Chapter 35
Maggie’s all nerves as she waits in Dr. Samuels’s office.
“Maggie!” he greets her. “How are the transfusions going?”
“Good,” she says quickly.
“No pain?”
She shakes her head. The transfusions themselves are painless, but Ingrid taking her life story and plopping it into another movie?
Excruciating. By now she’s had a couple of days to think about it, and she feels like she’s added five additional wrinkles.
She hasn’t called or emailed Ingrid again about it, though she’s made up her mind to ask her about it at the transfusion tomorrow.
“No physical pain,” she finally says. “But I have been getting wrinkles.” She scrunches her forehead. “And then there’s this.” She opens her hand and holds up the white hairs that she plucked.
He glances at them. “You’ll need to go to a salon for that, but let’s see about your skin…” He touches her cheeks and the skin around her eyes. Then he takes her hands and examines the skin on them. “I do notice some slight fine lines.”
Maggie winces at this painful confirmation. “How could it be happening so soon?”
“Everybody reacts differently,” Dr. Samuels says. “And before you panic, just because you aged a lot in the first few sessions doesn’t mean you’ll keep aging at the same pace.”
Maggie is relieved to hear this. Still, she bites her lip. “Is there any way we can slow it down?”
He rattles off a bunch of suggestions: eat healthy, sleep early, wear sunscreen, don’t smoke. She nods but doesn’t say anything. His voice softens. “Maggie, we knew going into this procedure that aging would be a risk.”
She had known. But now that she actually is aging, it seems a lot less groundbreaking and noble to help women de-age.
She tries her best to put on a brave smile.
This is what she signed up for. And tomorrow she’ll be getting $1.
1 million. Enough to change her life. She is changing her life, and the fucked-up wrinkle that Ingrid may be stealing her story from her doesn’t negate that.
“Not to worry. We’ll have you looking smooth and young again.”
Maggie glances up. “How?”
With a push of a button to signal his nurse, he announces cheerfully, “We’re going to get you a little Botox! It’s going to be great!”
Thirty units of Botox later, she leaves the clinic with her sunglasses on, her skin numb, and a heavy heart at the fact that she’s going to have to do this every few months now, according to Dr. Samuels.
He took a piece of paper and folded it a bunch of times for her, demonstrating that this is her skin now, and how if she doesn’t keep freezing it with literal poison, she’ll soon look like a pug.
As she’s hurrying across the parking lot to her car, she hears “Maggie?”
She turns around.
It’s Bryce. God, of all the times to bump into him! She immediately puts both her hands up to block the pricks in her forehead.
“Hey! Actually, I kinda gotta run—” she says.
“How’ve you been? You never respond to my texts…” he says. Yeah, that’s because you’re blocked, she wants to say. Instead, she just shrugs.
“I’ve been busy…”
“Oh yeah? You writing?” he asks. She groans internally.
Why does he always have to hit her where it hurts?
A few days ago, she would have happily answered yes.
Smiled and told his insecure ass her book has been optioned by a major Hollywood producer, thank you very much.
Now it feels like he’s digging a knife into a scab that she hasn’t even had a chance to pick yet.
“Yup,” she says, searching in her purse for her keys.
“Good! I know you’re going to kill it. And if you’re worried about being on sub, it’s not that bad.
We just went out with my book on Friday.
Thought I’d be waiting forever, but my agent just emailed me.
” He flashes his phone at her, with what she presumes is an email from his agent. “Looks like I’ll be going to auction.”
She feels the ground open under her, and for a second, she wants to be swallowed up whole.
But then she collects herself. She pushes a smile to her face.
“Congrats,” she says, and quickly gets into her car.
She drives off without another word, which she knows is shitty of her.
Going to auction on your first book is a monumental achievement, even for assholes.
But in this moment, all she can think of is her own book.
How is it ever going to sell when Ingrid’s sucking out the best parts for her movie?
She makes up her mind to tell Ingrid at the transfusion to stop it.