But that charm could be useful. “You think Mom will do it even if Mae doesn’t come?” She should know—she was Barbara’s daughter, after all—but she had no clue. Who cared if this guy knew it? He probably wouldn’t be around long anyway.
Andy looked up at Amanda. “Sure,” he said. “It’s too good to pass up. But you’ll ask Mae, right?”
Oh, she’d ask. Andy just didn’t need to know what she was asking for. All Mae really had to do was tell their mom it was a great idea—or better yet, say she was coming and then bail. Still, he was just a little too enthusiastic about even the possibility that Mae would appear.
“You wouldn’t want Mae here,” Amanda said. And really, he wouldn’t. The thought was awful. “She’s—she’s too many cooks in anybody’s kitchen.” And she would think Food Wars was stupid and piddling, even while she took the whole thing over. That was Mae’s specialty. She always made it look easy, and she always made you feel dumb for caring.
“I’d deal. Listen, try, okay? And I’ll get your mom to sign on either way.” He grinned, and it was a very appealing grin to conspire with. Amanda grinned back. Why not?
Barbara came to the door. “We need to get back to work,” she called, and Andy rose easily, seemingly not at all bothered by the implied reproof in her words.
“Sure thing. Gotta be friendly with the competition, though, right?” He turned back toward Amanda. “I’ll call you. I can get your number from your mom, okay?”
Amanda nodded. They probably should keep in touch—it made sense, and it would be much easier than talking to her mother.
And it would maybe even be kind of fun, if he was this excited about Food Wars. Even if he did think he’d like Mae. He’d learn, or rather, he wouldn’t, because Mae would not be here.
Amanda took out her phone as she walked back to her car, typing as she went. Mae had to do this for her. She just had to.
And then it would all begin.
MAE
Mae Moore was wearing her fiercest boots.
It was May—never, despite the name, Mae’s luckiest month—so strappy, expensive, high-heeled sandals might have been more appropriate for a meeting in the skyscraper that housed Glorious Home Television. But this was a big meeting. An important meeting, and possibly, as suggested by that worrying text from Lolly, not a good meeting. Which meant that Mae wanted both feet solidly on the ground and her thin skin well covered.
Standing in her Brooklyn closet, she’d chosen the tough-girl, ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners boots whose heels now hit the marble floors of the lobby with conviction as she flashed the ID card around her neck to Marcos and Jim at the security desk. Marcos pressed the button and waved her grandly through as he always did. They’d been here when she’d first walked into the building for her audition, wearing, she suddenly realized, these same boots. She hoped they weren’t about to see her walk out the doors for the last time as well.
Mae quashed that feeling immediately. Things were going great. She and Lolly had bonded from their first shoot together, and she knew Lolly enjoyed having her on set. She was absolutely going to get the full co-hosting gig. Alone in the elevator (ignoring the camera), she struck the Wonder Woman pose that was supposed to fill your body with confidence. This is going to be fine. No, great. They were going to tell her that she’d rocked the five-show audition. Lolly, single and child-free, needed the vibe Mae brought to the lifestyle-redesign show. Mae, married with children, appealed to viewers scrambling to balance work and family and needing a neat, organized home to calm the chaos. Lolly filled closets. Mae cleaned them. And cleaning them, Mae knew, was exactly what most people craved in a consumer-crazy world. The success of her book had proved it.
So this was just going to be a good meeting. A renewal of her role for the rest of the season. A discussion of the immediate future, which included the next few episodes of Sparkling, and the slightly more distant future, which Mae thought should include a pilot episode for a show that was all Mae. She mentally ticked off the reasons why: Half a million followers across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The book, Less Is Moore, named after her lifestyle philosophy. The contract for a second book, which she would absolutely figure out soon. The e-mail she sent out to more than twenty thousand subscribers every month. She was ready.
But the Wonder Woman pose and mental reminders of her successes never did quite enough to banish the out-of-place feeling Mae had every time she stepped out of the elevator at GHTV. The Sparkling set, which was staged each week in houses of ordinary, messy people with lives she was used to—that was one thing. But the enormous images of Incredible Homes that covered the walls, stills from the network’s most popular show, were not places Mae Moore would ever belong, and the offices themselves, filled with women in clothes and shoes Mae could price instantly, no matter how foolish she thought them, made her feel as though she’d just got off the bus from Kansas.
Lolly was waiting for her as the elevator door opened. As she grabbed Mae’s arm and pulled her into a practiced hug, she whispered in Mae’s ear, “Okay, get ready. You’re going to be fine, okay? This will all work out. Now, smile!”
Lolly couldn’t have been less reassuring if she had tried. Now, without Mae getting to say so much as a word, Lolly swept her into a big conference room, with a long wall of windows looking out over Central Park and a long wall of interior windows allowing everyone who walked by to see who and what was happening on the network’s main business stage. Smile-smile, kiss-kiss for Christine, their senior producer, in shoes identical to Lolly’s. Smile-smile, kiss-kiss for Christine’s boss, Meghan, in pumps of equal heel height but more gravitas, suggesting not so much that she took taxis everywhere but that she never, ever left this building. Smile-smile, kiss-kiss for the new social media director, for Meghan’s assistant, and for Christine’s junior producer, all glowing with confidence and sheer lip and cheek stain.
As she settled into her chair, trying to calm the nerves that Lolly’s words had lit up, Mae’s phone quacked loudly. No, seriously, she hadn’t had the sense to put it on vibrate? Kicking herself, Mae grabbed for her phone in the pocket of the bag she’d set down next to her chair. As she fumbled with the mute switch, she read her sister’s text:
FOOD WARS WANTS TO COME HERE. MOM NEEDS THIS, BUSINESS SUCKS, BUT SHE WON’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU. SHE’S GOING TO CALL YOU, CAN YOU JUST TELL HER YOU’LL COME AND THEN I’LL WORK IT OUT FROM HERE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO? SERIOUSLY IT WILL BE GREAT FOR MOM. I JUST NEED YOU TO HELP ME GET HER THERE.
Shit, what? As much as she knew she needed to tune in to the women around her, Mae was fully distracted by Amanda’s words. Food Wars? The competition show? Instantly, Mae could see how Food Wars would love the rivalry between Mimi’s and Frannie’s. And just as instantly, she could see what Amanda apparently was totally clueless about—that a reality show would steamroll their mother and rip the lid off every awful thing about Merinac, their house, their childhood, everything. She knew how this worked. Amanda, apparently, still believed in unicorns and thought this was a good idea. But Mae knew that about her sister, too. Damn it, Amanda. Just stay in your own yard, will you?