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“We won’t be seen again,” I insist. “We will be more careful in future. This doesn’t have to be the end of us.”
God, I really didn’t think that I would be walking in to this, I really didn’t think enough to even consider that this would be the end of us. I was stupid enough to assume that all would be okay.
“You don’t understand, do you?” I watch in horror as Millie leaves me in the living room and turns in to the kitchen. “You don’t get it. You can’t possibly see because you can’t have a secret. You must not have a secret, or you wouldn’t have sought out the media. You didn’t come to LA to run away from everything.”
“Secret?” I can’t help but leap on that remark. “What do you mean secret? You ran away?”
“Yes, I did.” As I join her in the kitchen, I notice her nodding firmly. “I did run away because I had something to escape. I wanted to hide, to find somewhere that I could hide in the fabric of the community without being noticed. So, why not come to a place where everyone else wants the lime light so no one will be looking at me? The weather helps as well, I have to admit that. It’s much better hiding in the sun light.”
I gulp thickly, now a little nervous myself. I always knew that Millie was more closed off than me, but it wasn’t enough for me to question it. Now though, I’m freaked out because there’s clearly something that I should have been aware of the entire time. I’m starting to wonder if I should back out a little bit…
“Fuck, this is too much.” But then Millie practically crumbles as the tears start flooding from her again and I know that I can’t go anywhere. I can’t leave her like this. No matter what’s going on in her life, what she’s kept away from me, I care about her. I can’t stop. I step closer to her and take her in my arms.
“I’m sorry that I caused this,” I tell her in a hushed whisper. “I didn’t know that it would be this bad.”
“It… it isn’t your fault,” she sobs against me. “You didn’t know… you couldn’t know… I just wish…”
I worry that she might be sick because she’s weeping that hard. I don’t like standing her holding her and feeling so hopeless. So useless. I know that I would do anything in the world to make her feel better.
“I can… I don’t know, I can get my agent to contact the press, to get them to leave you alone,” I offer. “I don’t know how reasonable they will be, but I can certainly try to keep them off your back…”
“But it’s too late.” She pulls back to look at me curiously. “You know that, don’t you? It’s too late to start asking people to leave me alone now. They have already found out everything that I don’t want them to know.”
“What do you mean?” I narrow my eyes curiously at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t seen? They know who I am, Lance. They know everything about me. People online have found out absolutely everything and now there’s no telling what will happen. I don’t know what to do…”
“The Internet?” I haven’t even thought about looking online. How dumb is that? Of course, the online world is a million miles ahead of the print media, it always is. Things can be uploaded in seconds and the whole world becomes the equivalent of a journalist. Plus, with information being so challenging to hide online, no wonder this has Millie so freaked out. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the Internet today. I’ve been on set…”
“Oh God,” she groans in actual pain. “So, you haven’t seen yet? Of course, you haven’t or you wouldn’t be here, would you? You wouldn’t want to see me if you knew everything that had happened.”
Millie retreats from me, she can’t get away quick enough, and the sheer terror on her face is just too much for me. I shouldn’t look online, that would be the best thing to do, but I need to know all the same. It’s pretty obvious to me that Millie isn’t about to spill the beans and tell me herself, so despite my better judgement I pull out my cell phone and I take a look to see what I have missed. Millie is instantly right; the online world has discovered who she is and all kinds of things about her as well. They know more about her than I do from their sleuthing and I have known her for over a year. They know where she grew up, who she was friends with, the school she went to, who she used to date… the sort of trouble she got herself in to with her ex-boyfriend…
