Page 40 of Slow Hands Cowboy

Addison frowned. “Everybody liked me.”

“Oh, no babe. They did not.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah. The people you were mean to didn’t like you.”

“I wasn’t mean to anybody.” The whole thing with Walker and prom pressed in on her. “Well, I was, but it was kid stuff, and also, Walker was popular. In his own right, and it isn’t like me not being friends with him hurt his clout or anything.”

“You had a reputation. For being a little bit superior to people.”

She frowned. “I don’t… How was I unaware of that?”

“Because you were in your bubble. Your Addison bubble. Your dad was the mayor, you had good grades, you were pretty, you were a cheerleader, and I guess you didn’t really need the people to like you who didn’t like you, also, it wasn’t like they were going to openly oppose you or anything. You were too popular for that.”

“Yes. I was popular. So…”

She paused. Of course, being popular was a very specific thing in high school. It didn’t actually speak to how many people liked you, so much as a position that you occupied, and for some reason she hadn’t fully taken that on board before this moment.

She had watched enough teen movies to know that a lot of people had resentment for the popular girl, both earned and unearned. The only person she had really been mean to in her recollection was Walker, but she had probably been dismissive of more people than she would care to think of.

She still felt uncomfortable at the idea that linking up with Walker might help her in some way. Mainly because she didn’t like the idea that her entire existence was going to be helped by other people’s reputations. Or hindered by it. Honestly, if people didn’t want to vote for her because of the way she had been in high school – obliviously lost in her own bubble, she could accept that, then that was fine. That was deserved.

For people to think that she was qualified for the job because of her dad, for them to question it because of Alan’s defection, or for them to rethink their stance on her because of Walker just irritated her.

Like she existed in the center of a constellation of men, and their feelings, impressions of her and mere presence mattered more than her own.

Because the reality was, most of the popularity, the privilege, all of that, that she had enjoyed came from her dad in the first place.

And it just made her feel… lost.

It made everything feel a little bit pointless. That she needed Walker’s help to save her now.

That none of it had ever been about her.

And yet she supposed she should be grateful because her mother’s reputation hadn’t managed to eclipse hers.

All it had taken was for enough good men to sign off on her.

“I have plans for handling all this on the social media front, but I’m not sure you’re going to love it because it involves automating some things. But I’ve been talking to some PR companies about positive astroturfing, among other things.” Anna laid out her plan for making sure conversations online were being monitored, managed and positively contributed to by programmed robots, which was something Addison would rather not know about. But what could you do when your whole image had been hijacked by videos of the worst moment of your life?

It reminded her so much of the day her mom left. She’d been playing in the treehouse in the backyard, a totally normal day. Until she’d fallen off the ladder at the top and plummeted to the ground below, badly skinning her knee and bruising herself, in addition to scaring years off her life.

She’d thought the fall had been the bad part, and then there had been a secret, worse thing waiting for her. They hadn’t been related, and she did know that, but they had become internal metaphors for her.

Falling wasn’t the worst part.

The wedding, that had been falling. Now there was fallout, and they had to do whatever needed to be done.

“Great,” she said. “Honestly, whatever works for the campaign.”

At this point, she needed that to happen more than she had at the beginning. If she were mayor, at least maybe then she would be judged on her own work.

If she did a bad job, then maybe people would hate her for that, they certainly wouldn’t keep on loving her just because of her dad.

If they loved her, maybe even a fraction of the credit for the work that she did would go to her. Maybe it would be her with no asterisk beside her name. Addison Carey, the mayor of Mustang River. And she would stand on her own two feet, or not at all, but maybe then something of it would be hers.

She wouldn’t be so tied to this… this need to prove herself. This need to pay her dad back. To be this perfect thing, because God knew now it was obvious that she wasn’t.