Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Despite it being a show supposedly just about himself and his life, the flashes we got of his apartment looked like he couldn’t even live there, everything was so clean and neat and sparkling. Everything looked like a show room, like it couldn’t be moved or touched.
God, I hated his fucking smug and smarmy face. Everything about him that I had once valued was gone, and everything I’d ever found annoying or frustrating about him was dialed up to eleven. He was basically just showing off for the camera for an hour. Was this what people wanted to see? Some arrogant asshole just talking about himself for eternity?
It was boring as hell, and if I’d just been a normal viewer flipping channels, I would’ve switched to the football game or a rerun of a sitcom long ago.
Virginia actually got some screen time, though. That surprised me. Not because I’d thought that she wouldn’t want it - of course she would have, she’d seek all the attention that she could -but I hadn’t thought that the producers would want her in it. After all, Virginia wasn’t the award-winning chef in the equation.
But there she was, simpering and smiling at Theo, practically clinging to him, giving him these big doe eyes and talking about how amazing he was to the camera in the talking head interviews.
Brooke put her hand on my shoulder, probably thinking to reassure and steady me, but honestly, it didn’t affect me. I just felt… sorry for Virginia. The woman that I had fallen in love with all those years ago had been a bright and vibrant person. She had known what she wanted in life and she had been determined to get it, whether that was the latest pair of shoes or the restaurant or me. That had clearly later backfired on my ass when she’d decided that what she wanted was Theo and to hell with me and our daughter but. Anyway.
She had been someone worth falling in love with, was my point. She had been someone with a lot of good qualities.
Now, I couldn’t see any of those. I just saw this… this woman with no personality other than gushing about her lover. Husband? I wasn’t sure if she and Theo were married, and I found that I didn’t even care. I felt bad for her, sorry for her, to see this person who had once been so great, at least in my eyes, sink down to this level.
But I really didn’t care all that much about her. Seeing her didn’t affect me. After the devastation that she’d caused, it was a relief. A revelation.
And it was all because of Stevie.
I had someone else who fit me even better, someone that I could admire and love even more than Virginia. Stevie complimented me in a way that Virginia never had, a way that I had been too blind to see or had overlooked because I had wanted to believe in the good things and I’d loved her to distraction. But God, seeing her was just leaving me dead inside. Stevie lit me up.
Brooke sniffled, and I realized my daughter was starting to cry. I quickly hit pause on the video and turned to her. “Hey, honey, it’s okay.”
Brooke shook her head. “It’s not, it’s really not. I can’t believe, they’ve sold out. That’s not proper cooking. That’s just Theo talking about nothing for an hour. Look at what he was doing, what, just showing off fancy knife skills as he cut some vegetable? Going on and on about all his fancy pants experiences… I’m so ashamed, Dad.”
I handed her some tissues, rage boiling in me. I didn’t care about Virginia and honestly… I was surprised by how little I cared about Theo, too. Let them go and have their precious reality show. Who gave a fuck? Not me. I had my own life to worry about. And my life actually had substance.
But Brooke—Brooke didn’t deserve to feel like this. I wanted to punch Theo in the face and read Virginia the riot act for making my daughter feel this shitty. Brooke was a good girl and she’d been as patient as she could be through all of this and now she had more humiliation to deal with.
“Mom looks so desperate,” Brooke said, accepting the tissues and wiping at her eyes. “Like she’ll do anything for five more seconds of fame. Like she’s got no personality besides liking him and promoting him. She sounded like a parrot. And did you see that plastic surgery? I mean I try not to judge people, Dad, you know that. If someone wants plastic surgery I suppose it’s their right, it’s their body. But she looks awful, like she’s doing that thing where she’s trying to look so much younger than she is and—” Brooke hiccupped, wiping at her eyes some more, and then blew her nose. “Theo looks like an idiot. He looks like a complete idiot! I can’t believe I ever looked up to him. I thought he was so cool and now he’s just so full of hot air and he’s… he’s just an idiot!”