Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed
Chapter Three
Jillian
It’s 4 a.m., but Ari and Bronwyn are parked on the overstuffed red velvet thrift store sofa in the living room, and they’re not going anywhere. They sip coffee from mugs with ironic slogans as they force me to repeat the entire story of what happened at the Bradford tower. Yes, I have to relive it not once, but twice, because the first time they don’t believe me.
When I’m done, they lean back and exchange amused glances. Movement in the corner draws my attention, and for the first time tonight, I smile. My dog Blinky and Bronwyn’s cat Pussy Galore are curled up together in Blinky’s dog bed. Blinky snores gently, his chest rising and falling.
“Wow,” Bronwyn says. “Seriously, woman. You were born with horseshoes up your butt.”
“How am I lucky? I got caught. Again.” I let out a long, slow sigh. “Jillian the joke, that’s me.”
“Would you like some cheese with that whine?” Ari asks, then dodges when I throw a pillow at him.
“You speak of wine, and yet we’re all sitting here drinking hot beverages.” I shoot a reproachful look at him. If ever I could benefit from a glass of fermented fruit, it’s now.
“Bronwyn’s right. You’re lucky AF. I thought you were a goner,” Ari says. “I mean, I thought we’d be holding a fundraiser for your bail. I left five messages for my cousin’s boyfriend, the lawyer.”
“That’s fine. At least you didn’t call my brother or my father.” I pin him with a suspicious glare. “Did you?”
“After you threatened to neuter me with a rusty spoon if I ever call your family for help?” Ari scoffs. “Ah, no, I did not. But I was on the verge of putting it on blast on social media that you’d been kidnapped by the Bradfords and they were going to feed you to the lions at their game-hunting lodge, which it turns out they don’t even have.” He sounds mildly sad about that.
“Lions? Did we know they specifically were going to have lions?” Bronwyn wonders.
I tilt my mug back and take a swig of chamomile tea. It fails to soothe.
“I’m hoping they have lions at that wildlife rehab facility. I might even go visit,” Ari says enthusiastically. “It sounds freaking amazing.”
“Traitor. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to wallow here.”
“You really need to learn to look on the bright side,” Bronwyn scolds me. “You have an amazing new job, and you get to stay at a luxury suite at a brand-new resort park with the hottest man this side of the Rocky Mountains who isn’t Ari.” She blows him a kiss.
He makes a pouty face, then shrugs. “I’ll allow it.”
Then he grins at me. “And yeah. I’m trying to weep with pity for you, but the ol’ tear ducts aren’t cooperating.”
I stifle a yawn and shake my head at them. “You don’t get it. I’m going to a super fun resort, yeah. Glued to the side of a man who was born without smile muscles, and who looks at me like I’m sun-ripened roadkill. And I’m going to be stuck with him for the whole summer.”
“Well, as I recall from the times we’ve been at Nowhere Special, he looks at you, that’s for sure.” She arches an eyebrow. ”I’m not entirely sure he looks at you like you’re warmed-over possum.”
I manage a wry smile. Bronwyn embraces her job as BFF with gusto. That means she thinks every man is madly in love with me, and every person who trash-talks me on social media is just jealous.
“And I’m to go through all of this, and then fail this assignment, because there’s no way to make Elliott look like a man capable of experiencing actual fun. And then, when I fail, they’ll press charges.” My voice is sliding up the octave scale in hysteria as I speak.
“Jillian.” Bronwyn shakes her head chidingly at me. “You’re being kind of a downer right now.”
“Yes, the prospect of prison will do that to a girl.” I let out a low groan of despair and run my fingers through my tangled hair. “I was willing to accept the risk of infuriating my family and getting in serious trouble if it meant exposing people who were animal abusers. But it’s really going to suck doing hard time because of a massively stupid mistake on my part.”
“You’d just get more community service. Like last time. I think.” Ari doesn’t look completely convinced. “And last time it turned out pretty well, didn’t it?”
It did. We met Cora and Duncan, the lovely couple who own Death Row Doggies, and it turned into a lasting friendship.
“Yeah, but they’re not going to give me community service a second time.”
“I don’t know. They might. My cousin’s boyfriend is a really good lawyer.”
“Isn’t he the guy with the late-night TV commercials? The one who’s always yelling, and I can’t tell if it’s meant ironically, ‘Call Steve Higgins, he’ll get you off’?”
“Yeah, but he’d have to be a really good lawyer to afford all of those commercials. Wouldn’t he?”
“Pass.” I don’t have many options, but relying on the get-you-off guy seems like an even worse idea than trying to glue a smile onto Elliott’s crabby face.
“Okay then. Well, I’m going to go take a quick nap. I’m supposed to report to the salt mines at nine forking a.m.”
“Boo hoo.” Bronwyn holds up her hand and makes the gesture of playing the world’s smallest violin. “Can we call you a waaahmbulance? I mean, seriously. You get to go on roller coasters for free.”
“I don’t actually love heights,” I remind them. ”But if you guys want, I can see if I can wangle you an invitation to one of their parks.”
“Really?” Ari brightens up.
He and Bronwyn are both graduate students, with him majoring in engineering and her going to veterinary school, so they’re broke as a joke. They’re fortunate that Ari’s father owns this house that he rents to us at about half of what he could charge, but they still have to pinch every penny.
He grins at her. “Better and better! I get to play with lions and go on free rides!”
I smile wearily. Ari is a big, happy kid in a grown man’s body, and I can see why Bronwyn loves him.
“You are so adorable,” Bronwyn trills. “I’m going to buy you a stuffed lion.”
“Seriously?” Ari beams like a lighthouse.
Bronwyn leans in to kiss him, and he groans and grabs the back of her hair with his hand. Which is my cue to run for my life, because they’re not going to stop. They’ll do it right there on the sofa, and if I don’t want to watch—which for the love of all that is holy I do not—I can just leave the room already. I almost always make it out of the room before clothes start flying off.
“Thanks for the emotional support. Or whatever that was,” I call out to them without looking back, and trudge wearily off to my room.
I collapse into a too-short nap. My dreams may or may not involve Elliott Bradford catching me as I climb up that billboard and handcuffing me.
First thing in the morning, fortified with a mega-mug of green tea, I’m showered and dressed in a tiered blue midi-skirt and white peasant blouse with a straw purse with a beach scene on it. I’m rocking an “I’m a free spirit, not an office drone” vibe. I hope.
The phone rings as I’m about to head out the door. I wince when I see the number. It’s my brother Theo’s wife, Pansy. I consider not answering, but if I don’t, she’ll keep calling, and then she’ll eventually panic and think I’ve gone missing, and she’ll tell Theo, and he’ll call my parents, and they’ll panic and send in the national guard to find me. I’m only exaggerating slightly. They still act like I’m five and liable to have wandered into one of the zoo enclosures to climb on the monkey bars. I mean, that happened once.
But my family have long memories. So I answer.
“Hello, Pansy!” I say brightly. “So nice to hear from you! I’d love to chat, but I’m just heading off to work.”
“Oh, are you going to one of your little protests?” she trills excitedly. “How fun!”
I grit my teeth. She’s not even trying to be patronizing. I hate to think of what she’d sound like if she was trying. She would never do it on purpose, though.
“No, actual work. A job that I’m getting paid to do.”
“I thought you got paid to attend save-the-whale protests? That’s what your mother said.”
My heart sinks a little. I’m sure that’s what my mother thinks I do, even though I’ve tried to explain the influencer gig on more than one occasion.
What I actually do is promote a select few products on my MyFace account, including a vegan leather company whose shoes I wear every day, and a company that makes insulated beverage cups from recycled water bottles. I’ve declined working for an agency, because they all want me to represent the products that their clients are pushing rather than products that I believe in.
I don’t know why I bother trying to tell my parents anything about my life—it’s like shouting at the ocean. I’m twenty-five, and they still send me a check every month because they think that if they don’t, I’ll end up living in an alley and rummaging through dumpsters. They’d be surprised if they knew what I actually do with that money; I’ve never personally touched a cent of it.
“Well, she’s wrong. And I need to head out now. I’ve got a job working for Bradford Family Resorts.”
“You what now?” She sounds startled. ”But I wanted you to come over for dinner this weekend.”
Oh no she didn’t. I know exactly what she wanted. Pansy is a compulsive fixer-upper. She’s a stay-at-home mom raising two perfect, brilliant, genius-level children, and she won’t rest until everyone is as happy as she is. Or else.
That means she’s made it her mission in life to fix me up with an eligible man. No matter that her idea of eligible is my idea of human Ativan.
After a few disastrous attempts on her part, I tried to explain that to her. “So what exactly are you looking for?” she asked me.
But the truth is, I’m not really looking for anything. I date from time to time, but I haven’t met anyone I felt had any real long-term potential. I mean heck; I don’t have any real long-term potential. My parents would be the first to agree with me, although they’d phrase it more like, “Someday Jillian will figure out what she wants to do!”
Until I got busted breaking into the animal testing facility and accidentally became the internet’s flavor of the month, I just drifted around from place to place and job to job, not really knowing what I’d do from one week to the next.
It never mattered that I had no plans for the future. I’m a hard worker and a great waitress and bartender. I’m young and fit and I clean up nice, so I’ve never had a hard time getting a job. I’m not super ambitious, but I don’t need to be. I just need to pay my bills. Everyone in my family has ambition in loads, but there was just none left over for me, apparently.
But Pansy can’t stop herself. She’s fixed up five of her friends with guys they ended up marrying, and she’s determined that I’ll be her sixth. Unfortunately, the guys she fixes me up with are like… well, like less sexy versions of Elliott Bradford. Earnest, serious, work-obsessed, and baffled by how I live my life.
I’m not a nine to five, Monday through Friday kind of girl. I’ve always been the spontaneous type. I’m passionate about causes that a lot of other people find weird. Pansy has fixed me up with an IRS auditor, a dentist, and a safety compliance officer. Nothing against any of them, but they bored the socks right off me. And when we went out for dinner, they didn’t seem to be having any more fun than I was. Why would she think it was a good idea to take matter and anti-matter and squish them together for an evening of stilted conversation?
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it,” I say apologetically, walking out the door and down the front steps. I walk towards my car, an ancient Volvo that’s had its share of hard knocks. “I’m going to the Bradfords’ new amusement park in Colorado tomorrow. I’ll be gone for a while.” I’m actually returning May twenty-ninth, the day after the official opening, but she doesn’t need to know specifics.
“But we’re celebrating Theo’s promotion! He just found out that he made partner!” I can hear the pout in her voice.
That pulls me up short. He made partner? That’s huge. And now I genuinely feel bad. This is a once-in-a-career kind of thing… Kind of like my father’s upcoming appointment to circuit judge, which could go up in flames if the Bradfords end up pressing charges.
“I’m so sorry I can’t make it. Tell him I said congratulations. I’m so happy for him!”
“Well, we could always reschedule. When do you have a free weekend?”
“You can’t reschedule a promotion party,” I protest. “Why would you even think that? The party’s not about me. When did he make partner?”
Pause. A pause that drags on.
“A few weeks ago.”
A few weeks ago.
A sharp sting nettles my heart. Nobody in my family bothered to tell me. My own brother didn’t bother to tell me. The only reason I’m hearing about it is because Pansy’s using it as an excuse to try to get her brother’s loser sister fixed up with a respectable man.
“Jillian, are you still there?”
“Yes, but I’ve got to go. And I’m sure you’ve already had a party for him.”
With my parents and their friends. Of course they’d have been invited. And of course they didn’t invite me. I might do something mortifying. I might act like myself. I might, say, stand up and lead everyone in an impromptu karaoke session… like I did when I was sixteen, at a restaurant in France, for my parents’ anniversary dinner.
Everyone seemed to have a great time, and they all joined in—everyone but my family. My parents and brother were silent the entire car ride home. They barely spoke to me for days. I’ve never done anything like that around them since.
I will go to my grave with them fearing that I’m one Chardonnay away from jumping up onto a chair, grabbing a fork to sing into, and belting out the lyrics to a Dolly Parton song.
“Well, there was just a little tiny get-together.” Pansy’s voice has gone small. “But we were waiting for you, for the main celebration.”
“I’ll send him a congratulations gift,” I say stiffly. “And I’ll apologize for it being a bit on the late side.” Okay, that was a little passive-aggressive on my part.
She heaves a sigh. “We just didn’t tell you because we were afraid that you’d feel bad. Your parents have asked me not to rub it in your face when… Well…”
When anyone in my family accomplishes something amazing, is what she’s saying. So every week, then. And twice on Sunday.
I could be a college graduate, but I’m not. I could be settled down in a happy relationship, but I’m not. I could have a high-powered, well-paying job, but... Well, the influencer gig actually pays pretty well, and it’s very satisfying in that I’m giving exposure to businesses that I believe in, businesses that are making the world a better place, but my family thinks of it as nothing but a ridiculous and faintly embarrassing hobby. It’s bad enough that I’m weird and wild—why do I have to be so public about it?
I force words from my mouth, and they march out, stiff and stilted. “Thank you for the thought, Pansy. I’ve got to leave for work, so I’ll let you go.”
Hot tears burn behind my eyes, and I blink them away.