by Brigid Coady
Had she really spent her whole Sunday curled up on the sofa trying to set these relationships up? And she still didn’t feel any nearer a solution. Okay, so maybe Googling people and then checking out the shows they were in on Netflix wasn’t neurosurgery but it definitely counted as research and that was work, wasn’t it?
The front door slammed shut, disturbing her thoughts. She looked up to see a sweaty Gee in the doorway.
Post-run Gee might be one of her favourite versions of him. She watched as he did a few side stretches.
Damn, she should send a thank you letter to Nike for designing the low side cut vest he was wearing. A flash of damp chest made her hug her cushion closer. He hadn’t re-waxed, she thought, feeling relieved as she looked at the dusting of hair shading the dips and valleys of his six pack.
He wouldn’t need to give that Teen Choice award for Male Hottie back anytime soon.
She quickly turned her face to the television screen but didn’t see what she thought might be on it. She never won at poker.
‘What are we watching?’ He came over to her and tried to snatch the remote control. Lickable abs or not, she automatically grasped the remote harder and held it as far from him as she could. Ten years’ experience meant she knew his sneaky attack ways.
‘Ouch.’ Had he really just sat on her?
She looked up to see him sitting on her thighs, leaning over her to grab the remote. His tank top dipped and her nose almost brushed the dip of his collarbones.
Her mouth watered.
‘Gee, come on this is childish,’ she croaked.
He laughed, the sound vibrating through her.
And then he wiped his sweaty cheek against hers. Was it bad that even his clammy sweaty skin made her want to lean in?
She didn’t want to give up but she pushed the remote control at him, breathless.
‘Ha!’ He held it aloft like Excalibur.
‘You are a dick.’ She groused as she pushed him off her legs.
‘But you love me anyway,’ he said as he threw himself prone onto the other sofa and changed the channel.
She made a production of scrubbing her face with tissues, exactly where he’d wiped his sweaty cheek against hers. No need for him to know.
The theme tune to Teen Wolf came on. How the hell he’d managed to make it to his thirties without someone killing him, i.e. her, she wasn’t sure. He gave her whiplash.
It was going to be a long afternoon. And she still had to make her obligatory calls to the parents. She hoped Mum had dropped the Alps idea because she didn’t have the energy.
***
‘I can’t believe you sat on me…’ she said as the third episode of the werewolf show came on.
She could still feel the warm weight of Gee on her thighs almost three hours later. The light dimming outside as the days were getting shorter.
‘Hush, Ems…’ He waved a hand from the sofa.
‘You really only watch it for Sterek,’ Emma said mentioning the biggest ship on the show.
‘If I wanted my hit of Sterek, I’d be better off reading fan fiction. The writers have completely ruined it.’
She pulled her laptop back to her. She agreed with him. She made up much better and believable stories every day for work. She tried to filter out Gee’s muttering and egging on of the characters on the show.
Okay, she thought, Amit’s shortlist was done which was good. It had been pretty quick, and would probably hold up under some scrutiny from even the most eager fans. But Ed and Will, well, they were a pain. How could two guys cause so many issues before she’d even got them introduced to a woman?
Not that it was their fault. No, this was all on Si and whoever in Maple Groove Records had thought up their brand personas. She looked back at the thick booklet she had been given last week.
The narratives they’d built for Ed and Will were quite frankly childlike and two-dimensional. Any intern could’ve done a better job than this. With all the data and analytics, they could’ve done something revolutionary, but instead their insights sucked. They were stuck using tired boyband tropes and images that dated back to The Monkees.
And now, with social media showing every facet of their lives, fans could work out when things didn’t add up. They would be able to drive a truck through any narrative they created if they kept it this obvious. If you wanted to sell a story or a fauxmance you needed some element of truth. That was basic common sense when weaving any kind of tale.
She flicked to the section about Will. According to his brand guidelines, he was to be the normal bloke next door who liked footie and his supermodel girlfriend. But how did that appeal to his demographic, she thought. That would give him an in with a heterosexual male set, but they weren’t the ones buying BOTP merchandise or music. How was this supposed to appeal to teen girls? If that wasn’t a dichotomy she didn’t know what was. They should sack the record company insight team. They were probably all middle-aged white men who thought teen girls would accept any kind of dross… They needed to try harder. She flicked back to Will’s key attributes page. These bullet points were so far from the Will she’d met. Nope, he was no boy next door. Potential dictator, maybe. Troublemaker, definitely.
And Ed. She read through his section – the phrase ‘adorably slow’ was used throughout the presentation. That, and the word ‘womaniser’. So, she had to work out a narrative for an adorably slow womaniser? None of it tallied with the intelligence she’d seen and the fact the bloke seemed like a puppy, the least likely womaniser she could think of.
But maybe they knew what they were doing, she thought dubiously. This was why she preferred jobs where she had free rein and was in at the beginning. When you had to try to shoehorn ill thought out story parts into anything it never went completely right.
She turned back to her own presentation. The bullet points were remarkably sparse for Will and Ed.
Okay, she could do this. She was a professional… Maybe she could work up some narratives for Ed that made him seem like he was ‘reformed’ from his womanising days, before they introduced the new love interest. That might work. She screwed up her face to see if that made her brain think faster.
But finding a supermodel that wouldn’t tower over Will would be a problem. She looked at his stats page. Five feet nine? She didn’t think so, five eight, maybe… if he was wearing very thick soled shoes.
‘What are you frowning at?’ Gee asked as Netflix asked if they were still watching the show. They’d been sitting here for too long if it had got to that point.
‘Your smell,’ she lied.
She didn’t want Gee to know what she was doing. And it wasn’t because it was a boyband she was working with. A boyband who were substantially more successful than the one he’d been in. No, he wasn’t that kind of bloke. It was just, she knew he didn’t like what she did. Even though she knew Mega! didn’t ask anyone do something they didn’t want. Maybe when the plans were better fleshed out and the band had bought into them, she’d tell him. Wouldn’t she?
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Gee sniff himself.
‘That is gross, Knightley,’ she said.
‘You love it,’ he said pushing himself off the sofa and throwing the remote at her.
‘Good, go shower, you filthy beast,’ she said catching the remote one-handed. ‘And I know you’re flipping me off,’ she said without looking round.
‘Whatever.’
Emma heard the squeaking of the stairs, the familiar creaking and rhythm of his footsteps. They were as familiar to her as her heartbeat. Sighing, she went back to her work. It was a good working list of possibilities, at least on paper. But, something felt off about it. It didn’t sing to her like it usually did. She was missing the usual fizzle that said she’d found a good match. Maybe it was all the logistics she’d have to do to work out how they would have met these women and when. She didn’t need it to look like there had been a mass ‘fauxmance’ convention where they’d all hooked up. Pop culture
’s version of speed-dating. She was probably tired, she was only worrying because she needed to make this look as ‘real’ as she could. And she wasn’t going to let Will Poulson win.
Chapter Twelve
Gee’s grey shirt was on her desk on Monday morning. It didn’t look like it had been ripped or stretched in the midst of some passionate clinch. She picked it up and shook it out.
It looked remarkably undamaged.
Damn, well maybe Dan was a more considerate lover. She didn’t want to think about what Gee would have said if it had been damaged. Without thinking she brought it to her face and inhaled.
It didn’t smell like Gee. Which was a stupid thing to think because Jamie had been wearing it and he used different laundry detergent. But it felt weird, like seeing something familiar through a filter.
She quickly put the shirt down.
‘Hey,’ Jamie said popping his head over the desk divider.
Oh no, that was not the face of a man who’d been snogged senseless all Saturday night. His forehead was all crinkly and the corners of his mouth turned down.
What was it with all the men she knew and pouts?
She put her laptop into the docking station, and tucked the shirt into her backpack, her fingers lingering on the soft knit.
No, she had work to do and she needed Jamie concentrating on how he was going to help her sell these fauxmances once they were signed off. She took her hand away and zipped the bag back up.
‘Coffee?’ Emma said thinking longingly of the presentation that was burning a place on her hard drive. She still had so much work to do, but Jamie pulled a very effective confused and unhappy look.
They shuffled into the kitchen.
‘So?’ She asked as she pressed the buttons on the coffee machine.
‘Well, we chatted in the car and then he let me out at home,’ he said, pouring boiling water from the kettle into a mug and then jabbing a spoon into the tea bag seeping there.
‘No moves?’ That was weird, she would have totally bet on Dan being the type to casually throw an arm over the back of the seat, and then within seconds of the arm hitting the other person’s shoulder it would turn into a snogging session.
Basic, old school, but could be very effective under the right circumstances and with enough alcohol consumption. Almost as good as going bowling and having someone demonstrate good technique by cuddling up behind you.
Jamie should have got lucky. What had gone wrong?
‘Nope, mostly he talked about work and I nodded along,’ he said, dragging the tea bag out of the mug. ‘Although he does have some funny ideas about what a queer audience is interested in…’ They stood together sipping their drinks saying nothing for a few moments.
‘Hey, Jamie, Emma.’ Rob from Tech Dev said quietly from the doorway before hurrying off again.
Crap. Rob. Emma watched as Jamie smiled for the first time that morning.
Nope, this wouldn’t do.
‘Fear not, I have a plan,’ she said. Well, she didn’t have one now but she’d have one by the end of the day. She was never knowingly without one. And Rob’s appearance had reminded her why.
As she walked back to her desk, she watched as Jamie’s head bowed, his shoulders hunched. She couldn’t think about the whole Jamie and Dan issue now, she didn’t have time. They would have to wait. She had some other matchmaking to do that she was getting paid for.
She sank into her chair and turned on her laptop. Maybe some kind and benevolent spirit would have finished it overnight, she dreamed. Sadly, when she opened the file it was still the same unfinished presentation she’d closed and saved last night. At least she had narrowed the list of women for the three band members down, so each had a top three. Not a great top three, there were still huge gaps. It was so frustrating.
For Amit it was easy, there was an up and coming girl band that Max was working with that needed their own PR boost, and two of the members in it were single and up for a bit of fake romance. Either one of them would work. She only needed to tweak Amit’s narrative to make the story fit. The third possibility was a new-on-the-scene American model.
Emma grimaced. The model had been fauxmancing before, would it be too obvious? Would the fans figure out it was a set up? Maybe, but she had a similar background to Amit’s.
And they needed the US connection if that was the market they wanted to grow into. She squinted at the slide with the model on and the bullet points about why and how she would work. Yes, it would work. She nodded her head, left her in and clicked onto the next section.
She stared at the photos of Ed and Will.
It shouldn’t be this hard, but the Maple Groove’s marketing plan still jarred with her. Especially from what she’d seen last week when she’d met the boys. What did they call it, cognitive dissonance, the inconsistency between what she saw and what she was being told to sell?
The echo of Will’s words, to bring it on, ran through her head. Well, she never backed down from a challenge.
She moved her head from side to side, loosening her neck muscles. She’d have a definitive list for the two of them by lunchtime if it killed her, and then the narratives to sell it by the end of the day. She wasn’t letting Malcolm McKee down, this was what was going to get her promoted and supercharge her career. She didn’t mind those sorts of changes to her timeline.
Yes, Jamie and Dan were just going to have to deal with their own life for today.
***
‘Done,’ she whispered, forcefully pressing the save button on her presentation. Then she pressed it a few more times to be certain.
And if that didn’t knock Malcolm, Maple Groove, Si and Will’s socks off then there was no justice. She flicked back through the slides. Oh, she was good.
Thank goodness Gee wasn’t there or he’d be making wisecracks about the smug smile she knew was on her face.
Ed’s face flashed up on the presentation. Taking into account the womaniser image, she knew she needed an older woman. If it looked like he’d messed around with someone who was eighteen or nineteen, he’d come across as bad. But break the heart of someone older… it wouldn’t be so bad.
Mind you, Emma shuddered at the thought of the heavy-handed way they’d dealt with his PR relationships before. Pairing him with a woman in her early thirties when he was seventeen had been a misstep. And also icky.
Okay, so older but not icky old. She’d done some calculations. They had to be between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. More famous in the US than the BOTP boys. Up for a fauxmance and able to sell a story.
She could feel the smile getting wider.
Oh, she was good. So good.
The first face on the slide, all blonde wholesome goodness, America’s sweetheart. She’d get them tabloid inches. Okay, Ed would probably have at least one breakup song blaming everything on him on her next album. It seemed to be her way, pseudo-confessional pop songs, but it was worth the risk and had the advantage of spinning the relationship out longer. That is, of course, if it didn’t turn into a proper romance like Phooke.
Emma looked at the glossy wedding photo stuck to the divider.
That was probably asking too much.
She flipped to Ed’s next option, a reality TV star just breaking into modelling. She came with instant name recognition, didn’t write confessional songs and they could probably get away with playing out the whole love story with planted articles and pap shots.
The third option, she grimaced at. It was a bit low key but could work for a slow burn and build up. Maybe not great for the US market.
Emma stared at the cookery writer’s picture. The good thing about her, she decided, was she was a blank page. Emma could weave narratives and backstories around her. Plant blind items to allude to a secret romance, they could cry for privacy and then ‘accidentally’ leave clues on social media.
She screwed up her face. It was a safe option but she kept it in.
And then there was Will.
He’d had a
girlfriend for years from home before he made it big. They had never hidden her but never used her. If he moved onto someone massively famous then it would look like he’d become too big for his breeches, leaving the normal bloke persona behind.
What he needed in a ‘girlfriend’ was someone with attitude. If only Kristen Stewart hadn’t got herself a girlfriend. Ditto Cara Delevigne, although she’d probably tower over him.
So Emma had gone for punk and edgy.
Ha, Will. Bring it on, she thought, as she flipped through the images. There was Beecee Pixie, a peroxide blonde indie singer, who flipped the bird almost as much as Will did.
The petite and feisty Helen Book, an actress who was breaking out of quirky teen roles. Her androgynous look would work well.
And last, a bland cookie cutter former Disney actress who was struggling to be remembered. She was American but didn’t have the same recognisability as the others. And she kind of looked like Will’s kid sister.
Hell, she thought, it was her wild card and she rounded off the list of three. Not quite the supermodel girlfriend the record company had been looking for but, well, she was the expert here, that was what they were paying her for.
The best thing about all of these choices for all the boys, was that other than the initial meeting which would be different for all of them, the actual fauxmance would look exactly the same.
She smiled as she looked at the timelines.
If the band’s concerts started at the beginning of November, they could have the relationships seeded in the press mid-October, followed by some pap photos and blurry personal shots of them in costumes for Halloween.
Emma checked the calendar to find out where they were at the end of October.
They were in LA, this would be good. She added a line.
Visit Knotts Scary Berry Farm.
Excellent. Cheesy but would work really well for the US market. With the added bonus of there probably being lots of fans around for fan service.
Okay, so then they had the girlfriends being seen at their concerts, there would be dates in frozen yoghurt shops and Starbucks. A sprinkle of cute shopping trips and holding hands in front of conveniently placed photographers. Add in allusions to them using private planes, flying them to meet in different places, when in actuality no one ever left. Package it all up and give it to The Daily Planet and let the general public join the dots.
