“And say what? ‘Did dodo murder you?’ ”I never should have hacked his phone.I was no good at keeping secrets. I was seconds away from confessing everything.
“Uh, no. Just ask him something about work. Literally anything except for what you just said.”
“Oh, right.”Duh.I got out my phone and typed out a text:
Me:Should I bring anything special to our meeting at the Manhattan Menagerie?
It was kind of a dumb question, but it wasn’t the worst. I hit send.
No reply. No reply. No reply. “Oh my God he’s definitely dead,” I said.
“You sent the text four seconds ago. Take a deep breath.”
For some reason I did the opposite and started holding my breath. At least ten more excruciating seconds passed. And then my phone dinged.Ahhhh!
Tanner:Nope.
Nope?That’s ALL he has to say?
Me: Nope?! That’s all you can say? I’ve thought you were dead all morning!
I was about to hit send when another message came.
Tanner: Actually, on second thought…maybe bring an umbrella. I’ve heard you can have a pretty shitty time in the aviary if you forget one.
Tanner: To clarify, I meant that the birds are gonna shit on us.
Me:Wow, nice dad joke.
Me:Speaking of dads…I bet dads hate you.
I immediately regretted hitting send on that last one. In my head it felt like the perfect opportunity to try to find out if he’d pissed off some girl’s dad. But in reality it was an absolutely terriblesegue. And honestly, I bet most dads loved him. He was a very charming guy.
Tanner: They do hate me. But only because I steal their jokes.
Me:And their daughters?
Tanner: What? Is your dad mad that you work for me? I know he would have preferred you go into accounting, but that wouldn’t have been a good fit. You were born for marketing. Anyway, gotta go. I’ll have a car pick you up at 5 for our meeting at the menagerie.
He was definitely pretending to be innocent with the whole daughter’s thing. But there was no time to dwell on that. I’d been neglecting my work all morning, and there was SO MUCH to do. Once Spaceboy signed on, we’d been getting a ton of invitation requests from influencers. Which was exactly what we wanted. But it was too many. So I had to go through and vet each one. Less than 100K followers?Better luck next time.Stupid name?No invite for you. Ugly pictures?Byyyye.
More importantly, though...we still didn’t have a caterer. Well…kind of. Tanner had found a replacement caterer for hors d'oeuvres, but apparently their desserts tasted like sand. So we were still in need of a good pastry chef.
No pastry chef worth our time would deign to return one of my calls, but they would likely reply to Tanner. So my job was to make a list of my top 3, and then he’d make the calls.
It took me all of ten seconds to make my list. At the very top was Chef Santiago. He had a restaurant in the city, but he also ran one of the most successful YouTube cooking channels. Without Chef Santiago’s videos, I never would have been able to help Joe save his family’s sugarcakes business. He was my cooking idol.
“Do you really think I should put Santiago’s on the list?” I asked Chastity. “I feel like Tanner wanted a list of bakeries rather than restaurants with 3 freaking Michelin stars. What are the odds that he’d be able to fit us in so late? Even just for dessert?”
“Almost zero,” replied Chastity. “But those were also our odds of getting Spaceboy to play at the party, and Tanner made that happen. So I say go for it. You need to get used to Tanner making all of your wildest dreams come true.”
“Yeah. When he’s not too busy banging people’s daughters.”
“Would you prefer he bang people’s sons?”
“No!”Gross!
“Then he doesn’t really have many options…”
