He grinned wider than Brooklyn had ever seen. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Other than wanting a baby, I’ve never been more serious about anything in all my life.”
Chapter Fifteen
Brooklyn woke to a ding.Then another.
“Ugh,” she groaned, slapping her bedside table in search of her phone. Finally, she found it. “Who’s texting me on a Saturday? This is my time to sleep.” She opened one eye, then the other. As the screen came into focus, she saw her sister’s name on the text notifications.
What happened last night?
Can you not go one day without getting into trouble?
“Trouble?” Brooklyn muttered, starting to type out a response, but deciding a text was going to take longer than a real conversation, so she made a call instead, flopping back on the bed when the line began to ring. “Nothing happened last night,” she said when Virginia picked up. “Other than me going to that movie premiere.”
“Google yourself.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“Fine. Hold on.” She put her sister on speaker and did a search for her name. .00003 seconds later, she had an answer.Baby Lady Steps Out on Lavaman.Brooklyn sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no.”
“I told you.”
Even worse, that horrendous headline was accompanied by a photo of what Brooklyn guessed would soon be known as the infamous ficus kiss. “Wow.”
“So you go on a date with one guy and end up making out with your ex twenty feet away?”
Brooklyn eyed the photo. She had to admire—silently, and only to herself—the clear evidence that the kiss had been exactly as hot as it had seemed. “He kissed me.”
“You’re practically humping him.”
She expanded the image with her fingers. “I guess I missed that part. It all happened so fast.”
“I can’t believe you would get back together with Alec and not tell me. Why don’t I know about this?”
“We’re not back together. And is that what’s bothering you?”
“To be honest, yes. I feel like you’ve been all over the place since you became famous.”
“I’m not famous. I’minfamous. That’s the way worse version. There’s zero money in it. And believe me, I don’t want anyone to remember me for things like this. I’m going to go down in history as a train wreck.”
“You’re no Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ll tell you that much.”
“Eleanor was no stranger to controversy.” Brooklyn threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, padding into her bathroom to pee. “What do I do about this?” She put her sister on speaker, then muted herself so Virginia didn’t have to listen to her do her business.
“I don’t even know anymore. I mean, the thing is, when you’re in the papers or on TV, it always ends up being good for business. We got a huge spike in subscriptions both times you were onGood Day USA. So maybe you should do nothing.”
Brooklyn was ahugefan of nothing. Nothing she could do. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands.
“But I’m guessing that Alec is going to have something to say about this,” Virginia continued. “And Jason Adams for that matter. You guys kind of made him look like an idiot. He invites a woman to a premiere on national TV, then she makes out with some other guy near a potted plant in the lobby of the theater?”
Brooklyn’s stomach turned. As much as she wanted to, there was no good twist on this, unless she and Alec were going to make up some lame excuse about him giving her mouth-to-mouth. While standing. And not during a medical emergency.
She took her phone off mute and wandered into her living room. It was a gray day, casting a pall over the best feature of her apartment—her view of the Hudson River. She plopped down on her sofa and curled up under a throw blanket. Her instinct right now was to hibernate. She certainly needed the sleep. “I guess that means the two guys who like me the most, which isn’t saying a lot, are both going to be pissed at me.”
“Are you and Alec back together? Is that what’s going on?”
