Bad Influence, page 16
The plan was for her to go to work for the day and then meet Joseph back at her place in the evening. They’d check her apartment out together and figure out what to do next.
But that was before she’d received the email. The one that made her blood freeze in her veins and the breath catch in the back of her throat. The one that had given her the awful, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
To Joseph, this is for you.
When she’d typed those words into the code—a little message for herself, a private reminder that nobody using the site would ever see—it had been with burning resentment. Bad Bachelors wasn’t born right after he left. For almost twelve months after, she’d been a zombie, drained of emotion and purpose. Drifting through each day. Trying to be strong for her family.
It had taken that long for the numbness to burn away, leaving her with simmering anger. One day she’d done that stupid thing that all broken hearts do at some point: she’d searched his name. When an article announcing his engagement to Annika Van Beek popped up, it was no less painful than a sledgehammer to her heart.
Engaged. Barely a year after they’d split up. It was like the final twist of a knife already embedded deep in her chest. A cruel blow to her self-esteem. While she struggled to move on, tripping awkwardly through dates and going home alone every single time, he’d already found someone else. The worst part of it was that the article had quoted Joseph’s father.
“Annika is a perfect match for my son. She’s the kind of woman we always hoped he would find, and we look forward to joining the Preston and Van Beek families.”
That day, Annie’s vision had been a wash of red. It had descended like a fine mist, coating her completely. She’d saved the article, in case she had a moment of weakness and wanted him back. And then she’d started to code the website. It had taken her over a year to build it, since she was learning everything piece by piece. But when she decided to do something, she would throw herself into it. Some advice from a former coworker had helped her secure the site—cloud hosting with multiple redundancies, a super-secure encrypted password system.
And Bad Bachelors was born.
To Joseph, this is for you.
She had forgotten about that message. Maybe not forgotten…but ignored. Suppressed.
What had changed in the scheme of things? Nothing. He was still her ex, still the guy who’d shattered her understanding of love and loyalty.
Annie smiled at the server as her latte was passed over, but the expression felt brittle. She carried the cup to a small, empty table in the corner of the café and let the warmth of the drink infuse her with a semblance of normalcy.
Nothing had changed. So why did thinking about him feel a little less painful? A little less like punishment?
“Annie.”
Her head turned at the sound of a familiar voice. “Remi, hi.”
Remi stood, holding a paper coffee cup between her hands. Her ballerina’s figure was encased in tight black jeans and a pink coat, a thick cream scarf wrapped around her neck. Being an Aussie, she always felt the New York chill more quickly than those who’d lived through the snowy winters from childhood.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.” Annie’s relief took the edge off her worries.
Remi bobbed her head. “Well, here I am.”
“Do you want to sit?”
“Uh…sure.” Remi set her cup down and shrugged out of her coat and scarf. Underneath, she had on a fitted sweater. “How are you?”
God, this was so awkward. It hadn’t been like that with Remi before. Not since the first time Annie had gone to visit Darcy after her new roommate had moved in and the three of them had ordered pizza and sipped wine out of plastic cups. She’d liked Remi right away. Liked her carefree attitude and snappy humor and genuine friendliness.
Then you had to go and flush all that friendship down the toilet.
“Good.” Annie nodded. The silence stretched on until she was sure the tension was starting to infect the people around them. The couple next to them stood and left. “How’s Wes?”
Remi sighed. For a moment, Annie thought she might unleash the fury. After all, that was how they’d ended things last time. Remi had asked her to choose between their friendship and Bad Bachelors. Annie had stubbornly refused to interfere with the reviews on the app and thus had picked technology over her friend.
It’s not about technology. It’s about purpose. Truth… Isn’t it?
“What are we doing?” Remi shook her head. “I don’t want to sit here and make bullshit small talk. I’m assuming you didn’t invite me here for that.”
That was Remi, always cutting to the chase.
“No.” Annie shook her head. What reason was she supposed to give? That she was desperately trying to get things back to the way they used to be, even though she knew it was impossible? Could she even salvage things? She had no idea. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Took you long enough.” Remi folded her arms across her chest.
“I wanted to give you some space after…” Annie sipped her coffee, but it tasted like nothing. “You know.”
“I don’t know if space is going to help things.”
“I know you’re pissed off at me, and you have every right to be. But I am sorry and I don’t want to lose you as a friend.” A sick, twisting feeling took hold of Annie’s stomach. “I’ve always been one of those people who shied away from being part of a big group. I’d rather have one or two great friends than an army of acquaintances. But I knew from that first night you moved into the old place with Darcy that you were one of us.”
“Really?” A smile ghosted over Remi’s shiny pink lips. “I never thought I’d fit in with cool New Yorkers.”
“Maybe not, but you fit with Darcy and me. The uncool New Yorkers.” That earned her a laugh. “I know I shouldn’t have kept you out of the loop, especially after Darcy found out about…what I was doing.” She hated talking in code, but the café was crowded. “We’re supposed to be a team, the three of us. I betrayed your trust, and I didn’t treat you the way a friend should.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“And,” she continued, needing to get it all off her chest. “I know you were angry that I wouldn’t remove Wes’s reviews. I really let you down.”
Remi nodded. “I was angry. But I put you in a position where I forced you to choose, so I guess I can’t really be upset that you picked a side simply because you didn’t choose me.”
Annie hadn’t wanted to delete the reviews, not just because it would ruin the integrity of the site but also because it might create a link back to her. And since protecting her identity had been her biggest concern—and was still her biggest concern—she hadn’t been able to give her friend what she wanted. It was pure selfishness on her part. Pure self-preservation.
“How’s everything going with Wes and the show?” She’d wanted to ask so many times in the last month, but each time she’d gone to dial Remi’s number, she’d chickened out.
A dreamy look passed over her friend’s face. “Wes is great. And now that our relationship is out in the open and the show is being well received, the pressure is off a bit.”
“You were amazing.” Annie had gone to the opening night of Out of Bounds—Wes’s modern dance production in which Remi was the star—and had bought tickets for her team at work to show her support. She wanted Remi to succeed, regardless of whether the possibility of friendship was still on the table. “My coworkers couldn’t stop talking about it in the office the next day. I don’t think anyone had ever seen a show like it before. It was incredibly unique.”
“Thanks.” Remi looked a little less wary now. “We worked really hard to get it off the ground the second time, but I’m glad we persisted. We’ve extended our run since the shows were continuing to sell out, which is great.”
“Wes must be really proud.”
“He is.”
That awkward silence settled over them again. It was unfamiliar. She and Remi had always been comfortable talking about “real” things. Darcy had been the one in their group who shied away from life chats and dissecting feelings. But Remi was an open book—honest and charming and unafraid of the sticky subjects.
Maybe that’s what you need to do now. Just lay it all on the line and hope that Remi understands your position. Lots of people remain friends even if they don’t agree on something.
“I had thought about killing it,” Annie said. “The whole thing.”
Remi’s rich, brown eyes narrowed slightly, and she sipped her drink. “Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve thought about it a lot, actually. It’s hard being a villain.”
“You’re not a villain.”
“No? I’ve caused trouble for Reed and Darcy, and for you and Wes.” She bit down on her lip so hard that the metallic taste of blood seeped onto her tongue. “I get people telling me every day what I’m doing is wrong and appalling and hateful. Am I just toying with people’s lives?”
“You’re not the one writing these reviews.” Remi sipped her drink. “Do you think Amazon feels guilty if someone trashes a book? They provide the platform, not the reviews.”
“We’re not talking about books though. These are real people.” The words caused something to shift in Annie’s chest. She hadn’t voiced these reservations aloud before—but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been circling in her brain. “Real relationships. And I give people a platform to say what they like. I draw attention to them.”
“How much attention?”
She cradled her drink, looking down into the milky depths. Her reflection was distorted. “I’m getting fifty thousand hits a day on the website, and it’s growing. People are looking at it from all over the world. The app has over a hundred thousand downloads.”
“Bloody hell.”
“I know.”
“And you didn’t monetize it?” Remi shook her head. “You’d be filthy rich by now.”
“The money isn’t the point.” In fact, the one thing she had to support her claim of really wanting Bad Bachelors to be a positive thing and to help women was her lack of monetization. It wasn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It wasn’t a get-rich-slow scheme either.
Despite that, she got daily requests from brands wanting space for ads and investors wanting to buy in. But that wasn’t what motivated her.
“My friend Mish has been using your app,” Remi said. “The barista who works next to her Lexington barre studio asked her out a while ago, but she’d come out of a bad relationship. When she looked him up and found he had nice reviews saying what a sweet guy he was, she decided to go out with him. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time.”
These were the stories that kept Annie going. Hearing how Bad Bachelors had brought people together, how it had helped them out of a dark place and into a better one, made all the threats and the shitty emails worth it.
“It made me realize I have to shoulder some of the blame for our fight,” Remi said. “I can see how you’re helping women.”
“Am I helping more than I’m hurting?” That was the real question. “I honestly don’t know.”
“You can’t be held responsible for what other people say. If the app didn’t exist, they would still be saying these things. God knows the kind of shit I see on Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. I doubt Mark Zuckerberg has a crisis of conscience over what people post on his platform.”
The knot in Annie’s stomach loosened. “I’m glad your friend found a good guy.”
“She really has. We had them over for dinner the other night, and he’s a lot of fun. He’s good for her.” Remi set her cup down and reached over the table to hold Annie’s hand. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
The emotion and stress and confusion of the last few days settled on Annie like a boulder in the pit of her stomach. Tears threatened but she blinked them away, entwining her fingers with Remi’s. “You and Darcy are like my family. It’s been killing me to not pick up the phone and call you. I wanted to, but I knew you needed some time. And then after a week or two passed, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was frightened you’d never want to see me again. It’s been hurting like hell.”
Remi nodded. “It’s been hurting me too.”
“Can you forgive me for being a shitty friend?”
“You’re not a shitty friend, Annie. You know I struggled with the concept of the app. I still do, truth be told. I’ve seen the damage it can do, but I’ve also seen the good. It sucks to be hurt, and you tried to find a way to help people avoid that.” She squeezed Annie’s hand. “And I have to say, seeing what it’s done for Mish, I think I understand the positive side a little more. I don’t know if I agree with it on the whole, but I do see both sides.”
Would she think the same thing if she knew that Annie had hidden a message in the code to take a shot at her ex? At one point in the not-too-distant past, Annie wouldn’t have cared one iota if it brought his career down. But something had changed.
You’re fooling yourself into thinking he has feelings for you because he agreed to help and because you had sex. That’s not how it works.
Regardless, it was impossible to shake the guilt. For the past three years, she’d blamed him for everything, and that wasn’t fair. Whether he had feelings for her now or not was beside the point.
“I shouldn’t have shut you out,” Annie said. “It was a dick move. I was so hung up on protecting myself that I didn’t think enough about how you would feel. I don’t want to be that person who puts her friends last.”
“I’m glad you called,” Remi said with a smile. “And I’m glad that we’re stronger than one argument. I was furious at the time, but I’ve thought about it a lot. I don’t necessarily agree with what you did, but I understand where you’re coming from. What you’ve tried to create.”
“So we are still friends?” She hardly felt as though she deserved it.
Remi leaned back in her chair and crossed one long leg over the other. “I can’t only have one uncool New Yorker friend. I’m told you guys come in pairs.”
Annie contemplated telling Remi about what was going on with Joseph. But she wasn’t sure talking about it would achieve anything. It wasn’t like Annie and Joseph were going to become an item simply because they’d slept together. In fact, she was determined to make sure that was a one-time thing. Pleasurable as it had been, booty calls were not her style. Especially not booty calls with the potential for emotional damage.
She would not get sucked into believing that he cared about her.
“So what now?” Remi asked. “What are your plans for the app?”
“Honestly? I have no idea.” Annie shook her head. “I never thought it would get to this point, and I don’t know where it should go from here.”
What she did know, however, was that priority number one was finding out who was messing with her and how she could keep Bad Bachelors going without ruining Joseph’s career. If she’d learned anything from her fight with Remi, it was that keeping secrets made more trouble in the long run. And while she wasn’t about to go public with her identity, shutting Joseph out when he was the only person who could help her wasn’t the best approach.
And that meant she needed to come clean about the message in the code.
* * *
Joseph swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the confines of his collar. It felt tight, like a fist squeezing around his windpipe. Which was stupid, since the damn thing was bespoke and made exactly to his measurements. Nevertheless, his fingers itched with the desire to slip underneath the collar to give himself some breathing room.
But that would be a mistake.
Showing weakness now, with bright lights and the shrewd eyes of the financial reporter in front of him, would undermine everything he’d been trying to achieve. He needed to be cool, calm, collected, and in control at all times. But especially with a camera trained on him.
“Our strategy is about putting the control back into the customers’ hands,” he said, reciting the words he’d run through with his communications specialist earlier that morning. “Banking is part of everyday life, and these days that means a mobile device is the preferred method of interaction. Ultimately, our goal is to allow customers to interact with us in a way that suits their lifestyle because our customers are young professionals, entrepreneurs, parents, business owners, and retirees. They all have different needs. But the one thing they have in common is that they want control over how they bank. So we’re giving it to them.”
“You’ve been very vocal about pushing forward with this aggressive digital strategy, but the fact is, you’ve got decades less experience than your competitors.” The reporter adjusted her glasses. The action felt a little too practiced, almost like she was purposefully appearing accessible and nonthreatening, despite the statement she’d just made voicing the concerns he knew others were thinking. It was a technique: lull the target into a false sense of security. “What makes you think you’re the best person to push forward with such an ambitious plan?”
“Who better to be at the helm than someone who’s grown up in a digital world? I’m a perfect representation of our growing youth customer base because I’ve always had a computer close by. I know what our younger customers want and how they behave, because it’s what I want and how I behave. Experience is important, of course, and I have that too. But the value that I bring to the table is that I’m comfortable breaking out of the old way of doing things. I’m here to shake up the status quo.”
The reporter nodded, her expression showing some begrudging admiration. “Do you have anything to say to the people who are worried that you’re not experienced enough for this job?”
“No, I don’t.” He looked directly at the camera. “I believe actions speak louder than words, so I’m ready to deliver this strategy and let my work speak for itself.”
