The rain hasn’t let up. It lashes the side of the house.
“What’s going on?”
Linney looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Have you not checked your phone?”
I shake my head, and pull it out of my pocket, realizing it must’ve died sometime last night while I was at Camp Bennet.
“Someone sold photos of Cara and Cooper to one of the gossip mags. The story just broke. Have you really not seen anything? I thought you were hermiting out of self-defense.”
My stomach rolls, and I can suddenly taste the vodka tonics from last night.
Oh my god.
That camera flash at the bar.
I wasn’t being paranoid.
The realization lands like a thud in my gut. I wasright.
I rush back to my room and plug my phone into its charging cord. There are twenty-seven missed calls and even more missed texts. I see an email from the team at FitGirl, with the ominous first words:Due to recent events… but I’m surprised to find I don’t really care. If they want to cancel this partnership because my brother is marryingsomeone tied to my reality TV past, then maybe they’re not the kind of company I want to work with anyway. I close out of the email without reading the rest and swipe over to social media to find the comment section on my posts has already turned into a dumpster fire.
Headlines range from the more harmless sounding: “An Ex-Rated Love Story” to “Nikki B-Gone: Stop Trying to Stay Relevant” to the even more blunt: “LovedByFans Shudder at Shameless Ploy for Attention from Former Star”—the latter speculating that Cara and I schemed all of this up together with the goal of gettingCaraon as the next lead.
A number of my fans have rushed to my defense, commenting that they’re sure I had nothing to do with this, that I must be so uncomfortable with the whole situation. And I’m thankful to them for recognizing me for what I am—an honest human in extremely weird circumstances. But it doesn’t really lessen the sting of the trolls and commentators out there casting both meandCara as fame-hungry cynics.
She’s getting her own share of hate headlines, too—and she’s the one who features in most of the unflattering pics from the bar last night. One in particular, of Cara mid-sneeze with her drink tilted dangerously, is captioned: “SLOPPY SECONDS.”
Interesting, by the way, that no one is saying my brother is fame-hungry. Double standards much?
And making everything even more excruciatingly awkward and confusing is that right there, amid all these embarrassing headlines, is a photo of me and Nate at the bar—me messily wiping my face with the back of my hand, him hovering with his arm near me, in a position that even in the blurry pic looks intimate.
I honestly don’t know what to make of the photo. After our fightlast night, I don’t know what to make of Nate at all. I feel sick to my stomach over this whole thing.
And desperate to talk to the Core Four.
Thankfully, as soon as I have that thought, the phone starts vibrating, and I see it’s a video call from the group chat.
“Oh my god, Nikki, how are you doing? I’m so sorry this is happening why is the world so crazy this is terrible!” Sybil says in a manic babble before I’ve even said “hey.”
“I truly can’t believe it,” Emma says. “It’s just a few photos, but they really went to town.”
“Babe,” Willow breathes, as if she’s just puffed a cigarette, though I know she doesn’t smoke anymore. Then in a sage tone, she proclaims: “What a. Fucking.Disaster.”
“What are you going to do?” Sybil jumps back in. “Are you going to call the press and tell your side of the story?”
“Oh, no way, she can’t do that, it’ll just stir the pot even more. It always does,” Emma warns. “Sorry, not to be cynical. But you’ve got to think about this like a lawyer. The less you say, the better. No comment, let it blow over.”
“Let it blow over,” I repeat, my voice wobbly.
“Yeah, that’s true, she has a point,” Sybil says, biting her nails. “Oh shit, I just swallowed nail polish again.”
“Can I ask you something, Nikki?” Willow interrupts contemplatively.
“Of course,” I say. “What is it?”
“Do you really want to go back onLovedBy?”
“Oh god,” I say, my gut sinking even further. “I hadn’t even thought about that yet. When people find out aboutA Shore Thing, it’s just going to play into the whole narrative, isn’t it? That I was somehow a part of all this for the attention. That it was all set up.”
