“Maybe two.”
I smiled as he headed off, and I turned to check out the crowd. How could I casually slip away now? And where on earth was Violet? I looked around the room at the guests—Derek and Michelle; Kelly Specter; Ryan and Meredith; Christopher, who photographed my cookbooks, and Christopher’s new fiancée, Julie Diaz. Julie was a partner at The Agency. She repped a lot of talent in the culinary world, and had made a play to be my agent, though Ryan (with his law degree) said there was no reason to bring someone else into the mix. What he meant was he didn’t want to hand over any of the money.
I was about to lose it when I spotted Violet making her way toward me, a slider in her hand.
“What’s going on here?” she said in a singsongy voice. “Why do you look like someone just gave you a bad oyster?”
“My phone won’t stop buzzing,” I whispered.
“How many emails do you get a day on average? Not to sound like Ryan, but you’re going to have to pull it together.”
She was right. But I pulled my phone out, and I saw a familiar subject line.
Hello, Sunshine
I clenched my teeth. This was starting to get irritating.
Did you think you’d get rid of me so quickly? #exhibit2 #comingsoon
Violet, who was reading over my shoulder, laughed a little too hard, trying to suggest that it didn’t matter. “This freak can send all the emails he wants. Your Twitter feed is secure! No one is getting in there!”
She pulled out her phone and showed me, like proof. No Tweets, not from me, not from the fake me.
“What’s going on, ladies? Why are we standing in the doorway?”
I looked up to see Ryan walking over, Meredith coming up behind him. She was dressed elegantly in knee-high boots and thin black pants, her long, honey-blond hair appropriately straightened. Her arms and thighs not revealing the three children she’d pushed out.
“Aintnosunshine just wrote again,” Violet said, holding up my phone to show him.
Meredith smiled tightly. “Our friendly neighborhood truth-teller?”
It was loaded, and why wouldn’t it be? Meredith had been okay with this pact originally. It had paid for her McMansion, and she got to stay home and raise the kids. But, like Danny, like all of us, Meredith had never thought Sunshine Mackenzie would be such a star. And, well, who doesn’t want their share of the spotlight? Nobody.
I took Meredith’s hand, looking her in the eye. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you backing us up on all this today.”
“It was a lovely statement, wasn’t it? I honestly thought it was pretty close to what I would have written. You’re a real pro.”
Another loaded smile.
“Let’s everyone play nice.” Ryan stepped in. “And let’s try to put the events of the day in the rearview, shall we?”
I held up my phone, the new email. “How exactly should I do that?”
“Block his email address.”
“That’s what you have to say?”
Ryan grabbed the phone from Violet, shoved it back into my pocket. “No, what I have to say is there is press everywhere, so happy faces, people. And get out of the doorway. It makes you look short.”
“Ryan, I thought this was handled.”
“It was!” Violet said. “It is.”
“This bastard can email all he wants, that’s all he can do at this point,” Ryan said. “We’ve cut him off at the knees.”
The word knees was not even out of his mouth when my phone started to buzz again—when everyone’s phone started to buzz, that universal buzz letting you know you had an update on your Twitter feed.
Ryan pulled his phone out as Violet looked at hers, confused. “Ah . . . guys.”
Ryan’s face turned bright red.
Violet opened the door, motioned for me to step outside. She clearly didn’t want me to read whatever it was in that room. “You’ve been hacked again.”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Ryan said.
I reached for my phone, my heart pounding. “What happened to ‘No one is getting in there’?”
Ryan shook his head. “Violet?”
“I don’t know how they got back in,” she said. “I mean, Jack put up the firewalls . . .”
“Well, Jack is fired,” Ryan said.
I stopped listening, looking down at my Twitter feed.
What I was doing while Meredith Landy was cooking. #herhusband
There was a link to my Instagram account, where there were two new photographs posted. They were outtakes from a photo shoot for my new cookbook—a day a film crew had come in to do a “behind the scenes” feature.
The first photograph was of Ryan and me laughing in a corner, Ryan feeding me a brownie. Not exactly innocent, but not convincing, either. The next photo was a little worse. Ryan and I were leaning against the chef’s table, a little too close together. My hand was on his chest. His mouth was moving right up to mine.
We should have stepped outside. Instead, we found ourselves in the front of the room as everyone looked up, as if in unison, eyes darting between Ryan and me—and Meredith.
Ryan let out a laugh. “Guys, this was the photo shoot for Sunny’s new cookbook,” he said. “Outtakes. Further proof that anything can be taken out of context to appear a certain way.”
“It was.” Violet pointed to a spot in the photograph’s corner. “That’s me in the background. I was there.”
The ease and strength with which they lied was astounding.
But that was the key to lying, wasn’t it? Believing it yourself? Or finding something in the lie that you could believe? We had done a photo shoot that day. Violet had been there. This was just long after she went home.
I looked at Danny, who was standing in the back of the room with our college friends, looking down at Derek’s phone. It was my great luck we were separated—if only by a few feet. If we hadn’t been, if he had been right next to me, he would have known immediately what I had done. Now I had a chance to convince him, to convince everyone.
Meredith, bless her heart, put her hand on Ryan’s shoulder and helped do just that.
“So someone wants to turn this into an eventful evening!” she said.
Violet jumped in. “Spoiler alert! Sunny will inhale any brownie someone puts in front of her.”
I laughed. It was such a perfect thing for her to say, defusing the moment. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe her. And something about my laughter—truthful, real—furthered that cause. People started to put their phones away, wanting to be on the inside of a joke, the inside of a story, that they could talk about later. What a start to Sunny’s birthday party! She got hacked again, and it was hilarious.
Even Danny, who now was looking up at me, didn’t seem fazed. I didn’t dare smile at him, though. I shrugged as if to say, I have no idea. I shrugged because it was the only thing I could do that wouldn’t give away my guilt.
Ryan gently wrapped his arm around Meredith’s shoulders. And luckily, she was looking back at him with love in her eyes, totally convinced.
“When we throw a party, we really throw a party!” he said, giving me a wink.