
“Oh my god, is this normal? You bring homeless people off the street to live here?” The man is horrified. “Call the police!”
“Hey, buddy, my grandma picked you up at the Starbucks, and I know you don’t have anywhere to live.” Piper wags her finger at him.
“I just moved here,” he sniffs, “from Ottawa.”
“I live here, and you’re on Piper’s bed,” I say into the carpet. The nice, soft carpet.
“Dani, no, you can’t sleep at a time like this. There’s a crisis.”
I smell coffee as Piper sets down a steaming mug.
“Where’s my coffee?” the half-nude man demands.
There’s a commercial on the TV for a new salon on 33rd Street. Botox and Blowouts.
“Sounds like something she needs.” Half-naked guy makes a face.
“Okay, you know what? Out,” Piper snaps.
“Your grandmother said I could stay here.”
“And she’s not here, is she? So out!” Piper yells.
“Where is Gran?” I croak into the carpet.
“No one knows anything about hospitality anymore, do they?” the half-nude man yells, grabbing his clothes.
Piper flips him off, and he retaliates by taking my coffee.
“You’re the reason why women stay single!” Piper shrieks after him.
He slams the door behind him.
On TV, the morning-show host announces, “And now for that juicy update on the Wall Street kidnapping. Colette has some updates she would like to share with us.”
“Oh no.”
Now I’m awake. Unfortunately. Because on the TV, there’s Colette airing my deepest, darkest secret. And no, not the fact that I had an ill-advised crush on my chemistry professor in high school and made a scrapbook in his honor.
“So you’re saying,” the morning-show host tells Colette, “that your friend Danielle made up this whole kidnapping?”
Colette nods. The smile on her face is pure evil.
“Dani’s delusional. She’s always been obsessed with boys.
Too bad for her, men just don’t like her, and it’s not hard to see why.
She clearly made up this whole kidnapping thing for attention.
And the worst part of it is that she used it to try and blackmail poor Graham Richmond. ”
“The billionaire?” The morning host is aghast.
“And philanthropist,” Colette adds. “He has a charity that does wonderful work. Let’s just say that I was suspicious from the start that Graham didn’t actually like her.
I mean, not to be mean, but a man like that has certain standards.
Instead of putting in the work to make herself more desirable, Danielle”—she turns to the camera—“I just want people to know that there are women out there who respect men, who aren’t out there to manipulate men for their own gain—”
“Liiiieeesss!” Gran comes screaming into the TV studio.
“Why is everyone up so early?” I groan.
“To be fair, Gran just didn’t come home.” Piper grimaces as we watch the social carnage on the screen.
Gran’s face is right up in the camera. “This is a scam! This girl is a liar! She’s trying to slander my granddaughter. No one was trying to blackmail anyone.”
Piper puts a pillow over her face.
“This is awful. I’m never going to recover!” I scream.
“Don’t listen to her, the crazy old bat. There is no proof that Dani was with Graham prior to the evening of the kidnapping!” Colette rages on the screen.
“Of course there ain’t. That’s because I asked Graham to kidnap her.” Gran dodges the security guards who are trying to chase her down.
“How is this better than what Colette is accusing me of?” I sit up.
“I’m sorry…” The morning-show host is speechless for a moment. “You paid to have your own granddaughter kidnapped?”
“‘Kidnapped’ is in quotation marks. It was a sex thing. And no money changed hands,” Gran emphasizes.
“No one believes that!” Colette screams.
“I had to! It was a last act of desperation. Dani’s almost thirty and still a virgin,” Gran tells the entire world.
“That’s it. I’m moving somewhere where they don’t speak English.” I haul myself up.
“Dani was scared of sex. This was the only way,” Gran tells the cameras.
“She sits at home alone. She knits. She claims she wants kids and a big family, but Santa Claus doesn’t bring babies.
She needed to lose that V-card—like pulling a tooth.
Then she could start on her new life. How was I to know that the two of them would fall in love! ”
“No one”—Colette screeches as the camera follows her, as she and Gran circle each other— “believes that. No one believes that a billionaire fake-kidnapped Dani in her shitty Costco clothes to have sex with her.”
“You can’t say that on morning TV!”
The morning-show hosts don’t seem too mad. I’m sure the producers see dollar signs in a viral video at my expense.
“Dani’s got big titties, and they’re real.” Gran picks up a chair and brandishes it.
“I hate this family.”
“I actually asked around!” Gran hollers. “There’s a lot of billionaires, and there was a list of guys who wanted to be the one to pop that cherry pie.”
“Oh, really?” the host asks. “Would you share which ones you talked to, by any chance?”
“None! She didn’t talk to—”
“Don’t listen to them—please!”
“Mom!?” I stand up and stare open-mouthed at the screen. “Dad?”
My father is there, wandering around the set, admiring the furniture.
“There was no kidnapping plot. These people are making it up for attention. And to try and pull the wool over my eyes.” Mom glares at Gran. “I know that Dani and Graham met”—Mom shudders—“online.”
“How do you know they met online?” Gran demands.
“Stop making it worse!” I shout at the TV.
“Because my niece told me.” Mom sniffs.
“Dani knows how I feel about relationships that start with online dating, and these girls concocted this whole kidnapping story to try and hoodwink me. But I’m going to have to put a stop to this nonsense—it’s gone on long enough.
” My mother waves her hands. “Even though now everyone knows that my daughter is dating a man she met online.”
“Piper!” I turn open-mouthed to my cousin.
“Your mom should work for the CIA, because she was fishing for information!” Piper shrieks while I yell. “I had to tell her something! I thought this would shut her up.”
“Online dating?”
“At least now you and Graham can be happily ever after.” Piper grimaces. “Since no one’s going to find out that he… you know.”
“You don’t understand!” I shriek. “I was kidnapped.”
“‘Kidnapped.’” Piper makes air quotes.
“No! Kidnapped.” I grab my dirty hair. “Me and Lulu were kidnapped by Graham’s nutso stepbrother. By freaking Kraig. Last night. From the office.”
“Whoa. I just have to say that your life in the past couple of months has gotten super insane.”
“It’s all for nothing, because Graham broke up with me.” I sob. “He thinks that he’s a monster, and he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. So now I have to tell my mom that the man who was my only chance at happiness just dumped me. And she thinks I’m online dating!”
The doorbell rings. For a second my heart leaps, thinking it’s Graham.
But it’s not.
“Why are you back here?” Piper rails at the half-nude man.
“I need money for a cab. Also”—he throws an envelope at me—“the doorman said I had to bring this to you if he was going to let me up.”
“Get lost.” Piper shoves a few fives at him.
“This better not be another wedding invitation.” I pull a leaf out of my hair.
Piper turns over the envelope. “It’s got your name on it. Can I open it?”
“Go for it. Mom opens my mail all the time,” I groan.
And I lie back down on the floor, my hair a tangled, smelly mess around me.
“Oh shit!” Piper yelps.
“No—don’t tell me. I don’t need any more bad news.”
I close my eyes. “Now everyone—and I do mean literally every person I have ever known or ever will know—knows that I was a virgin up until like a month ago. And that I was lying about it. I lied to so many people that I totally, for sure, had sex. I want to die. That’s how I got the job at Svensson Investment—by bonding with the hiring manager about dating and sex with guys in New York. ”
“Well, good news.” The floor squeaks as Piper walks over. “You’ll never have to work again in your life.”
A small card with familiar handwriting flutters down onto my face. I grab it, smudging dirty fingerprints on the creamy-white paper.
I promise you’ll never have to see me again.
I’m sorry.
“There’s a check for thirty-five million dollars. From Graham Richmond.”
“Honestly, Dani, what is wrong with you? That was the most embarrassing moment of my entire life.” Mom storms into the apartment.
“Me? I’m the problem? You all are the ones acting crazy on national television!” I scream. “I’m the one who should be embarrassed.” I stuff Graham’s check into my bag.
I’ve been pressing it to my heart—not because of the money, but because it’s his handwriting. It’s the last thing I have of his he touched.
Did he mean it? Am I really never going to see him again?
It can’t be.
He’s been such a fixture of my life, of my day-to-day, of my thoughts, that the thought of him just… gone?
I can’t really comprehend it.
And now after this news segment? Graham’s not going to want to touch me with a ten-foot pole.