Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed
Chapter Twenty-One
Elliott
The sun is low on the horizon by the time I reach her grandmother’s cabin. My heart leaps in relief when I make my way down the dirt driveway and see her beat up old Volvo parked out front. It’s a nicely maintained log cabin on the shore of a small private lake, with a porch wrapped around it like a big hug.
I bang on the door and then wait. I hear frantic footsteps inside, and my old paranoia rears up. If she answers the door looking all sexy and wearing a negligee, and there’s a man’s voice in the background… I think I’d be sick on the spot.
The door flies open, and I feel like an idiot. She’s wearing slippers and a T-shirt that might have been black once but is now faded as gray as her expression. Her sweatpants are splattered with dried blue paint. Her hair’s standing up in spikes. These are not the clothes of a woman having a secret weekend tryst. These are the clothes of a woman who wants to hibernate for the winter.
Also, she’s brandishing a fire extinguisher in a threatening fashion—until she sees that it’s me.
“Oh. You’re not an axe murderer,” she says wearily, dropping her arm and letting the fire extinguisher dangle. She sounds almost disappointed.
I stare at the fire extinguisher in bafflement. “I have so many questions.”
She brushes the hair out of her face. Her eyes are swollen and bloodshot, and I can tell she’s been crying. My stomach wrenches in dismay, and I’m furious at myself for suspecting what I did about her. “I thought you were an intruder,” she says with a listless shrug. She steps aside to let me in and sets the fire extinguisher down by the door.
“So shouldn’t you have kept the door locked and called 911?”
She shakes her head and strolls into the cabin’s living room, where she flops down on a brown leather sofa. The room is decorated in rustic style, with gingham curtains and braided rugs, and a big picture window that opens onto a wall of green forest.
I follow her in and sit down next to her.
“There’s no cell phone service out here, and no landline. And I believe in confronting my problems head on—if it involves anything other than my family, that is.”
I utter a groan of dismay. “Do you know how many horror movies involve a pretty girl in a cabin in the woods? Approximately seventy-five percent of them.”
“I think your numbers are off. You’re leaving out big fancy suburban houses where teenagers are having slumber parties and get picked off one by one. Also, summer camps.”
“Okay, fine, you’ve got your slasher tropes down pat. It still doesn’t mean that it’s safe for you to be out here with no way to call for help. Could I please pay for you to get a landline here? I will do anything you ask of me. I will submit to whatever horrible photo ops you have scheduled for me, with a smile on my face. Well, my approximation of a smile, anyway.”
She heaves a huge sigh. ”You don’t need to do that for me,” she mutters. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re anything but fine. Please,” I say. “Talk to me.”
“I’m sorry, Elliott.” She blinks through tear-stained lashes. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up at your meeting. I’m sorry I didn’t call. You have every right to be disappointed and angry at me. You have every right to not want to talk to me. The thing is, this is just me.” She vaguely waves a hand in front of her face, and manages a sad, pained smile. “I should have told you earlier.”
“Told me what?”
Her shoulders lift in a tiny shrug. “Told you that I’m basically a disappointment and a screwup.”
I scowl at her. “Or that you give up way too easily?”
“Excuse you?” She sits up straight and returns the scowl.
I swallow my frustration and try again. “Just tell me what brought this on. Please. Is it something that I’ve done?”
“Of course not!” she splutters.
“Something I haven’t done?”
“No! It has nothing to do with you. You’re perfect. Well, you’re pretty amazing, anyway.” She manages a weak smile.
“How dare you. I will not settle for being considered merely pretty amazing, not even on a bad day.” The smile flickers again, then vanishes. “Come on, Jillian. Just tell me what’s bothering you, please.”
“It’s going to sound stupid.” She chews her full lower lip.
I hold my hands out wide. “Hit me with it. I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Remember I asked you to come to a formal event with my parents?”
“Yes. Got my tux all picked out and everything. I was debating whether or not to wear my clown-face Elliott family tie from our 100th anniversary celebration.”
She smiles wryly. “You’re a little too late. So am I. I should have known something was up when I never got the invitation from my mother.”
“Maybe...it got lost in the mail?” I suggest.
Then she shakes her head sadly. “My mother would have called me to guilt trip me about not responding. No, she deliberately didn’t send me the invitation because she didn’t want me to go to their country club and embarrass them. I saw a little item in the newspaper’s society column, that’s the only reason I knew.” Tears shine in her eyes. “Earlier this summer they had a party to celebrate Theo making partner at his law firm. Didn’t invite me to that either. And the worst thing is... I get it. I do. I’m embarrassing.”
Anger swells in me, but I swallow it down because I don’t want her to think it’s her I’m furious at. “No, you’re not. You’re fun. You’re entertaining. But you never take it too far.”
“It’s okay.” She manages a tear-stained smile. “I’ve pretty much accepted it. This is me, and this is all I’m ever going to be. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I got in trouble a lot, because it was the only way I could get my parents to pay attention to me. They paid plenty of attention to Theo, because he was Mr. Perfect. He was the high school valedictorian, debate champion, prom king, high school newspaper editor. My parents were always hyper-focused perfectionists and high achievers, and he was exactly like the two of them, distilled down into one perfect boy. I was nothing like my parents, nothing like Theo. I was hyper and unfocused from preschool on. I got bad grades, I was always acting silly and distracting the other kids.”
“I mean, it sounds like… you acted like a child.”
“Maybe to any other parents. To them, I was an embarrassment. They spent my entire childhood apologizing for my behavior. They used to say I was their little happy accident, which is true except for the happy part. My parents are the type of people who have everything planned and scheduled and they decided they could fit one child into their life, and that would be it. But when Theo was eight, their birth control failed.” She heaves a sigh. “That was the only time their plans ever failed. I mean, they literally have their entire life mapped out. Theo even got married the year they predicted he would. And do you know how long they’ve been planning their fortieth anniversary getaway?”
“Forty years?” I guess.
“Got it in one.”
I shake my head. “You know what’s ironic? I always wanted exactly what you had—a normal family. I had my crazy artist mother with all her weirdo friends, and our wacky furniture, and all the strays she collected, and my goofy dad who dressed up in clown clothes and would do anything for a laugh and was obsessed with orchids. Fucking orchids. Do you know how embarrassing that was to me as a teenager? I didn’t even want to invite my friends over to our house because it was a freak show. I wanted what you have, but now I realize how lucky I was. My parents didn’t judge me. They thought that anything I did was marvelous and amazing, and they genuinely meant it.”
“I know they did.” Jillian smiles at me. “I’ve met your parents. They’re the least judgmental people I’ve ever met. But in fairness to you, the teenage years are a really stressful time, and I understand why you’d have wanted normal parents.”
“I guess the grass is always greener. But here’s the thing, Jillian. You need to stop letting them decide how you feel about yourself, because their view of you is seriously—excuse my French—fucked up. Your friends love you, the people at Nowhere Special love you, everybody at Bradford Family Resorts loves you.”
“I’m having a flashback. I remember somebody telling me that there was a difference between fun and frivolous.”
I make a wry face. “I was wrong about you. Very, very wrong. I apologize for saying that. True confession, I was scared of having you come work for us because I’ve had a crush on you from the first minute I laid eyes on you at Nowhere Special.”
“Shut up.”
I clap a hand to my chest. “God’s honest truth. I was grasping at any straw I could, to protect myself emotionally. But as soon as I saw you in action, I realized you work your ass off and you’re an absolute natural at what you do.”
Her lips purse together. “And… what do I do, exactly? I’m not being sarcastic here. I feel like I don’t really entirely know. I randomly agreed to promote a couple of companies because I like their products, I volunteer at a dog shelter, I bartend, I take pictures at your parks…”
“You highlight the best in everyone and everything around you.”
The smile that spreads across her face is like the sun bursting out from behind the clouds. “That’s a very nice way to put it.”
“I only speak the truth. Listen, next time your family does something to make you feel lousy, just call me and tell me. If you don’t feel up to coming to work, tell me. We do have these things called personal days. Yeah, yeah, you’re a contract employee, but you’re still allowed to have the occasional bad day.”
She straightens up and looks me in the eye. “I let Edith and the company down too by not showing up.”
I nod. “Yes, you did.” I could try to sugarcoat it, but I don’t think that would be helpful to her.
“I’m not used to anyone depending on me for anything, but that’s no excuse. It won’t happen again. I’ll call Edith and apologize, and I’ll work after hours and through the weekend if necessary to catch up.”
“That’ll do it.”
“You’re being very understanding.”
“Just don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to ruin my reputation as a hard-ass. By the way, in addition to Edith, we have to call your roommates and tell them you’re not dead.”
“I guess I could change my clothes too.” She glances wearily down at her tattered outfit.
“What? Why would you even think that?” I grin at her. “You look gorgeous.”
“That’s sweet of you to say. It’s also bull-shitake.”
“Okay.” I smile. “You look like you just hopped off a railway car with a hobo gang. But you wear it well. Let’s just go and get the call over with.”
We take my car and drive twenty minutes until we get a cell phone signal, and she calls her roommates and apologizes. Then she calls Edith, who is in a meeting, and leaves a message apologizing and outlining her plans to catch up on the marketing campaigns.
When we get back to the cabin, we walk in the door and I pull her to me in a loose embrace, arms looped around her waist. ”Turtles are the fastest land animal.”
She rears back, startled. “Say what now?”
I grin at her. “I’m saying stupid things. And I’ll keep going until you feel obligated to kiss me to shut me up. Don’t think I won’t.”
She bursts out laughing. “Oh, I don’t doubt that for a second.”
“Chihuahuas are known to be a friendly and reasonable breed.”
She silences me with a kiss.