“Y…yes,” she said on a ragged sigh that echoed with a rasp in the tiled space. “Unfortunately, that’s me. Makeup guru, social media influencer and all-around phony. Tell that to your friend. Susie-Susie is a pathetic phony.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked softly, genuinely curious.
Turning, she leaned her slender length back against the marble countertop with me. “Because it’s true. All the stupid pictures on social media, my Instagram-perfect life, all of it is one big, fat lie.”
My smile was one of sympathy. “We sometimes give good face to hide our pain, don’t we? You do it with selfies and makeup, others do it with substance abuse or food. It’s like when someone takes a picture and tells you to smile and you oblige because you don’t want to ruin a picture with a frown when everyone else is smiling, right? So you put on a mask. But it’s just a mask. I understand that better than anyone, Susie. It means you don’t want people to see your pain. That’s not what I’d call phony. I’d call it survival.”
She gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles going white. “No. It makes me a phony no matter how you slice it, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t care how much money it makes or how many sponsors it gets me, I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Someone was definitely at a crossroads. And this someone understood that better than anyone.
“Then don’t do it anymore. If you’ve made all this money, why not just walk away? You’re still plenty young. Find something you really want to do and do it,” I encouraged, watching her face change.
And then she did something odd, something unexpected. She put her hand to her lower abdomen before snatching it away, her words choked. “I can’t right now. I have obligations. Real-life obligations.”
I’m not sure why a piece of the puzzle clicked, or why it went in the direction it did, but it did—and instantly I knew why she couldn’t walk away from her sponsors and the money she was making.
“You can’t walk away because you’re pregnant, right?”
And that was when she crumpled against me and nodded, her sobs breaking my heart. “Yes!”
Chapter 9
As I held Susie and let her cry, I almost wished I hadn’t said anything. Not because I didn’t want to console her, but because now I felt compelled to ask her who the father was.
The one-time nun in me and the nosy Nellie who was sure she was on to something were about to collide.
“Is it Luca Stoker’s?”
She stilled in my arms for a moment before she straightened and narrowed her gaze in my direction, pushing out of my embrace. “How do you know about him?”
I looked up at her hardening face, and knew I had to work fast to get her to trust me, now that I’d brought up the enemy. “My friend, the insanely gorgeous one you mentioned—like I said, she’s a huge fan, and she watches all the YT makeup videos, but she also watches the tea spillers’ vlogs, too. It wasn’t really a secret.”
Blowing out a ragged breath, Susie nodded. “Yes. It’s his. We only broke up three months ago. I found out just after we called it quits. I was going to tell Mitzy after her meet and greet, just to watch her squirm, but I decided not to.”
“Is that what you meant by saying she was going to see what happens?” I decided being truthful was the only way to do this.
Her eyes widened, but they didn’t widen in the way you’d expect. They didn’t widen in surprise that she’d been caught. Not at all. “I’m not sure I know what you mean?”
“My insanely gorgeous friend again. She got a bit of your conversation on video at Mitzy’s event. It was by accident. She was videoing the event on her phone.”
“I guess that doesn’t look very good for me, does it? But I didn’t tell her or even plan to tell her. I swear.”
Digging for more tissues in my purse, I handed them to her. “So did Luca call it quits or did you?”
“I tell everyone I ended it, and that we’re still friends, blah-blah-blah. I made a whole video about it, if you’re interested. You know, I said all the nice things you say when you’re in the public eye, but the truth is, he really did leave me for Mitzy, and he was very honest about the fact that he’d cheated on me with her. It’s the only thing he’s ever been honest about. But he told me the truth when I caught him coming out of her hotel room at another event we did together.”
Well, she definitely didn’t look terribly upset about it. “I’m sorry, Susie. I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful.”
But she shook her head and scoffed. “I’m better off. Luca’s a fame whore. He loves the limelight, and when mine began to dim and some of my deals and sponsors went to Mitzy, he latched on to the next big hit—Mitzy and her million-dollar deal with Pink Leaf Cosmetics.”
My metaphoric red flag whipped upward in my mind’s eye. “The deal she allegedly stole from Ames Snarles.”
Now Susie’s eyes went even wider. “How did you know about that?”
Wow. So it was true.
“I heard a little here and a little there. Alma was talking to Octavia about it at the event.”
Susie’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “That hag can’t keep her mouth shut about anything. She thinks because she featured her on her channel and gave Mitzy her start, she’s owed something. When the truth is, Mitzy worked just as hard at social climbing and backstabbing as Alma did. She just happened to do it when YT was really exploding and companies were discovering the influence us gurus had over our audiences. Alma’s an OG. She didn’t get
