Chapter 2
The spray from the boat’s wake mists over my sweaty face, and I’m grateful for it, because it lets me know this isn’t a dream.
“We’ll deal with the paperwork once we’re on Empress,” Viv had told me back at the café after I dazedly accepted her offer.
“We’re basically contractors for Royal Yachts, Trey’s company.
So, you’ll have to sign a few things, but we can get you started right away.
After you’re settled we can meet to discuss elevating your content. ”
“You said on our Zoom call that I’d have to host on the Empress page too?”
“Uh-huh. It’s easy. There’s six of us, so we each host on the Empress Insta and TikTok accounts one day a week.
Sunday we recycle older content that did well, so no worries there.
You’re replacing the girl who did Wednesday.
Hype up the yacht. Goal is to get eyes on Trey’s business so he can start chartering and selling these babies.
Don’t worry, I’ll give you a full rundown and set of guidelines once you’re settled. ”
“I didn’t plan for this at all. I only have enough clothes for a long weekend,” I said. “And I didn’t bring any books. Which is, you know…pretty important for my page. And I need to deal with my apartment. My landlord is super close to evicting me. I’ve been late on the past two rent payments.”
Viv had laughed, like my troubles were mere nuisances.
“Don’t even worry about it! We can have whatever you need shipped to Islamorada, and one of our people will bring it to Empress from there.
Trey is good to his girls. We’ll continue to pay rent at your old apartment until we can figure something else out.
And I’m sure you’ll go home for Thanksgiving at the end of the month, right?
You can get anything else you need then.
Relax, girl, you’re a Royal Yacht Queen now. It’ll all get taken care of.”
“But what—”
“Char! Babe, relax!” She had leaned forward and tapped a finger against my collarbone. “You made it. The hard part is over. The rest is a dream come true.”
It wasn’t, of course. If it were a dream come true, I would be the one with the bestselling novel and Sage wouldn’t be dead.
It might not be a dream, but it was progress, and I couldn’t deny that I needed this. Desperately.
“Almost there,” Viv calls out over the roar of the motor underneath us. Her ride is a souped-up speedboat with barely enough room for the two of us and the thick, burly guy she calls Captain Zap. “That’s Ligia.” Viv points at a smear of green and white directly ahead of us.
“You have to do this every time you go into town?” I ask, my words whipped to her by the wind.
She grins. “Yeah, but we rarely go onshore. That’s what Mika’s for.” At my look of confusion, she clarifies: “Our chief stew. Don’t worry, it’ll all get taken care of.”
Viv edges closer to me on the hot, white leather seats that are afforded no shade from the blazing sun. My ratty duffel bag is tucked between my legs.
Viv leans in to yell in my ear. “Like I said on our Zoom call, Ligia is a private island. Unlisted too. Otherwise, we’d have lunatics and stalkers camping out on the beach trying to hang out with us on Empress.
It’s pretty deserted. There’s a dock for boats.
And a little outpost, a beach house, really, for anyone who needs to stay overnight who can’t fit on the yacht.
But besides that, it’s just us. And Empress.
Which has literally everything a girl could want or need. ”
She’s grinning at me with such excitement that I can’t help but smile back.
Viv whips out her phone and angles it toward me.
I put up a hand automatically. “Oh, no, please, I’m a wreck.”
“Char, you look tousled and hot, and we absolutely need to document the arrival of our newest queen for the big welcome video we do later.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s an influencer. I’m technically an influencer, even if my page is minuscule compared to hers. And I agreed to a job that basically involves 24/7 influencing.
Still, I have to bite my tongue to hide the grimace forming as Viv first takes a selfie of the two of us where I look woefully inadequate next to her glamour, and then swipes to video and directs me to look off at the surf “mysteriously” as she films me from different angles.
Get used to it, I tell myself. You literally signed up for this.
I’m grateful for the opportunity. I’m mostly grateful for the money. But I can’t let Viv know that I deeply dislike being an influencer, and I wouldn’t have done it without Sage’s prodding.
“It’s smart,” Sage had told me four years ago, after encouraging me to start a bookstagram. “Grow your audience organically. Then when we get published, we’ll have built-in readers!”
In the end though, only one of us got published.
Regardless, Viv clearly loves her job. I have to pretend I do too. What is influencing if not lying a little bit, all the time?
By the time Viv’s finished milking me for content, we’re pulling up to Ligia.
The island is small and flat. You could probably walk from end to end in a half hour. It’s lush with clusters of palm trees and other flowering greenery I’ve never seen before. They don’t have plants like these in Wisconsin, especially not on the cusp of winter.
Three sides of the island are ringed by rocks and shallow waters; the fourth has a short expanse of white sand beach with a long wooden dock jutting far out into the waves. A yellow beach house sits tucked away between a grove of trees and the edge of the sand.
“When Trey bought this island, he knew he had to name it Ligia,” Viv tells me as Captain Zap navigates carefully around the spear-like dock. “It means ‘clear-voiced.’ He named it after one of the sirens in Greek mythology because it’s a place fit for mermaids. And we’re like the sirens of Empress!”
My skin prickles at her words.
Fucking mermaids.
I don’t want to think about the book. About Sage. About mermaids and Greek myths. I clear my throat. “You know, Ligia are also isopods. They’re tiny bug-looking creatures known as ‘rock lice.’ They’re kind of ugly.”
Viv frowns. “I forgot you’re a bookworm.”
I should play nicer with her. She gave me a lucrative job. I need to behave. But she needs to shut up about mermaids.
“I like Trey’s version better.” I smile, trying to cover my slip. “Much sexier. Do I get to meet him? I guess he’s technically our boss, right?”
Viv’s frown flickers and vanishes, but there’s a tightness along the side of her jaw that wasn’t there before. “Oh, yeah, Trey pops in and out pretty often. You’ll meet him at some point, I’m sure.”
Trey Bardi. The unknown factor in this equation.
Two weeks ago, I was scrolling through job listings when my eyes snagged on one that had a familiar name in the description.
Everyone knew Trey Bardi. Well, everyone who was plugged into matters of social media hierarchy did, anyway.
Trey was a trust fund baby with a business-minded brain.
He reached billionaire status by the time he was thirty-two, thanks to his tech start-up and hefty investment portfolio.
A year ago, at thirty-five and apparently not content to rest on any laurels, he bought a private island, founded a new company that builds luxury houseboats, and commissioned a bunch of hot young influencers to live on one and advertise it in return for free board and pay.
Looking for a smart, savvy social media content creator for a once-in-a-lifetime contract position for Trey Bardi’s Royal Yachts, the ad read.
There were about a billion different qualifications, and I met almost none of them. But I was desperately applying to anything that seemed even remotely related to my limited skills, so I submitted an application anyway.
To my surprise, I received an email from someone named Vivienne Rockland.
Trey and I looked at your page. He’s very interested in your style. I’d like to set up a Zoom interview to see if you might be a good fit.
I was intensely curious to meet Viv’s boss, to find out what on earth prompted him to be interested in my “style.” I had checked out the Empress social media account, but I didn’t understand what they saw in me—a book micro-influencer whose page sold reading-themed merch, partnered with indie publishers, and promoted companies that made reading lights and bullet journals.
All Viv would say during our Zoom interview was that Trey wanted something “different,” wanted to “expand the brand.” Why they had picked me instead of one of the accounts with over a hundred thousand followers seemed strange, but I wasn’t going to question it now.
“We like that you’re not only posting photos of aesthetic books,” Viv explained during our call, right before she asked me if I’d be able to get down to Islamorada in a week for an in-person meeting.
“You’re on camera. Talking about your thoughts.
Being engaging. Selling the shit out of the books you like in a way that doesn’t seem like they’re being sold to you. That’s something we’re looking for.”
I had let Viv think that I was a savvy marketing genius with a friendly, approachable personality. But @ChaptersWithCharlie isn’t me. Viv should know better than anyone that who you are online is rarely who you are in real life.
Viv hired @ChaptersWithCharlie. Not Charlie Engels, the twenty-four-year-old unpublished author who was pressured to keep the account she was apathetic about because her best friend told her it would eventually pay off. And I suppose it did—for Sage. Because while I was posting, she was writing.
I want nothing more than to delete my account and never look back.
That can’t happen now. @ChaptersWithCharlie is the only reason I got this job.
Even though opening the app gives me stomach cramps, knowing I’ll see someone raving about A Song of Scales and Salt on my feed, I’ll have to fight through it.
I need the money. Bad. After all, I’m not the one who got a six-figure book deal.