Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Paige woke to her phone vibrating on the nightstand.
It wasn’t her alarm. She could tell from the uneven rhythm of it. A jittery buzz that kept stopping and starting, as if the phone itself knew how annoying it was. She reached for it with one eye open. She was an early riser, but it was still dark out. She tapped the screen to make it stop.
It didn’t.
Instead, the screen lit up fully with notification stacked on top of notification, the lock screen crowded in a way she’d never seen before.
She blinked and leaned up on one elbow.
For a second, her sleepy brain tried to make sense of it. Likes. Follows. Comments. Mentions. The number of them kept ticking upward even as she watched.
“What on earth…” she murmured.
She unlocked the phone and opened TikTok.
The video getting all the attention was the one she’d posted the afternoon before. It was nothing flashy. She hadn’t even used a filter because she didn’t like using those. Those felt like hiding, in a way.
She’d just been sitting at her kitchen table, hair pulled back, talking honestly about starting over later in life and how strange it felt to realize you’d done everything “right” and yet you still needed a new plan.
She hadn’t expected much engagement, because it wasn’t her usual cheery content. She’d had a moment where she wanted to be truly sincere with her audience about how hard getting older could be sometimes.
Apparently, that truth had resonated. With more than just her audience.
The view count climbed while she stared at it. Ten thousand. Twenty. It lurched past fifty and she had to tell herself to breathe.
Her follower count—normally a slow, steady creep—had jumped by the thousands. Every refresh brought more. She’d had posts blow up before but nothing like this.
Paige swung her legs out of bed and stood there in her nightgown, phone in hand, feeling oddly disconnected from her own body. The comments were scrolling too fast to read properly, but phrases jumped out at her anyway.
This is exactly how I feel. Thank you for saying this out loud. I thought I was the only one. You’ve earned a follow for that kind of honesty.
Her throat tightened and she felt a small rush of panic.
This wasn’t the casual encouragement she was used to. This was something else. It was so much bigger and more intense. It felt like she’d said something that had hit a sweet spot she hadn’t known existed, and now people were lining up to tell her it was important.
She scrolled back to the top of the notifications.
New followers. New messages. And they just kept coming. One comment simply read: We need more voices like yours.
Paige sank onto the edge of the bed. “Well, here I am.”
Oddly, she wasn’t sure she liked all this attention. She liked her channel manageable. Friendly. She’d only started it to show her ex-husband how well she was doing without him. She’d wanted a place where she could speak plainly on any subject without caring too much about who was listening.
Now it felt like everyone might be.
Excitement fluttered in her chest, quickly followed by something sharper. This was a lot of exposure. Paige set the phone face-down on the bed and pressed her hands to her knees.
“Well,” she said softly to the empty room. “What’s done is done. There’s no turning back now.”
She picked the phone up, heart beating faster than before, and began trying to really comprehend what she’d woken up to. This wasn’t just a spike in numbers. It felt like the beginning of something she could easily lose her grip on.
She scrolled again, slower this time, forcing herself to actually read what people were saying.
Women her age. Younger women, too. Even a few men.
Story after story that made her nod her head in understanding.
There were messages asking questions she wasn’t sure she knew how to answer for anyone but herself.
She hadn’t set out to be a fount of midlife information, but apparently, that’s what people thought she was.
Her phone buzzed again. And again.
Paige set it face-down on her knees and stared at the windows on the opposite wall, where the early light was just beginning to shift. Her house was blessedly quiet and that felt like exactly what she needed right now.
Graham would be awake soon enough. Maybe he already was. She looked at the time. He was an early riser. He was probably making coffee and catching up on the news, his standard morning. She imagined telling him about this and felt a flicker of both excitement and hesitation.
Whatever had happened overnight had started something. She could already feel the pressure of it. The expectation, the attention, the building momentum. Would it last? Or would it fade away after a few days? That’s what usually happened.
And how did she respond to it?
Paige looked at her phone again, her heart beating a little faster than it had a moment ago. She took a breath and refreshed the screen.
The numbers continued to climb. How was that possible? How long was this going to last?
Suddenly, the phone rang in her hand, making her jump. Randi’s name lit up the screen.
Randi watched Paige’s channel even closer than Paige did, so it was no surprise her daughter had noticed. She let out a short, incredulous laugh as she answered. “I take it you’ve been on TikTok already this morning?”
“Mom!” Randi sounded breathless. “What did you do?”
“I just went to bed,” Paige said. “I had no idea that off-the-cuff post would blow up like that.”
Randi laughed. “I just watched it. I mean, I watched it and then I read the comments and then I watched it again. For being off the cuff, it was heartfelt. Obviously, it resonated with a lot of people. It’s crazy how many comments and likes and views you have. Do you know how big this is?”
“I know how many notifications I have,” Paige said, glancing at the screen, which immediately lit up again as if to make her point. “That’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I’m kind of still absorbing it all.”
“This is amazing,” Randi said. “People are really connecting with you. You’re saying stuff that hits home, obviously. I guess no one else is being this honest.”
“It was one post.” Paige pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t trying to say anything special. I was just being honest about how hard it is to get older. How even when someone looks like they have it all together, like me, they don’t really.”
“I think that’s why it worked,” Randi said promptly. “You’re not selling anything. You’re just…being you. Totally honest. Completely calm. And not pretending that getting older is either a tragedy or some kind of joke.”
Paige sat back on the bed, listening. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks it’s calm.”
Randi snorted. “I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way. Have you looked at your follower count yet?”
“Yes,” Paige said dryly. “And I’d very much like it to stop changing.”
Randi laughed again. “It won’t. Not now. But this could actually turn into something, you know. Real opportunities. Media stuff. Bigger brand partnerships. I’m not talking about those pans you like.”
Paige winced. This was so much to take in. “I don’t know about that. And I’m not doing it for the money.”
“Why not?” Randi said. “What’s wrong with that? You’ve worked for this. You didn’t just wake up and go viral. You’ve been building this channel for a while.”
“Except this did happen overnight.”
“You sound like you don’t think it’s going to last.”
“I have no idea.” But she didn’t think it would. Not really.
“You need to get a new post up asap. More of what you did yesterday. That same kind of honest, funny, real conversation.”
Paige looked at her nightstand and at her ereader that held the new book they’d be discussing Thursday night.
She thought about the connection she’d made with the Queen Bees and how much fun they had together.
Then she thought about the life she’d carefully created for herself after she’d hit rock bottom.
And about Graham and this new stage of her life.
“You know this whole TikTok thing was supposed to be about showing your father I’d moved on. ”
“Which you did. But now it’s about a whole lot more than that,” Randi said gently. “That doesn’t mean it has to be scary.”
Paige smiled in spite of herself. “I didn’t say it was scary.”
“You didn’t have to. I could hear it in your voice. It’s okay to be scared. I’m proud of you,” Randi said.
Paige’s entire mood lightened. “Thank you.”
“And,” Randi added with a hint of mischief. “You should probably call Graham before he hears about it from a stranger.”
Paige laughed. “You mean you?”
“Definitely from me,” Randi said in a teasing tone. “I was ready to call.”
“You were not.”
Randi snorted. “No, but the thought did cross my mind.”
“I’ll tell him.” Paige shook her head, smiling now, and glanced once more at the phone in her hand. The notifications were still pouring in.
“Good. Because he likes you. He deserves to know.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. And figure out what comes next.”
“I’ll be right here,” Randi said. “Cheering loudly.”
When the call ended, Paige let the phone rest in her palm for a moment. Excitement stirred within her, already edging out the uncertainty. What could this really mean?
She had no idea. But it would probably be an interesting journey.
Smiling, she tapped Graham’s number.