Hello, Sunshine

by Laura Dave

  The hacker apparently had not.

  My phone buzzed again, shaking in my pocket, and I looked down at another tweet.

  A Farmers Daughter? #idontthinkso

  And a link to: aintnosunshine.nyc

  I clicked the button, an entire website up and running—my yearbook photo from high school, front and center, my real name, Sunshine Stephens, underneath. And all the details too:

  “Sunshine Stephens grew up in Montauk, on prestigious Old Montauk Highway, in a cliffside mansion. No small farming town, no home on the range. Her father was a famed composer. She had quite a cushy childhood.”

  The description was wrong. We’d had no money, it wasn’t a mansion, and my childhood was the opposite of cushy—but it didn’t matter. Everything I had sold on the air was a bill of goods, and everyone would know it now. It wasn’t just strangers who would feel betrayed hearing about who I used to be. It was friends and colleagues—everyone whom I’d never told who I really was. Since Sunshine Mackenzie’s inception, I’d kept my past from all of them. As for the people I’d grown up with, I had theories as to why they’d stayed quiet—theories about how my town stopped caring about you as soon as you walked out the door. Ryan dismissed that reasoning though, saying they’d stayed quiet for the reason everyone stayed quiet: People only spoke up about something if it benefited them. I palmed my phone angrily, not sure what to do. If I could find out who was doing this, maybe there was a play to be made. But how on earth was I going to do that?

  It was as if the freak had heard me contemplating. My phone buzzed, and I looked down at the alert, a text from a blocked number.

  Tough Night? #aintnosunshine

  I wrote back quickly. Who are you?

  I could ask you the same thing.

  Pls. What do you want?

  The little ellipsis started going like crazy. What do you think I want?

  I was shaking, completely furious. Whoever this was, he was enjoying it. Enjoying the discomfort I was in. He was punishing me in every way he could think of.

  Are you after money here?

  Wrong question.

  The little ellipsis started going again. Then, suddenly, it stopped. And started again.

  How much money?

  I thought of what Danny and I had in savings. After the apartment renovation and the money he’d put into his business, it wasn’t a lot.

  Forget it. Bye 4 now.

  I looked down at the phone, horrified that this horrible person had ruined my birthday, my marriage, my career. He wanted to play games? I could play games too.

  A little game of telephone, specifically. In which I palmed my phone and hurled it right over the railing and into the Hudson River.

  7

  When I got back to the loft, I heard someone rummaging around in the kitchen. And for a second, I thought Danny was there. I didn’t think he’d forgiven me, but I thought maybe he had forgotten something—that he’d come home to get clothes for the night. That I’d have another chance to win him over. To get him to lie down and talk it through. To get him, for the night, to stay.

  “Sunny?” I heard from the kitchen.

  It was Ryan.

  He walked into the living room, a bottle of scotch in his hand. “Where have you been?” he said.

  “Nowhere. Why are you here?”

  “It’s nice to see you too,” he said.

  I was gutted and all I wanted to do was get into bed. Wake up, like in Groundhog Day, get to start this birthday again. But there was Ryan, a terrible reminder that that wasn’t happening.

  “I thought you could use some company,” he said. “And I was sure I could use a drink.”

  “What if Danny was here?”

  Ryan sat down in my egg chair. “Danny is not coming back here. Tonight took care of that.”

  “Please get out of my chair.”

  Ryan moved toward the couch. “So Meredith’s a wreck, but after I sent her back to Scarsdale in an Uber, I was able to go back in and calm everybody down. And it actually worked. I mean, Danny helped a lot, I’ve got to say. Did you propose the idea of that speech?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m impressed. Didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Danny.”

  “Do you think I want to talk about Danny?”

  I sat down in my chair, weary and miserable. I wanted Ryan to go, but I was too exhausted to press it.

  “Point is, after a little finagling and hand-holding, I got everyone buying that it was a misunderstanding. I even suggested that Meredith was actually angry about something else.”

  “What’d that be?”

  Ryan poured some scotch into a glass. “A woman friend I made upstate.”

  “Thanks for taking that hit,” I said.

  “The little hacker fucker is a pain in my ass.”

  I walked to the cabinet, grabbed a glass, and poured myself a scotch as well. “What are we going to do about the website?”

  He took a long pull from his glass. “I was hoping you didn’t see that.”

  Then he shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, “the stuff with your past, I think I can finagle.”

  I met his eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Who can’t relate to someone pretending to be something they’re not in order to please other people? It will make A Little Sunshine even more popular. Every girl who ever lied about her age on OKCupid will be rooting for you.”

  “People don’t like a fraud.”

  “Everyone is a fraud, Sunshine. Everyone with an Instagram page, a Facebook account. And certainly everyone with a cooking show. How many of these folks are cooking for themselves, really? They’re figureheads. All of them. That test kitchen at Cook TV? It’s never busy with the real people. It’s their cronies. Other people making the recipes. And don’t get me started on the Food Network.”

  “Think we went a step beyond that, Ryan.”

  He waved me off. “Tomato, tomahto! We sell an image of the person in front of the camera. And that’s the job. To be the perfect image. You did the job and did it beautifully. So now we just have to change the image.”

  “To what?”

  “Learning, getting real, for real. Self-embrace. It’s the latest thing. And it doesn’t matter how big the lies are. People forget. They always forget the details.”

  “It’s the internet, Ryan. Naked pictures aren’t quickly forgotten.”

  “Craig’s pulled them, my lawyers are all over it, that part is handled. And Meredith will calm down and handle the rest. She wouldn’t want to put her children in that position. Outing their father, as it were.”

  I didn’t know if it was the scotch, but I started to think that it could actually work. “So . . . it’s your plan to ignore the lies?”

  “My plan is to change the story. My plan is to fix this for you. For us.”

  He leaned forward, holding each side of my egg chair. And he looked into my eyes. Despite everything I knew about him—everything he showed me over and over again about how he felt about the truth, how he felt about doing what was ostensibly right—it was in the moments like this that Ryan amazed me. Because he wasn’t playing around when he looked at me like that. He wasn’t pretending. He was looking into my eyes, so I would see it: his sincerity. How much he wanted to do right by me.

  “Look, the Food Network gig, they’re going to put that on hold. Those guys don’t like controversy. But we’ll get it back. I swear to you. The only thing America loves more than adoring someone is hating her. And then having a new reason to love her all over again. So we pretended a little about where you came from because you were embarrassed about where you came from. Everyone can relate to being embarrassed. Everyone can relate to wanting to change their own story so they’re presented in their best possible light.”

  I nodded, starting to feel calmer.

  Ryan had made up the story once, he could make it up again. If anyone could, it was Ryan.

  Sensin
g my quiet praise, he smiled. I smiled back, taking a breath.

  This was probably a mistake. He took it as an invitation and kissed me. I pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Ryan, we decided not to do this.”

  “We decided it would get too messy. It’s not messy anymore. Danny’s out of the picture. And . . .”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  My heart started to hurt. Fourteen years. He couldn’t be. Not just like that.

  “It’s not about our spouses anymore,” he said.

  “You think Meredith is going to go along with your plan if you leave her?”

  “Yes,” he said, totally unfazed, and I realized my error. Ryan didn’t operate in the world of self-doubt. He believed he’d get away with anything. And, really, he was probably right.

  He pushed my hair behind my ears, leaned in again. “I love you,” he said.

  Love. Ryan never said he loved me, not like that. The closest he’d gotten was when he hired a crew to film the behind-the-scenes of my photo shoot—the day that was now all over the internet. The camera operator was this really good-looking guy—tall, smart, and studying to be a director at NYU. Ryan thought we were flirting even though it was innocently friendly. And Ryan fired him. When I asked Ryan why later, he begrudgingly admitted to being jealous. It’s hard to see someone you love interested in someone else. That was what he had said, daring me to argue. I didn’t say anything. It hadn’t seemed worth the fight.

  “I love you and I want to be with you. And I will work it out so ultimately it doesn’t hurt us. Look at Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman . . .”

  “I don’t think they’d like the comparison.”

  Ryan waited. “I know you love me too.”

  I took a large sip of my scotch, finishing the glass.

  Ryan didn’t move. “Sunny?”

  “I think we should talk about this tomorrow.”

  “No. I think we should talk about this now. I want this.” He motioned between us. “No wives, no husbands. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.”

  Ryan didn’t say things like that. He’d never said that we should leave our spouses, be together. He wouldn’t. Not unless he was certain it would be reciprocated.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

  “Did you do this? So I’d have no choice but to be with you?”

  He laughed awkwardly. “No choice? Wow.”

  “You sure came up with a plan to fix it quickly.”

  “That’s how my brain works. Quickly.”

  My head was blurry. He had to go, right now.

  “If this is about Danny, believe me, he isn’t coming back. Not that you belonged with him anyway. I’m proof positive of that.”

  “Well, I can’t do this.” I motioned between us. “Sorry.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Then I don’t want to.”

  It came out firmer than I meant it to—but I was angry that he was putting everything on the line, angry he assumed the answer would be yes.

  “Well, I don’t want to do anything else,” he said.

  “Ryan, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re the first person who would say that there is an empire at stake here.”

  “There are a lot of things at stake here.”

  My head was spinning. He was putting the entire plan he’d just made on the line? It was now contingent on there also being a plan around us?

  He took my face in his hands. “So it’s you and me, or I’m going another way.”

  There was my answer. So I thought about it. I actually thought about pretending. The smart thing would be to pretend that I wanted to give things a shot with him, especially if that was what he needed in order to stay committed.

  “Okay, fine.”

  “Okay, fine?”

  I looked away. “What do you want from me?”

  “A little bit of gratitude, for starters. I made you what you are.”

  “Please! I just happened to be the girl behind the right bar.”

  Ryan stood up, his eyes turning cold. “That’s only true right now,” he said.

  Then he took a last sip of his drink and headed toward the door.

  “See ya,” he said. As though he wasn’t saying good-bye. As though he wasn’t walking out on a nearly decade-long partnership.

  Except he was.

  And, like that, he was gone.

  8

  The next morning, I threw on a pair of jeans and a tank top and headed to my studio, right above Chelsea Market, which housed A Little Sunshine’s kitchen, built to look like my Tribeca kitchen: my gray slate countertop, the glass refrigerator.

  A plan swirled through my mind. Ryan had jumped ship, yes, but in the light of the morning, I knew that if he could turn this thing around, I could too.

  My triage plan: The Food Network was off the table for now, but I would safeguard my contracts still in place, speak to my most important contacts (Evelyn, who was the head of A Little Sunshine’s advertising department, Louis at the publisher), assure everyone that Danny’s speech had been genuine, that there never had been anything between Ryan and me, and that I already had a new management team ready to jump on board. I made a note to call Julie at The Agency, who would be happy to help pick up the pieces. As soon as I had a few of them in my pocket.

  When I walked in, I found Violet barking orders at several production assistants who were on their hands and knees in front of a cabinet, packing files into boxes, organizing all the supplies.

  Violet raised her hands in exasperation. “Where have you been? I’ve called you a thousand times! And your fucking voice mail is full.”

  “I lost my phone.”

  “You lost your phone? Of all days!”

  I looked around at the chaos, the production assistants moving at double speed. “Why is everyone packing up?”

  Violet’s eyes went wide. “Do you not know?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Guys, we are going to need the studio for ten. If you would get the fuck out, thank you . . .” She motioned for the production assistants to go. “But don’t go far. There’s a lot to do!”

  Everyone shuffled out, leaving the two of us alone.

  Then Violet motioned for me to have a seat. “A Little Sunshine’s cooked,” she said.

  I looked at her, stunned. “What?”

  “Evelyn emailed with a spreadsheet of all the advertisers who have pulled their ads, or who are threatening to pull, or are threatening to sue,” Violet said. “No one wants to be in the A Little Sunshine business. And the studio wants us out of here by the end of business today. They sent . . . like . . . an official legal email saying you had rented the studio space under false pretenses and they demanded we vacate by the end of the business day.”

  Violet, who looked seriously afraid I might throw something, turned away and continued the work of loading files into boxes, of packing up the studio.

  I took a breath and focused. Of course advertisers were going to balk. I just had to prove that the fans were loyal to me over any of these rumors. I just needed to stop the hemorrhaging. I would draft a carefully worded email, supportive notes from my fans attached. As long as the fans stayed loyal, I’d have the money folks back in no time.

  “And how’s the fan base hanging in?” I said.

  “About eight hundred thousand on Twitter.”

  “I lost eight hundred thousand followers?”

  “No, you have eight hundred thousand followers left. You lost 1.9 million.”

  “I can do the math!”

  “Do you wanna do it for Facebook, too?”

  A nightmare, this was turning into a nightmare. And why would the studio also sting me? It didn’t make any sense unless there was another reason. A business reason. A way to turn my loss into their gain. Or someone who had figured out how to.

  Ryan. The hit from the studio had Ryan written all
over it. He had convinced them to kick me out. He had given them a compelling reason. But what was it, exactly?

  “Get Ryan on the phone,” I said.

  Violet stared up at me, again a deer in headlights. “I will, but I think you should know first that Ryan and Meredith just issued a joint press release,” she murmured.

  “Proclaiming my guilt?”

  “No, announcing that they are doing their own show.”

  And there it was. My loss, their gain.

  Violet opened the phone and held out the press release, so I could see for myself. “Putting the Pieces Together,” she said. “A tale of divorce and dessert.”

  “A show about their divorce?”

  “Divorce. And reconciliation,” Violet said. “They did a flash poll, and it seems that people want them to work it out, despite his affair. With you.”

  “It was hardly an affair.”

  “All the better,” she said.

  She returned to her file boxes, dumping things inside.

  I tried to not explode, to stay proactive. “I’m going to go and check my email.”

  “Probably a good idea. You have some doozies in there.”

  I drilled her with a look.

  “I’m just saying!”

  “Don’t.”

  I headed for the laptop on my kitchen countertop—soon to be Meredith’s kitchen countertop—to counteract any additional damage Ryan had done. Fourteen hours ago, Ryan was professing his love to me. Now he was professing it to his wife. Was any of it real to him? It was all a little real, but the only thing that mattered to Ryan at the end of the day was Ryan. And he was going to do whatever he needed to in order to save his own ship. Including sinking mine in the process.

  I opened my email to one hundred new messages. Maybe that sounds like a lot, but it was a pretty typical morning. Maybe even a little light.

  I wasn’t surprised that there weren’t more emails waiting for me. I’d learned early on that people stay away if they think you’re struggling. They don’t want the stink to fall on them too. It’s a strategic error, though. I always emailed the day after someone’s show went belly-up, after a failure. So I would be the person they turned to, the person they thought was on their side. That individual could be useful.