Free Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy Page A

flowery summer dress and call a cab.
    Avalon Bay is a paradoxical coastal town full of rugged fishermen and multimillionaires. On one side of Main Street are high-end boutiques selling handmade soaps. On the other, pawnshops and tattoo parlors. The boardwalk is quiet on a weekday afternoon. Most of the bars are sparsely populated with sweaty locals propped up on stools watching ESPN with their pals.
    I walk farther than the last time I was here and reach a section still devastated by hurricane damage from a couple years ago. Several buildings are under construction. Nearby, a crew works on restoring a restaurant where scaffolding is erected around its exterior. Other businesses have been cordoned off with caution tape and plywood. It’s apparent they haven’t been touched since the storm tore off their roofs and flooded the interiors.
    I stop when I come to a quaint late-Victorian-style hotel. It’s white with green trim, and the entire back side of the building had been gutted by storm surge. The hotel’s walls were ripped out, its innards exposed. Old furniture and wrinkled carpets still wait forthe guests that aren’t coming. The weathered sign out front reads
The Beacon Hotel
in gold script font and is broken in two places.
    I wonder what happened to the owners that they never rebuilt. And how has no one swooped in to claim the property and restore it to its former glory? This is a prime location.
    My phone buzzes a few times with incoming emails, so I stop at an ice cream shop and buy a vanilla cone. Then I settle on the bench out front, scrolling through my inbox one-handed.
    The first email is an update from one of my site moderators. She informs me she had to block several users who’d been trolling every post on
GirlfriendFails
, leaving racist and sexist comments. I open the attached screenshots. My jaw drops at the level of vitriol I read in those comments.
    I shoot off a quick email:
Good call blocking them.
    The next one is an SOS from the guy I hired to oversee
BoyfriendFails
. Apparently, a user is threatening legal action, claiming one of the posts on the site is libelous. I click on the post in question. The writer of it went out with a guy she calls “Ted,” who didn’t disclose he had a micropenis and blindsided her during their first intimate encounter.
    I return to my email to skim the letter my admin, Alan, received from some DC law firm with a scary letterhead. I guess the user—butterflykisses44—picked an alias too close to her boyfriend’s real name. Ted is actually Tad, who is suitably outraged, humiliated, and demanding
BoyfriendFails
not only take down the post, but pay him damages because of the emotional distress it’s caused him.
    Since the site is a platform and not a publisher, we can’t be sued for the content of our users, but I tell Alan to forward the letter to my own lawyer just in case. Then I shut off my phone and slurp down the rest of my melting ice cream. Just another day in the life of Mackenzie Cabot, CEO.
    If I’m being honest with myself, though, lately I’ve been itchingfor …something
more
. I love my apps, but nowadays there’s nothing for me to do but say yes or no. Sign here, initial there. Read this email, approve this ad. The real excitement came at the beginning, when I was sitting with my friends and brainstorming features for the apps. Meeting with the developer and programmer and bringing my ideas to life. Creating the marketing campaign to attract users. The launch.
    It was challenging and exciting. It was the most fun I’d ever had.
That’s
the part I truly enjoyed, I realize now. The creation, not the maintenance. Not that I hate the sites and want to sell them. I don’t. They’re still mine. Part of my budding empire. But maybe it’s time to brainstorm some new business ideas.
    As the sun dips low in the sky, I walk onto the beach and sit on the sand, listening to the waves and watching the seagulls glide against the wind. Behind me, a