He chuckles, shaking his head, a forkful of orange chicken in his hand.
“Are you ready to have your socks knocked off?” I say, directing the remote toward the TV.
“I think I’ll be keeping my socks on,” he says, looking down at his feet.
He’s wearing the T-shirt and joggers that he let me borrow. It kind of worked out perfectly that I still had them, because he wouldn’t have had time to go home and change and come back—it would’ve cost him at least forty minutes with traffic.
A part of me didn’t want to let him have them back. I didn’t tell him this, but I may have slept in the shirt a couple of times. It’s a very nice cotton.
I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants while he ordered food, and then we settled in on our opposite sides of the couch. For a work meeting, it’s feeling a little too domestic, to be honest.
And kind of . . . strange.
But that’s not going to stop me from making him watch this. We are in too deep now. I pull up the show and press “Play” on thefirst episode of season one, the theme song forKingdom of Flame and Moonlightfilling the room.
Luke—because he can’t help himself—makes snide comments and jokes during the first episode, so much that I have to pause and rewind more than once. But by the second one, he’s hooked.
When the credits roll at the end, I turn off the TV with the remote.
“Hey,” Luke says, his head popping up from his side of the couch, and he nudges me with his foot. We’re stretched out now, our legs meeting in the middle. “Aren’t we going to watch the next one?”
“We have to be at the studio in the morning,” I say, yawning.
“So what. It’s not like we’ll need a lot of energy. We’ll probably just sit around and watch them film another table scene.”
“No,” I tell him. “Tomorrow is a fight scene.”
“I’m sure they’ll find a way to make that boring too.”
My phone beeps on the coffee table, and I grab it to see who’s texting me. It’s a message from Tessa.
Tessa:This just posted
I click on the link she sent, and it takes me to a post from You Oughta Know.
“Oh no,” I say, sitting up.
“What’s going on?” Luke asks, sitting up too.
“You Oughta Know made a post.”
I scoot toward the middle of the couch, and Luke does the same so we can look at my phone together.
“Dearest Sunbeams, I’m afraid we’ve all been played,”she starts in her nasally voice, a picture of Bailey and River kissing behind her.“It’s come to my attention that this entire breakup between Bailey Lockhart and River Rhodes has all been a publicity stunt to get us to keep our eyes on the show—a PR move if I’ve ever seen one.”
“What?” I say to my phone screen.
“Let’s start with the timing of the ‘breakup,’”she says, using air quotes, like a brat.“Was it a coincidence that it was announced just as the release date for season four was revealed? I think not.”
I look at Luke and shake my head. Itwasa coincidence, actually.
“Then the blind item comes out, written by someone who knows exactly what they were doing.”
She reads the blind item before moving on to the PR war that she claims was “designed to keep the fans engaged and talking about the show,” and goes on to say that the behind-the-scenes content that Luke and I have been posting was a “drip feed to keep fans invested.”
“All leading up to the cast party, that ‘private event’ that somehow had a photographer nearby? Give me a break,”she says.“And, Sunbeams, then a picture shows up of our beloved stars kissing, just as the show was about to start filming, making it obvious what’s beengoing on all along: a blatant PR stunt. As for me and mine? I won’t be watching the next season. Join me, and let’s show them we won’t be played. Until next time.”She blows air kisses at the camera, and then it’s over.
“It already has ten thousand views,” I say.
