Bad Reputation

by Stefanie London

  “People or person?”

  His lip quirked. “What did you say last week? You didn’t go back for seconds?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, this was the same. I dated a girl in my early twenties who was a dancer—contemporary mostly, but she did ballet as well.” He paused. “I thought she was it…and after three years, I asked her to move in with me, and she told me she couldn’t keep living a lie. She said the only reason she’d stayed with me so long was because she was worried about losing the connection to my family if she broke up with me.”

  Ouch. Remi cringed. “That’s brutal.”

  “When you have a powerful family, people sometimes pretend to be interested because they want something from you.”

  “Is that why you wanted to know what your mother said to me?”

  “I was worried she was going to warn you away from the show. But yeah…I guess I wanted to see your reaction as well.”

  The words revealed a lot, even if his facial expression remained neutral. It wasn’t hard to see why people wanted a piece of him. Although she couldn’t imagine needing to pretend anything with Wes—everything he stirred in her was the real deal. Which was exactly why it’d been hard to keep her distance.

  “I’m only after you for legitimate reasons,” she said with a wink.

  “Oh yeah?” His eyes roamed her hungrily. “What’s that?”

  “I had to see if the Anaconda was real.” She couldn’t even get through the sentence without breaking off into laughter. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Laugh all you want, Remi. I’m going to make you pay for that later.”

  Remi reached for her drink, unable to wipe the smile off her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the excited frisson of a real connection. All she had to do was make sure she kept that feeling in check. This thing with Wes was still a bad decision and she couldn’t afford to let it get out of hand. Indulging did not mean throwing all caution to the wind. They would have to keep it quiet, and she would still have to keep her heart under lock and key.

  Chapter 18

  “I think there’s a lot more to Wes beneath the surface, and I can’t say I got there in the short time we dated. Beware the charming smile—it’s a locked door.”

  —StillDating

  Remi was the kind of person who needed to work problems out of her system with some kind of physical activity. Action kept her mind calm enough to look at things with an objective eye—as much as was possible—and rehearsals for Out of Bounds had been kicking her butt on a daily basis.

  That’s why she’d decided to accept Annie’s offer for a drink only two days after their blowup. Plus, she was hoping it would stop her friend from calling every couple of hours. She’d had to turn her phone off earlier that day because the notifications were driving her nuts. But that was Annie in a nutshell—the woman was like a dog with a bone when she wanted something.

  Remi walked into the Williamsburg bar where they’d agreed to meet. She’d left the theater early for a remedial massage in the hopes it might help with some of the tightness in her calves that was causing issues with her jumps. There was nothing like the punishing touch of her massage therapist, Isla, to get things working the way they were supposed to.

  Since this bar was only a few blocks away, Annie had offered to meet her there. It was unusual she was even out of work at this hour. Normally, Darcy and Remi had to pry her away from her laptop during the week. But she must have left early, because she was already perched on a stool with a cocktail in front of her when Remi arrived. Her shoulder-length, brown hair hung in a curtain across her face as she tapped furiously at her phone.

  “Hey,” Remi said as she walked over and slung her bag over the back of the barstool next to Annie.

  “Oh, hey.” Annie offered a tentative smile. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

  “You didn’t leave me a lot of choice,” she replied as she took a seat. “People were starting to wonder if my phone was possessed.”

  “Sorry about that.” Annie tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing a neat, single pearl stud. “I couldn’t concentrate on work and I wanted to set things straight. I feel really bad about how things went down on Sunday.”

  Remi studied her friend for a moment. It was hard to believe this was the woman behind Bad Bachelors. In her white silk blouse and black pencil skirt, freckles dusting her nose where a pair of chunky black glasses sat, she looked totally unassuming. Gorgeous, but unassuming.

  It made her want to laugh. The bar had several groups of men scattered around it—a couple of suits in one corner, a cluster of hipsters in another. A lone man with blond, surfer-style hair and beads around his neck chilled out at the end of a bar, nursing a beer. How many of them would want to know Annie’s identity? That she was the “Dating Information Warrior” who created a platform for all their dirty laundry to be aired.

  “I know I was wrong to keep secrets from you and especially for dragging Darcy into it,” Annie said, pausing to take a delicate sip of her drink. “It’s fine that you’re pissed at me, but please don’t be mad at her. She’s sick over it and it’s not her fault. I put her in that position.”

  Remi didn’t want to soften, but the loyalty that Darcy and Annie had for each other was admirable. It was funny now though, looking back on Darcy’s relationship with Reed knowing that Annie was partially responsible for the wedge that’d been driven between them before they worked everything out.

  “I’m not pissed,” Remi said. “I’m hurt.”

  In her family, lies were the worst sin you could commit. Her mother had always said that if she could own up to her actions, then nothing would ever get between them. Which was exactly why her gut was churning over keeping this from Wes.

  “You have every right to be.” Annie traced the wooden bar, her fingers catching on a small indentation. “I was so terrified of people finding out I figured the best course of action was silence. The only reason Darcy found out was because Reed tracked me down.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  She laughed, but the sound was laced with bitterness. “I made a mistake. I was so blinded by worry that he was going to chew Darcy up and spit her out that I did something I shouldn’t have. I attacked him and someone he cared about, and in the process, I left myself open. It was a stupid move.”

  Remi wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. What was done was done.

  They paused as the bartender approached them and Remi ordered a diet Coke. Bert was coming to watch the Out of Bounds cast tomorrow, and she needed to be on her A game. But part of that had to include clearing her head of this issue with Annie.

  “Are you going to talk to me about it now?” Remi asked.

  Annie’s eyes darted around. The bar wasn’t yet busy, and nobody was within earshot. But she had that wild, paranoid look of someone who knew they had a reason to hide. “I need to know you’re not going to pass any of this along.”

  That was a tall order, considering how Remi had found out. Her mind shifted to Wes, to the playful smile and his warm hands and the passion with which he approached everything in life.

  By keeping this secret from him, they were starting something based on a lie.

  Starting something? You slept with him once. You don’t owe him anything.

  But she did. She owed him for opening a door to the career she’d so desperately missed. And she owed him for believing in her when she didn’t even believe in herself. Unfortunately, there were only two options at her disposal—lie to Wes and protect Annie or hand Annie over and lose a friendship.

  Dammit. She was screwed no matter which way she turned.

  “I won’t say anything,” she said reluctantly. No matter how hurt she was, there was too much history between them to decimate that relationship.

 
; Without Darcy and Annie, Remi might never have found her feet in New York. They’d helped her acclimatize to her new home, given her companionship, and been an ear in her moments of overwhelming homesickness. Her first few months in New York were a dark time, and the two women had been her light.

  “Thank you.” Annie reached across the bar and grabbed Remi’s hand. “I know I don’t deserve it.”

  “Tell me what happened.” Remi plucked the wedge of lemon from the rim of her drink and gave it a squeeze. “From the beginning.”

  “The site has…” Annie shook her head. “It’s taken on a life of its own. It was never meant to get this big.”

  “Why did you start it?”

  “Blind fury, I guess.” She tucked her hair back behind her ear, even though it hadn’t moved an inch since the last time she’d done it. “Obviously I was crushed after…”

  The engagement that wasn’t to be. Remi remembered it well, and it had given her the chance to support Annie in the same way Annie had supported her in the wake of her breakup and miscarriage.

  “But I had this strange delayed reaction. I was fine for a while. Then Darcy’s wedding fell through. More and more, I saw these beautiful, smart, talented women get bulldozed by relationships. They’d get swallowed up and broken down by men who treated them like they were disposable.” Her eyes shimmered.

  Annie didn’t appear sad. Rather, fury burned brightly in her pursed lips and clenched hands. She wasn’t the type of girl to lay down and accept defeat. To simply take whatever life threw at her. Hell no, she’d come out swinging. Always.

  “And it occurred to me that some of the guys had a pattern—search, seduce, destroy.” She ticked the items off her fingers. “They’d find women who caught their eye. Then they’d build them up and say all the right things only to walk away after getting what they wanted. The women who weren’t getting hurt were the ones who knew that, either because they’d learned that lesson, or because they didn’t place importance in traditional relationship goals.”

  It was true. Annie’s assessment covered Remi’s relationship with Alex to a T. He’d approached her after a day of rehearsals, and she’d been too star struck to decline his offer of a coffee. Over a few months, they’d met often, and he’d tell her how talented she was and how far she would go with the company. That one day, he knew they would be dancing together as principals.

  It was the dream she’d clutched to her chest ever since she was a little girl. The ultimate ballet fantasy.

  Then once the sex produced problems, he’d dropped her like a hot potato.

  Ever since, Remi had approached sex from a very different angle. It was something to be enjoyed, a way to blow off steam. But it meant nothing…until Wes.

  “And that’s even before you get into the more insidious behavior. The really nasty, damaging stuff like pigging and stealthing.” Annie shook her head, looking as though she might be sick. “Did you know there are groups of men who get a woman to agree to have sex with them and remove the condom in stealth without her permission exposing her to unwanted pregnancy and STDs? This is what women are facing in the dating world today. It’s dangerous, and we need a way to warn one another.”

  Remi had no idea how to respond. It was a disgusting and unsafe world in some corners of the dating jungle.

  “I wondered if there was a way to let people know before they got into a relationship what might be in store for them,” Annie said. “I know not all men are bad. And I don’t, despite what a lot of people have said, hate them.”

  She paused as a gentleman walked past, his eyes lingering with appreciation on them both. Annie took the break in conversation as a chance to order another drink.

  “So the problem we have,” Annie continued, “is that the ones who hurt you the most are able to do it because they know how to act like the good guys. I wanted to create something to shift that power. I figure, if women won’t spend thirty dollars on a lipstick without checking the reviews, then why should they open their hearts up to men without the same reassurance that they’re making a good decision?”

  It was a damn good point. And Remi had embraced Bad Bachelors in the beginning, using it to avoid men who might be tempted to call after a steamy night—possibly the opposite of how it was used by most women, but it worked for her. It offered some protection in a landscape where women were vulnerable.

  “I understand that.” Remi bobbed her head. “But people aren’t products. How can you classify something as complex as a human with five stars? And even then, positive reviews don’t always have a positive outcome for the person.”

  Wes was the perfect example of that.

  “Sex is…” Remi shook her head, trying to find the right words. “Complicated.”

  “I know.” Annie toyed with the stem of her cocktail glass. “And early on, before it blew up, I had moments where I wondered if I’d done this appalling thing. Was I taking everything the internet made terrible about human interaction and fueling it?”

  “People are vicious behind their computer screens,” Remi said. She’d seen it plenty of times reading the comments on a YouTube video or at the bottom of an article or blog post. Reviews for products like books or makeup could be just as bad; people bled snark and judgment onto their keyboards in a way that would never happen face-to-face.

  “That worried me at first.” She sighed. “Then I got an email from a woman who was divorced. She’d managed to walk away from an abusive relationship after putting up with constant gaslighting and physical abuse. She told me that she never thought she’d be able to date again. She was too scared of meeting someone like her ex-husband and getting trapped a second time.”

  Remi’s chest squeezed. “That’s awful.”

  “She said the app really helped her find the confidence to try again. A guy she worked with asked her out, and he had good reviews. So she went on a few dates with him. Now the relationship didn’t work out, because they didn’t have much in common, but she said that she would never have been able to take that step if it wasn’t for the app giving her some confidence that she knew what she was getting herself into.” Annie bit down on her lip. “I’ll admit it, Bad Bachelors started as a coping mechanism. But you, me, and Darcy had all experienced pain, and I wanted to see if there was a way to help others avoid it.”

  “And what about the good guys who get caught up in it?” Remi asked.

  “I ended up changing the way it works, so men have to connect their Facebook accounts. It was the only way I could stop myself from getting sued.” Her hand came up to her ear and she twisted the pearl stud around. “But anyone whose profile was created before that would still be on there. I couldn’t delete everything and start from scratch. I can only make sure the site is built to weed out the crap. The algorithm looks for indicators of fake reviews, and I read every email claiming a review is fake. But I won’t shut the site down, not when I know it does good things for a lot of women.”

  “If you believe in it so much, then why don’t you come forward?”

  Annie swiveled on her barstool and looked out into the bar. It was getting busier now, more groups of people had come in and the noise level was rising. The sound of laughter and conversation was mixed with the rattling of ice cubes in the bartender’s cocktail shaker. The scene was vibrant and warm. Fun. Nothing like the dark shadows of their conversation.

  “Could you imagine what would happen to me?” Annie looked at her. “I’d be outed within hours. I have no doubt that some of the people who send me threats would be crazy enough to show up on my doorstep. I’m doing something that makes people angry. The truth tends to have that affect.”

  Remi wasn’t sure how to feel. She understood Annie’s motivations and her fears, she understood the desire to do something good for her gender. And hearing her stories about the women she’d helped certainly made her believe there was some good coming from Bad Bachelo
rs. But the system Annie had created was also primed for abuse, it brought private information into the public—things which should exist for two people behind closed doors were suddenly detailed for the world to see.

  “So you’re going to keep Bad Bachelors alive?” she asked. She lowered her voice, because there were people coming closer to them now, crowding them.

  “I am.” She nodded. “The site is important. It’s helping people. I know some men might get caught in the crosshairs, like Wes, but it’s helping more people than it’s hurting.”

  Remi wasn’t so sure about that.

  “I know it’s a burden to have this information,” Annie said. “That was another reason I didn’t want people to know. It’s a tough secret to keep and I understand I’m asking a lot. But you know me, Remi. I believe in the good that this site does even if it didn’t start out that way.”

  “I’m sure you do believe it.”

  “So we’re still friends?” Annie’s eyes were wide and pleading. And it wasn’t a ploy to ensure her secret was safe. They were friends. Real friends.

  “Of course.” Remi sighed. “I don’t agree with everything you’ve done, but I understand.”

  She rolled her shoulders back. Everything hurt—her body, her head, her heart. Annie was right—this secret was a burden. But she’d committed to keeping it, so that meant sucking it up and moving on.

  * * *

  Wes let himself into the theater while it was still dark outside, well before anyone else was due to arrive. He flicked on the lights, juggling his laptop bag and takeout coffee cup in his free hand. The closer they got to opening night, the more there was to do. He’d met with the bank yesterday, to discuss loans for the show should things fall through with Bert. The outcome was bleak. Even leveraging himself to the hilt, things would be tight. He’d need to take a loan against his apartment to make it happen, not to mention making a quick sale on his car. With everything balancing on a knife’s edge, it was critical today went well.