Page 102 of Untether

She swings her legs to the ground and twists her body so she can full-on glare at me. ‘This is why you hired me. Rewrite the narrative.’ She brushes her palms together. ‘Done and dusted. Remember what you kept saying to us in pre-production? You wanted it to have thelucky bitchfactor? That, right there, is thelucky bitchfactor. Look at that fucking smile on your face. Even I’m jealous as fuck.’

She gives me one of her rare grins, and it has megrinning, too, because she’s right. ‘Yeah.’ I drum my fingernails on the table in an effort to pull myself the hell together. ‘I know you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right. I’m always right. You’ve gone frompoor bitchtolucky bitchin a single, perfectly executed master stroke, which was the entire fucking mandate. And you, my friend’—she points at Lizzy—‘are a genius.’

‘She definitely is,’ I agree, more resolutely this time. Lizzy’s film is everything I could have hoped for and more. She’s captured the zeitgeist while elevating my storytelling to a timeless level. I don’t really know how she’s done it.

I swallow. ‘But what if that isn’t the end of the story?’

‘It’s never the end of the story,’ Lizzy says, ‘but we’re always going to have to choose a note to end on. And the question is, does this ending feel representative? Does it pull the messaging together sufficiently?’

‘No, I mean…’ I swallow. ‘Cal and I are… together, kind of.’

It’s an utterly inadequate depiction of how we are.

He asked me to be his girlfriend, and I still haven’t given him the courtesy of a firmyes.

He came over to my home the other day and flipped my mood upside down.

He occupies my thoughts and commands my body.

He’s gone from being a good-time guy I was supposed to hook up with once a week to being the single most important person in my life aside from my sons.

Inadequate or not, it’s enough to send Mara over the edge.

‘Oh, Jesus fuck, no,’ she groans, letting her forehead plant dramatically on the table. ‘Mother of God, tell me you’re fucking with me.’

‘I’m not fucking with you,’ I tell her, more firmly now. ‘He wants a relationship.’

She raises her head and grimaces in distaste. ‘And you?’

A beat passes, and then: ‘I want one, too.’

‘Fucking useless,’ she mutters as Lizzy titters.

‘He makes me happy,’ I plead.

‘Of course he makes you happy. If he put on a mask and tied me up and stuck his enormous dick inside me, he’d make me happy, too. That guy makeseveryonehappy. No wonder his Instagram following has grown by a hundred thousand since the trailer dropped.’

‘It has?’ Cal must be thrilled. I’m amazed he didn’t wow me with the stats yesterday.

‘Focus, Russell. You’re not supposed to fall for the young, hot, professional shagger. What did Simone call him? Yourboy toy. You’re supposed to enjoy him, not sail off into the sunset with him.’

‘Why not?’ Lizzy asks, crossing her arms. ‘For the sake of the messaging. IsAida Russell finds happiness with a hot younger guy after her un-hot, older husband fucks her overnot a compelling message?’

Mara holds up her hands in defeat. ‘Honestly, you don’t pay me enough to deal with this muppetry. You’re both intentionally missing the point. This experiment is supposed to be about smashing stereotypes. Breaking boundaries. Doing whatever the fuck you like with a guy who’s completely inappropriate and showing the beloved Great British Public that the sky does not fall when you indulge yourself once in a while.

‘This Cal guy is a bloody KFC Bargain Bucket. Fucking delicious, great for the occasional treat, and fills you up good and proper, butyou’re not supposed to get hooked.’

67

AIDA

‘That’s a shitty analogy, and you know it,’ I tell her. I’m pissed, and there’s no way I’ll admit her metaphor would make me laugh at any other time. The man’s dick fills me up, that’s for damn sure. ‘I could gorge myself stupid on him and it would only do good things for me.’

‘Yeah, until it all comes crashing down and it’s a million times worse than it was when John fucked off, because you really gelled with this guy,’ Mara says matter-of-factly.

Wow.

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