Skinnydipping Read online

  “Who do I have to sleep with to get a drink on this plane?”

  Beloved by countless fans for being devilishly dishy, outrageously funny, and always giving it to us straight, three-time New York Times bestselling author Bethenny Frankel now makes her fiction debut with the story of Faith Brightstone. Faith is an aspiring actress just out of college, who moves to L.A. determined to have it all–a job on the most popular TV show, a beach house in Malibu, and a gorgeous producer boyfriend. But when reality hits, she finds herself with a gig as a glorified servant, a role that has more to do with T&A than acting, and a dead-end relationship. Finally, Faith decides she’s had enough of La La Land and moves back to New York with just a suitcase and her dog, Muffin.

  Five years later, Faith has finally found her groove as an entrepreneur and manages to land a spot on a new reality TV show hosted by her idol–the legendary businesswoman and domestic goddess Sybil Hunter. Diving into the bizarre world of reality TV, Faith’s loud mouth and tell-it-like-it-is style immediately get her in trouble with her fellow contestants–the delusional socialite; the boozy lifestyle coach; the moody headband designer; and her closest friend, the ambitious housewife who eventually betrays her. Even Sybil is not what she appears.

  As the show comes to a dramatic close, Faith discovers that the man of her dreams may have just walked into her life. Will she choose fame or love? Or can she have it all?

  BETHENNY FRANKEL is the three-time bestselling author of A Place of Yes, Naturally Thin, and The Skinnygirl Dish. She is the creator of the Skinnygirl brand–which extends to cocktails, beauty, fitness, and health–and the star of her own Bravo TV show. In 2011, Bethenny won a Glamour Women of the Year Award and was named one of the Top 100 World’s Most Powerful Celebrities by Forbes magazine. She is a graduate of The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts. Bethenny lives in New York with her husband, Jason; daughter, Bryn; and dog, Cookie.

  www.bethenny.com

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  JACKET IMAGE COMPOSITE BY MELODY CASSEN

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  BACKGROUND © SHUTTERSTOCK

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  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

  Also by Bethenny Frankel

  A Place of Yes

  The Skinnygirl Dish

  Naturally Thin

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  Touchstone

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  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by BB Endeavors, LLC

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2012

  TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Joy O’Meara

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Frankel, Bethenny.

  Skinnydipping : a novel / Bethenny Frankel ;

  with Eve Adamson. — 1st Touchstone hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Touchstone book.”

  I. Adamson, Eve. II. Title.

  PS3606.R3856S58 2012

  813'.6—dc23

  2012005941

  ISBN 978-1-4516-6737-0

  ISBN 978-1-4516-6743-1 (ebook)

  This book is dedicated to our imagination. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to travel to places we never thought we could go, to dream about things that we never thought we could do, and to feel the feeling of pure freedom. Let your imagination run wild. It may take you somewhere so incredible that you can hardly believe it is true.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  skinnydipping

  prologue

  Where are the stilt walkers? Has anybody seen the stilt walkers?”

  I’m calm, but I can hear the shrillness creeping into my voice as I picture the absolute disaster that will result if Andy doesn’t show up soon with the damn stilts and the people to put on top of them. The stilt walkers are essential—the dramatic cherry on top of the charity carnival. The finale of Domestic Goddess, and the deciding factor in the rest of my life. And isn’t that typical? You raise $80,000 for charity, you erect a forty-foot tent practically single-handedly, you hire and coordinate seventy-five employees, and you produce the whole goddamn spectacle, and then your life hangs in the balance because of a couple of clowns on sticks. Meanwhile, the cameras are rolling and America is watching. My failure would make just as good TV as my success, so nobody cares whether I win or not. Nobody but me. And this is just what Sybil Hunter expects. I have to make this work.

  Somebody runs past pushing a popcorn cart that dribbles grease along the floor. The amplifier blares circus music, then cuts out with a crackling pop. A chunky, squinting boy in thick glasses grabs my arm—Jerome, the facility manager’s assistant I roped into helping me. He looks barely twelve years old. “The sno-cone machine is broken, one of the ponies is sick, and somebody left the banner on the floor and it got trampled,” he says, pushing up his glasses nervously.

  Easy, Faith. Easy. You’ve done this before. I’d handled events bigger than this, and disasters bigger than this, too. My eyes are fixed on the wide double doors standing open across the warehouse space, where Sybil Hunter stands, backlit, imposing, the evil overlord ready to reign terror and destruction on the final challenge of what has come to be, in my mind
, a sell-your-soul-to-the-devil concept: reality television. I imagine her smirk, her lust for my failure. I’m barely noticing the cameras rotating around in front of us, though part of me recognizes that my alarm is being recorded for national consumption. Tears are welling up, but I bite my lip hard, reminding myself what Sybil told me during the middle of the season, when my team lost a challenge and turned on me, the team leader. “A woman who shows weakness in this business won’t last long.”

  Suck it up, Faith. This is it. Keep your eye on the prize. With a last glance at Sybil’s Hitchcockian outline, I turn to the pimply kid waiting for instructions. They come out of me like machine-gun fire: “Call the vendor and demand another sno-cone maker within forty-five minutes. Get the sick pony out of here, call a vet, call the rodeo, whatever it takes. Repair the banner—just make it look good. And for God’s sake, get Andy and Jodi Sue over here now! I need my fucking team.”

  He nods and runs off. I stare at my clipboard. The list of unchecked items is three times longer than the list of checked items. I persuade a man with a mop to clean up the grease that’s trailing the popcorn machine. My eyes dart over the list, trying to prioritize at warp speed. Suddenly, Jodi Sue, eliminated contestant and disgruntled team member, is in front of me.

  “I can’t find Andy,” she says in her squeaky voice, her cleavage even more evident and elevated than usual in a bright yellow wrap dress with a plunged neckline. “I finished the caramel apples, the cotton candy machine looks great with the neon, and the programs were just delivered and they’re perfect.”

  “Show me,” I demand. She holds out one and I grab it. The glossy, oversized program has saturated carnival colors, balloons, clowns, and a Ferris wheel on the cover. Good, very good.

  “But Andy’s still MIA,” she adds, shrugging.

  “Where the hell is he? What could he possibly be doing with five stilt walkers in the middle of Manhattan?”

  “I really don’t know,” she says, shrugging again. “He won’t answer his cell phone.”

  “This is great. Just great. This is Shari Jacobs’s lucky day,” I mutter. I could just imagine Sybil Hunter fawning over my ex-BFF/archenemy and fellow finalist, as she pulled off her final challenge with typical high-rent perfection. I get a carnival, and she gets a baby shower for Sybil’s pregnant cousin. A fucking baby shower. I can just see the fondant baby bootie cupcakes and sterling silver rattle party favors and pink champagne. They’ll all act like best friends, trying to impress each other with how rich their husbands are.

  And here I am, sweating it out, pits soaked, with swamp crotch, trying not to have an anxiety attack, and running on fumes both on this warped excuse for a television show and in my life, with just eighty-seven dollars in my bank account and a team that hates me. Everything depends on an out-of-control carnival about to go horribly wrong. I’m so damn close to winning, and I need that prize more than anything, more than anyone else on the show. I just can’t bear going back to my so-called normal life.

  Now I’m sweating blood to make this event happen, and I can’t even get some paid extras on poles to show up—hell, I can’t even get my whole team to show up.

  I look around: total chaos. A group of union guys tries to unroll artificial turf into the same spot where another group is trying to set up the Ferris wheel. A speaker on the sound stage wobbles and topples over with a crash, nearly crushing the woman trying to secure it to the stand. I look at Jodi Sue in despair.

  “How are we going to do this?” I say. “How is this even possible?”

  “Search me,” she says. “It’s your challenge. I was eliminated weeks ago, thanks to you, and I wouldn’t be here helping you if it wasn’t in my contract, because I think you’re a bitch.” She smiles sweetly.

  I’m in this alone. It’s a zero-sum game.

  “OK, Jodi Sue,” I say. “Why don’t you just go sit on your ass out of the way and get your cleavage ready for the stilt walkers. They’re going to have a great view.” Her mouth drops open as I spin away and set off to track down Andy. Because if I don’t find those clowns in the next fifteen minutes, I might as well not even show up at the finale. As I storm past Sybil—she stands silently, critically in the doorway with her arms crossed—I can’t help myself. “What do you think, Sybil?” I ask. “Are you entertained? Is it everything you hoped to see from me? Because you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  PART ONE

  chapter one

  Who do I have to sleep with to get a drink on this plane?”

  I called out the request randomly, hopefully, as passengers pushed down the aisle into coach, their suitcases bumping my arm. Some of them raised their eyebrows at me, but I’m used to that. I’m rarely what you would call “appropriate,” although what these people around me didn’t seem to realize was that tequila is always appropriate. I just smiled at them.

  Besides, I couldn’t contain myself. Just minutes before, I had been sitting at the gate in Kennedy, devastated, trying with every inner resource I had not to break down into tears in front of everyone, and dreading how I would tell my father I’d missed the flight. Getting onto this flight meant everything to me. Everything. I’d skipped college graduation to catch this flight, but last night I’d stayed out until four club-hopping with friends I hoped never to see again, celebrating the end of my four-year imprisonment at NYU. I’d gone home with some handsome dark-haired Wall Street trader whom I’d then wrangled into driving me to my apartment, double-parking out front while I ran upstairs to grab my bag (and pull off last night’s sequined halter top and mini skirt in favor of a black jersey dress that didn’t wrinkle too badly), then driving me to the airport. Heading toward JFK, I lectured him about how fast to drive and which route to take. He’d dropped me off in front of the terminal, not sure what to do about my tears and hysteria about missing the plane. What was his name again?

  Anyway, I’d been too late—or so they’d told me, until the woman at the desk called my name.

  “Faith Brightstone, please come to the ticket counter.” I was sitting right in front of her, for God’s sake. Did she have to use the little microphone?

  “Yes? What! I’m here,” I said, jumping up and clutching my carry-on with suddenly renewed optimism.

  “There’s one seat left. Hurry!” She pointed to the door. I sprinted down the jetway, nearly toppling off my sample sale Manolos with the four-inch heels, the ones that had finally tipped my credit card over its $30,000 limit. I rushed breathlessly into the first-class cabin, where a flight attendant with her hair severely restrained in a blonde bun looked me in the eye, and there was that moment when we both knew I didn’t really belong in first class. I wondered, self-consciously, if I still smelled like champagne and sex. I pursed my lips to contain any telltale alcohol fumes and hoped the spray of Chanel No. 5 to the crotch had taken care of the rest.

  She surveyed me with undisguised condescension, her gaze traveling over my unwashed hair, my slightly puffy face and probably bloodshot eyes, and my rumpled dress, and fixing on my red leather carry-on, the one I’d purchased because I knew it would absolutely meet any airline’s carry-on standard. And because it was red, and stood out from the others. “You’re going to have to check that, dear,” she said, smugly.

  “What? But it’s small! We can squeeze it in, I know we can. Please!” Frantically, I unzipped the front pocket and pulled out the tangle of bras and underwear I’d packed, and stuffed them into my purse. “There. Just let me try to make it fit.”

  She sighed, barely able to keep from rolling her eyes. “I suppose we could move this, and this.” She spit out the words as she rearranged two other bags in the compartment above that one beautiful empty seat that was about to be mine. She took the carry-on from my hands and jammed it unceremoniously between a silver hardshell Tumi carry-on and a Louis Vuitton tote the color of browned butter. Then she actually wiped her hands on her skirt, as if my bag was covered in cooties. I almost laughed—with relief, because of a slight sense of hysteria I�
��d been nurturing since I woke up in a panic, and because she was just so mean that it was funny. She turned primly and walked away. Bitch.

  One day, I vowed, I would belong in first class, and people would wonder who I was. She’d be kissing my fully-paid-for Manolos.

  I threw myself into the seat and sighed with deep contentment. I made it! And now, at last, I could relax. I looked at the man sitting next to me—schlubby, middle-aged, with a thick rectangular mustache. An almost–Tom-Selleck type. He wore an expensive suit and had a pile of scripts on his tray table. I noticed a very nice briefcase under the seat in front of him. I smiled to myself. I was intrigued. It wasn’t the standard reading material I usually noticed on planes. I was really on my way to Los Angeles.

  So, in that spirit, where was my drink? Wasn’t that the whole point of first class?

  The woman with the blonde bun walked by, brusquely checking that everyone was following the rules for takeoff. She stopped at our row and told Almost–Tom-Selleck, “Sir, please put your tray table up for takeoff.” He moved the scripts to his lap, as if he’d done this a thousand times before. Although I didn’t like my odds considering our previous encounter, I decided it couldn’t hurt to ask again: “So … when do we get those drinks?” I asked her, trying out my best Hollywood smile.