“Eighteen percent?” I slumped back in my chair. “Wow.”
“Yep. And,” he said, tapping my knee, “I have no doubt you can do even better. You have more personality and charisma in your left earlobe than Felicity Fakes It.”
“Felicity Fashion Fix,” I corrected on a chuckle, my mood slowly on the rise again.
He curled a long piece of my hair around his finger and tugged gently. “I don’t really care what her brand name is because she’s not my client anymore, you are.” He edged closer to me, taking my hands in his and rubbing his thumb over the inside of my wrists. “You’ve proven you know how to hook your viewers’ loyalty, Molly. Now you need to hook them in the heart. If you can do that, then I can get you a makeover show in front of millions that will make everything you’ve done to build your brand to this point seem trivial in comparison.”
I tried the phrase on for size—hook them in the heart—imagining how my twin brother would respond to such a statement.
“Oh!” I sat up straight and flattened my feet to the floor. “I’ve got it.”
“What? A nonprofit we can contact?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly, but I do know the person who can lead me to one. Miles. My brother has a connection to every nonprofit organization within a hundred-mile radius of here.” And beyond.
“Ah, yes. The preacher,” Ethan said, finally reaching for his glass of wine and reclining back on the sofa. “Weren’t the two of you supposed to do an interview together for your channels? I thought I suggested that a few months back—show your viewers the whole twin bonding thing you two have going. Did Val forget to put that on the schedule?”
I tried to ignore the raw way his tone rubbed against me whenever he spoke of my brother. Though he and Miles had only interacted twice, it was abundantly clear that neither of them was going to take up calling each other bro any time soon. Truth was, I often felt like a goalie between them, blocking any potential insult and negative jab.
I stood up, slipped between him and the chair, and made my way back to the kitchen. “He’s not interested in doing an interview for Makeup Matters, and I’m totally okay with that. It’s not his thing.”
Ethan laughed. “Why not? Are preachers banned from social media? Is that one of the twelve commandments?”
“Ten.”
“Ten what?”
“There are only ten commandments, not twelve.”
He pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen, either not hearing me or not caring to respond. “You should really change his mind on that. It’s a missed opportunity.”
It probably was, and yet I knew my brother. The same way I knew my parents. Though at least Miles understood some of the benefits to social media and what my career as an influencer actually entailed. My parents, however, shared one flip phone between the two of them with no fancy apps or internet service—all in the name of frugality and stewardship.
As I pulled our plates down from the cupboard, I said nothing more on the topic of my family to Ethan. It was one of the clear boundary lines I’d drawn when we started dating. He hadn’t known me as a child or as a lonely teenager searching for her place in a household she’d never quite measured up to. And I liked it that way. The two of us had come from two totally different lifestyles, two totally different histories, two totally different worlds, and perhaps that was what I enjoyed most about being with him. Our pasts didn’t have to matter, because all we focused on was the future dreams we chased together. And in that aspect, we were very much the same. Ethan and I were a goal-making, goal-crushing machine. And signing on with his agency had been one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
He believed in me. And perhaps that was the only encouragement I needed to push toward my next goal.
“Hey.” He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders while I reached for a spatula. “What do you think about skipping the chicken tonight and going out to eat instead? I’m craving that little Italian place downtown, the one with the breaded artichokes and fresh caprese salad.” He brushed my hair off my back and planted a kiss to my neck. “We can continue this conversation over a nice plate of veal parmesan. And, bonus, there’ll be no dishes needing to be washed.”
I glanced down at the chicken I’d been marinating all day, based on a recipe I’d chosen a week ago when he told me he’d be flying into town tonight. “I do love that place, but I’ve been looking forward to trying this chicken out all week, and—”
He spun me around and touched my chin. “Babe, once this deal goes through, the only meals you’ll ever want to try will be cooked by professional chefs. Come on, let me treat you tonight. I’m proud of you.” He went to the door and shrugged on his jacket before removing my blush cardigan from the rustic wall hook and holding it open. “After all, it’s not every day I get to celebrate the accomplishments of my best client, who also happens to be my beautiful girlfriend.”
2
Molly
“I need a cause.” The words reverberated off the gymnasium walls as if I’d spoken them through a megaphone.
My brother wiped the sweat off his brow with the hem of his shirt—why are guys so gross?—and twisted to find me blazing a trail on the polished floor in my taupe booties. Though Miles worked to school his surprise at seeing me here, of all places, I could have spotted the humored twitch of his upper lip from across the Pacific Ocean. He was a terrible actor—truly the worst. He once got cut from our fifth-grade Christmas pageant only three days before curtain call because he couldn’t stop his nervous chuckle every time Mary’s donkey lumbered on stage, heaving a pillow-stuffed virgin mother. His debut theater career ended abruptly after a fed-up Mrs. Martin told him to bite the inside of his cheeks because there was no such thing as a laughing wise man. To which Miles had smartly replied, “There was no such thing as a wise man at the nativity scene, either. They came later.”
“Morning, sis. It’s nice to see you, too. My trip to Guatemala was great, by the way. Thanks for asking.” He chucked the ball at the wall, retrieving it on the bounce back. “You come to play doubles with me?” At this he cracked a full smile. Prior to Miles taking up wall ball on Tuesday mornings at his church gymnasium, I truly believed wall ball was a pretend sport, like the kind playground teachers made up for the athletically challenged to pass recess. Like hopscotch. Or tetherball. But nope, for some unknown reason, my twenty-seven-year-old brother was all about it.
I enunciated my words a second time. “I. Need. A. Cause.”
He bounced the red rubber ball twice at his feet. “I heard you the first time, and yet I still have no clue what you’re talking about.”
After lying awake half the night, strategizing and typing out nonsensical notes for my assistant Val to find in her inbox this morning, I’d convinced myself that Miles was my best hope for finding the right connection to a cause that would offer both experience—for the Netflix producers—and minimal commitment in light of my sixty-hour workweek. The thing was, Miles couldn’t know about the possibility of a makeover show. Or even the possibility of an audition for one. Because Miles was . . . well, Miles was a saint among humans. If I was gonna ask for help in his area of expertise, then he’d expect my motives to be pure. Which they were. Sort of.