Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
The list goes on and on.
And if I do all this, she will agree to never sue me for any of it.
How is this real life? I mean, why would she want a fake apology?
But I know why. She needs to cut me down so she can steal my sunshine. And she doesn’t care how she does it. She has no use for the truth.
Or, alternatively, she’s crazy and really believes that I’m out to ruin her.
She’s either a morally evil person or she’s mentally ill. Doesn’t matter though, does it?
This is what she wants.
And… is it that bad? I mean, I know it’s all lies. I didn’t do any of that stuff, but don’t people take plea deals all the time to get a lesser sentence?
If I did this, it’s just… a plea deal. To get a lesser sentence.
This is when I notice something about the game I’m in with the bros. There are over a million people watching us right now.
That’s the threshold.
Leslie wanted a million people. She wanted the apology to be live. And she wants it tonight.
I could do this.
I could do it right now, here on Snitch. And in ten minutes, maybe, it could all be over.
I press ‘action key’ on my keyboard and my character comes to life. Then I unmute my headset. “OK, listen, guys.”
“Welcome back,” Terry says. They are busy battling.
“Don’t just stand there, Steve. Fight.”
I push the icon on the screen that will show my face. And there I am. “Um… I just want to say… I’m Steve Smith and this is my statement.”
“Dude.” Terry pauses his game. “What are you doing?”
I take a deep breath and look at him, but talk to the people watching the stream. “I’m going to apologize to Les—I mean…” Fuck. If I say her real name, she will make a new scene for doxing her in front of a million people.
“Don’t do it,” Shawn says. “Don’t—”
“I’m here to publicly apologize to Raylen Star. She’s a… a famous romance author. And I… I treated her badly at a romance convention a few weeks ago.”
People in the Snitch chat are confused. The comments are flying by so fast, you can’t even read them.
More and more join in to watch, the number climbing exponentially in real time. I get out my phone and prepare to read down Leslie’s list.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE SAME TIME
I’ve started packing. It’s still going to be a few weeks until I’m in a position to put in an offer on a house, but I don’t want to keep Sheila from renting it now. It’s the end of summer and with kids getting ready to go back to UCLA, this is a prime spot for some grad student who wants to be relatively close to campus and doesn’t mind being an occasional suntan-lotion-applier. I’m going to just crash at Brit’s for a while, until I have the cash. I definitely plan on paying all cash for whatever house Evelynn gets me. (I did decide to go with her. She’s a dealmaker and wouldn’t stop texting and calling after I made the mistake of writing my info down on her sign-in sheet.) She says she can ‘make wonders happen’ with an all-cash offer.
Ring. Ring.
That’s probably her now. She is tenacious.
I look. Oh. It’s not. It’s…
“Hi, Audrey.”
“Are you on your computer?” Audrey Saint’s voice sounds more urgent than I’m used to.
“No. Why?”
“Turn on your computer.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay. Hold on.” I dig out my laptop from under a pile of sweaters I own and never wear. Because it’s LA. And even though it gets chilly in December and January, I still prefer jackets. Sweaters make me feel shapeless. Anyway, my computer is under them.
I open it up. “Okay. What’s—?”
“Go to Snitch.”
“Snitch?”
“That gamer platform.”
“I know what it is. I just—”
“Just do it.”
I head to the site and there, on the main page, the ‘Featured Stream’ that’s currently being displayed to one-point-seven million people is…
“And then, while she was resting and under the influence of pain medication, we paid housekeeping at the Aria to break into her suite and change her out of her clothes into an unattractive nightgown with cats on it. Raylen doesn’t even own a cat nightgown. We just thought it would be cruel.”
“What in the frackety fuck is this?” I ask Audrey.
“What does it look like? Steve is going through a litany of apologies to Leslie, live on Snitch.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
“How did you know about this?”
“James. He’s a big D&D Game Master Dungeon something. I dunno. But he was on and saw it.”
“We also drank all the liquor in her minibar and left the bottles scattered around to make it look like she did it. Just because we are assholes. No other reason,” Steve goes on.
“This is insane!” I shout.
“I know. I know. I mean… I know Steve and Essie really well. And, this is… There’s just no way they would do any of the stuff he’s apologizing for.”