The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet (17 page)

Maybe, however, it’s the reverse. Maybe he wants to learn about web video from me—after all, he knows about my videos. Thankfully, with Lydia’s intervention and a discreet
after-dinner conversation, we managed to clue Ricky in to not mentioning the videos in front of my parents anymore, but now . . . now he sort of thinks he’s in on this great secret.

First Caroline, now Ricky Collins. The oddest people have discovered my videos. I don’t really know how to feel about it, except that Ricky never seemed to notice that I (and my mother)
called him a dickhead on them. Which, is good, I suppose.

I just wish I could figure out what he wanted from me. From us. Other than a bunch of fancy meals my mom labors over for hours and then forces us to sit through multiple courses of with
painfully polite conversation. Mostly from Ricky, and mostly about Catherine De Bourgh.

I would like to figure this out before Mom gets desperate, decides to up her game, and goes back to bankrupting the family with her elaborate meals. I did spy another mortgage meeting in my
dad’s day planner (yes, I’ve taken to snooping through my dad’s desk, what’s your point?) and with that and the remodel, it makes me worried that such a time is coming
sooner than I think.

My phone lit up like a Christmas tree this morning. Kitty was sleeping on my chest and stared at me angrily when I moved her. If Kitty was here, it must have meant that Lydia
had gotten up very early that morning, to catch the bus to community college for class registration. Lydia had lost car privileges again and been forced onto public transit ever since she got bored
and decided to teach herself papier-mâché and left her life-size replica of her old pony Mr. Wuffles in the backseat of her/Mom’s car, wherein it melted.

Mom was not happy.

Neither was Kitty when I pushed her off my chest to reach for my phone.

My heart started going a little faster. It had been a while since I’d heard from George Wickham. His job rolled out of town and he got caught up in other things, as did I. Truth be told, I
hadn’t thought that much about him . . . except for the occasional daydream about his surprisingly charming shoulders. But now . . . he was texting me again. Interesting.

I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. I typed back:

(I put the smiley face on just in case. But then I worried I should have gone with the winky face.)

And now, I was picturing him in a Speedo. How did it get so hot in my room?

Well, well, well. George Wickham was texting again, possibly coming back through town. This could make for a very welcome distraction from the perpetual annoyance of Ricky Collins.

“Are you sure you want to put this online?”

Charlotte leaned over my shoulder, watching the playback of the video I shot today. I’m currently rocking back and forth, such is my shock and anger. On tomorrow’s video, I was
supposed to be talking about how my mother is crazy and trying to push me and Ricky together—heck, she even mentioned “partnering” with him, which ew—when, suddenly, Ricky
himself was making the same proposal.

While I was filming my video.

Yes, I got proposed to by Mr. Ricky Collins. On camera.

Except, what he asked me was not for my hand in marriage (his hands already being full with his as-yet-unmet Canadian fiancée), but instead, my hand in business.

He asked me to be his business partner at Collins & Collins.

Apparently, it was his objective in coming here all along. Packing up his mother’s house was the excuse. His primary investor, Catherine De Bourgh, had advised him to get a business
partner, presumably someone who knew about this “Internet video craze and how to monetize it.” Ricky, having run into Charlotte and me at VidCon, and been impressed by my videos’
viewership (he even asked to see my analytics, which felt a little invasive. Like, if when you went to the doctor, he took down your address and then asked how much you pay in rent. But I
digress.), decided that I would be the perfect person to . . . how did he put it? “Share this most important part of my [his] life.”

Someone should point his fiancée to my videos. They would be educational.

Regardless, the lack of background and education that Ricky has in Internet video is surpassed only by the lack of respect he has for me, if the way he went about offering this proposition shows
me anything.

First, he said that my lack of connections in the industry were a hindrance.

Secondly, he said he would have to compensate for my lack of business acumen.

Then, he said that I would have to give up my pursuit of my degree, and while that was a huge sacrifice (for him—not having a business partner with an advanced degree would be shameful),
it was one he was willing to make.

All of this . . . for the chance to make corporate how-to videos with the hopeful future prospect of bad reality TV.

My gut churned as I listened to him. And the only thing I could do was listen because he, as per usual, did not let me get a word in edgewise. Finally I had to interrupt—well, yell at
him.

I told him no. It took him a few times to get it; thinking I was negotiating, he offered me benefits, and a signing bonus, bigger and bigger manila envelopes of corporate compensation, and . .
.

I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I could have stomached Ricky or stomached his business model I would have considered it—but I can’t stand either. So I told him off, as forcefully
and finally as I could.

“I am well-connected, funded, and offering you a respectable position,” he’d bristled. “As charming as you are, you are unlikely to ever be offered anything comparable
with your connections and degree.”

Read: I was turning down the best if not only offer I’ll ever get and am ruining my life in doing so.

There are times you have to be reserved. Circumspect. And then there are times you need to forcibly eject a guy from your bedroom—which he barged into without asking in the first
place.

Oh, no, wait—that’s not true. He did ask permission to come into my room and interrupt everything with his insistent proposal. He asked it of my mother.

I’m pretty sure my mother has been in on this scheme for a while now. She must have known about his intentions toward me—it certainly explains all those hints she dropped about
“partnering” (still ew).

It also explains why she was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs after Ricky left.

“Lizzie! What are you doing? I just saw Mr. Collins and he said that he offered you a job and I said congratulations to him and to you . . . and then he said that congratulations would
have to wait until he’d convinced you to take it! What did you tell him?” she asked, barely letting my foot touch the bottom stair.

“I told
Ricky
no, Mom.”

She looked at me as if I had just admitted to murdering a penguin. “You go after him right now, and you tell him you changed your mind!”

“No, Mom. I don’t want to work for him.”

“I DON’T CARE!” my mother screeched. After this there was some incoherent yelling and badgering, punctuated only by the words “Wait until your father gets home!”
and the occasional sob and threat to march across the street and bring Ricky Collins back here.