“It’s not what you’re thinking,” I tell her.
“I’m thinking a lot of things right now,” she says. “Is the curse . . . it’s broken?”
“No.” I shake my head, blinking again to keep the tears back because I really hate that stupid curse. More than ever.
“Nothing happened,” I explain. “There was a work emergency. I ended up at Luke’s place.”
Her eyes widen even more, which I didn’t think was possible. “Those are Luke’s clothes? Tell me everything.”
“I spilled soup on my dress,” I say. “Luke let me borrow some clothes so he could treat it. That’s all.”
It dawns on me then that I left my dress at his place. And I still don’t know what Victoria’s response is going to be. The more shocking thing is that I can’t bring myself to care about either.
“Oh,” Sam says, her disappointment almost palpable. “Well, that’s a bummer.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It’s a bummer.”
For so many reasons.
I go to my room and flop down on my bed, not bothering to turn on the lights. I just lie there in the dark.
Luke almost kissed me tonight. What if I had let him? I know “what if,” though. He would have forgotten all those nice things he said about me tonight. He would have forgotten . . . everything.
I can never let that happen.
I roll over and try to fall asleep, but all I can do is smell the remnants of that spicy cologne on his shirt and cry.
Chapter 19
PR Tip #71:Sometimes the best PR move is just letting people be human.
It’s been four days since I ran out of Luke’s apartment. Four days of stilted text exchanges. Four days since I’ve even been in the same room as him. And it kind of feels like four months.
But now I’m about to walk into the studio, my computer bag on my shoulder, to help Bailey through media day. It’s my first time back at Silverline since that first scary meeting with Victoria.
Media day is a rotation of back-to-back interviews—journalists coming in one after another—and I’ll be there the whole time. Every question is preapproved. Every answer is monitored. If anything goes off script, I need to catch it before it becomes a headline.
And Luke has to do the same for River. So we’ll be standing in the same small room together. All day.
Translation: Uuuuggghhh.
Oh, and I remembered this morning when I was getting ready that I have a make-up date tonight with . . . Chris. His name is Chris. I had to check my phone.
The good news is that the fact we’re here for media day means we didn’t get fired. Victoria let us put out the clip the next day, just a small portion of it, and it was a good post. Not too revealing, but definitely showing Kaelric and Elora ramping up their feelings. #EloraAndKaelric started trending again, and the cat post was forgotten almost instantly.
But this was the text exchange between Luke and me that morning:
Jerkwad:Victoria approved the post
Me:Great!!
I’m not typically an exclamation point overuser, but it felt necessary that morning. It was my attempt at:Everything’s fine! No big deal! Please forget last night happened!
Jerkwad:How do you want to do this?
Me:I’ll do it!! No problem!!
Honestly, I’m still feeling embarrassed by all the exclamation points.
