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take a mental health day. That’s the thing about being an influencer—the lines between real life and social media are pretty much nonexistent, and there’s no real time off.
It’s the first perfect summer day of the season, with the sun beating down from a cloudless blue sky.
It doesn’t help that the pool is teeming with eyes. Mothers. Neighbors. Women I know from book club and the gym.
something inside, something intangible and slippery. Something a lot like jealousy.
Which is ridiculous. I’m not a jealous person, and Patrick has never given me any reason to think I should be.
Social media is volatile, and it moves at the speed of light.
Now I stand here, a fresh wave of dread expanding in my chest.
“Don’t you find that strange? That she knows all these things about you, private, personal things you don’t want revealed on these gossip sites, and yet you know very little about her and her life.”
that I’m too self-centered to have asked my personal assistant about herself.
And then I wonder if her question is meant to be bait, a trick to make me respond. It puts me on guard, and so does Patrick’s expression.
Whatever has happened to that poor personal assistant, you know what they say. It’s always the husband.
Alex passed out the second her eyes were closed, as usual. I’ve always admired that about her, how she can zonk out no matter how stressful her day.
Even if that meant breaking some promises.
There’s only one reason for a dog to lose its shit in the middle of the night.
People are thinking, That’s what you get. If you don’t want that kind of hate, then don’t be an influencer.
People are saying that’s the nature of the internet, and I only have myself to blame.”
Why let all these strangers in on our private lives, our family?
And there it is, the crux of the problem. Alex is the one who signed up for this lack of privacy. Not me,
Alex is the one putting the Hutchinson family in perfect, pretty squares—big
The truth is, I want it to stop, too.
“Okay, but I’d like to remind you how hard I’ve worked to get here. How much money Unapologetically Alex brings in, how many perks.
It’s raining when my alarm pierces the silence on Wednesday, a slow, steady patter that any other morning would lull me right back to sleep.
I hit Snooze and lie here in the semidark, feeling the warmth of Patrick’s body next to mine, the rhythmic puffs of his breathing. Still passed out cold, thanks to one of my sleeping pills.
I close my eyes and listen to the drizzle outside, thinking about how much Patrick hates pharmaceuticals. He says they give him a headache, ...
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And yet that was him riffling through my drawers last night in search of the bottle, him sleeping through the alarm...
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for the first time in my marriage I knew that Patrick lied to me, right to my face,
still he needed a pill to fall asleep.
This is a man who lies. Who’s keeping secrets.
over to find Patrick, awake and staring in my direction. He blinks, eyes dark against bright white cotton. “You’re awake.”
he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. His skin is warm, safe. “What ...
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Today is one week since AC vanished, and never has a missing person had such a loud presence—in my head, in my life, on the web.
The latest rumor is that Patrick and AC were having an affair.
That kind of struggle forms you as a person, and it taught me to work hard. Eighty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year. I’m always working, and when I’m not, I’m thinking about work. It’s an obsession that’s served me well.”
“I don’t know. Three.” I think about what those three days will be like. Seventy-two hours of waiting for the next bomb to drop
Alex’s followers are a bunch of stupid cows who drink her ridiculous Kool-Aid. I don’t know if that makes her smart or vapid. Maybe both.
AC: You can’t really mean that. Your wife is a rock star. Creating a profitable business out of pictures and good vibes. I mean, how brilliant is that? Patrick: Can we please stop talking about Alex now?
AC: Um, okay. What would you like to talk about? Patrick: That dress. [long pause] I’d like it a lot better if you weren’t wearing any underwear.
She liked the way his big hands curved around the stitched leather steering wheel,
Jenni’s mother told me about your finstas.” Fake Instagram accounts, ones I didn’t know about.
Those photos have nothing to do with me.”
“Because they’re fake!” She’s shouting now, but the tears are gone and, in their place, a feral fury. “And so are you, FYI. You are the queen of fake.” Her words land with a breathless sting.
“No. Unapologetically Alex is a job. She is a persona. And while she might not be entirely truthful all the time, she’s not me. I’m not her, and I’m not fake.”
There’s literally nothing about you that’s real.”
Yes, my job is a performance of fakery. Yes, I present myself in ways that make me look prettier, thinner, better, more joyful than I am, but there’s a reason those filters are so popular. It’s so the asshole trolls don’t point out every imperfection.
Perception is reality, Patrick. No one understands this better than an influencer.”
“So influence them into understanding that the pictures and audio are fakes.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Scandals go viral while ex...
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Patrick and I have always been good at this—at shutting out the world, at becoming our own little island. The cars, the people, the noise. It all falls away and it’s just us two.
“I love you.” He presses his forehead to mine, smiling at me over the rim of his shades.
Small steps are big steps! You’ve already survived one hundred percent of your worst days! You’re bigger than your fears! Good things are coming to you!
