Page 21 of Insta-Love

TEN

Bowen

“Do you think I’m some gold digger, trying to scam you for your sponsorship money?” she asks incredulously.

I shrug. “It happens more than you’d think.”

Ava scowls, blowing out a few heavy breaths before she finds her words. “If you must know, I never expected anything from you because I don’t want it.”

Ouch. “Why not?”

“You don’t have anything I’m looking for.” The monotonous way she answers reveals more than she’d like about the validity of that comment.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I lean forward; well aware the proximity makes her uncomfortable. “And you’d know that because?”

“You put your whole life on display for the world, and nothing you’ve shown about how you spend your days is remotely the same as mine.”

“So you’ve looked at my pictures?” If I were a cockerel, I’d be strutting around this room with my feathery chest puffed out.

“A bit. Yeah.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did you think?”

She stares at me as though I’ve lost the plot. “You want me to critique you?”

“I want your honest to God first impression.” Because what I post on Instagram is nowhere near the truth.

I’ve never got to know another person intimately who’s been introduced to my life via social media before they’ve had a chance to get to know the real me. It has me intrigued, what I must appear like to people who haven’t spent time with me behind the scenes, to people who haven’t spoken to me—arguments not included—before they made up their mind on who I was based on my images.

Ava tucks her hair behind an ear and wriggles her head side to side, as though searching for the right words. “I guess the first thing that stands out is you’re confident. You kind of have to be to put yourself out there like that every day.”

“Correct.” Although how much of that confidence is a façade that fools even me some days, she has no idea.

“You’re successful, so you must be goal orientated. You seem happy, lots of friends, and you spend as much time posting about leisure time as you do about the gym and nutrition and stuff.”

Looks like the MILF has done a little more looking than she let on.

“And?” I prompt. “Downfalls?”

“You’re arrogant. You make assumptions about people based on the fact they aren’t like you, and you feel that you’re owed everything because of how you look.”

“Not true.”

“Yeah?” she challenges. “How so? Because that was the impression I got of you when we first spoke, not from your Instagram account.”

The woman needs to quit with the knives of truth already. “Fair play. We didn’t get off on the right foot, as you said yourself, but you have to admit you’ve got some enormous chip on your shoulder when it comes to the male half of the species.”

“I have reason to,” she says coolly. “And before you ask, no, I won’t tell you the story behind that.”

The reasons why she’d never be the right kind of chick for me whirr through my mind like an LCD display: damaged, untrusting, preoccupied with her daughter. She’s never shown any indication of having any aspirations for herself. She’s content to cruise along being Lily’s mum, and that shit doesn’t fly in my world.

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