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“Hey,” she says, sitting beside me. “Thanks for letting me have the room earlier.”
“You really don’t have to thank me. I totally get wanting to have alone time with your boyfriend.” I can tell Hayley and I will have unspoken girl code worked out the rest of the tour.
“So, tell me something.”
“Sure.” I wipe my mouth with a napkin.
“What happened to your red lipstick?”
“Oh, I, um. I…” I clearly didn’t expect her to remember that I had on a bold red lipstick when she saw me at the hotel, and now I don’t. I can’t even say that it came off as I ate because there’s not a red lip print around the rim of my water bottle. Or my napkin.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I just happened to notice a tiny smudge of red lipstick on Jax’s neck and when I asked him about it, he was equally flustered. I put two and two together. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. And if you do want to talk about it, I’m here.”
I feared this would happen and now someone knows. One notch of my credibility is knocked off my resume. I can’t add making out with my client as a professional accomplishment. I guess I’m lucky it’s Hayley to find out first, because I might be able to beg her to keep my secret. At the same time, I need to play it cool. The bigger deal I make out of kissing Jax, the more incentive I’m giving Hayley to gossip about it. If she tells Jayce, then it’s over. News like this would travel fast. So, I do what I think is best for this situation. I take a sip of my water and simply say, “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Awkward silence fills the air for a moment. Then, I panic. “When did you notice the lipstick, Hayley?”
“Just a few minutes ago when I walked in and said ‘hi’ to Jax. I saw a red smear on his neck and well, my first thought was that it was lipstick and…”
“Oh no.” I put down my sandwich. Forget food. It appears I have an appetite for destruction instead.
“I promise I won’t say anything. We can talk more about this later when we’re alone. He wiped it off.”
“It’s actually not you that I’m worried about right now. But Jax did a bunch of media interviews and posed for photos. What if people see it?”
“It really wasn’t super noticeable. Besides, if they did see it, no one has seen you with lipstick on tonight except for me and Jax.”
“Except for the fact that I posted a selfie hours ago on social media with #jaxslater.”
“Ok, let’s not panic. You can just take it down.”
I pull out my phone and check my social media. My photo already has 200 likes.
“Too late. As a publicist, I know taking down this photo will cause more damage than leaving it up.”
As a publicist, I say again to myself. This is it. The end of my new career before it even started. I can see the headlines now. All this time I’ve been worried about Brenda and what she had going on with Jax. I should have been focused on my own status.
“I’ll just monitor the hashtag and online alerts. The first sign of trouble and I’ll address it. For now, please keep this between us.” My eyes water as I plea to Haley.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Doors are going to open to the general public soon, so I don’t really have much of a choice other than to move forward and not dwell on what happened, or predict the disaster to come. Jax will be taking the stage in about an hour. But the real show is going to be watching me figure out how to clean up this mess, save my job, and keep my relationship with Jax a secret.
Trash the Dress Online Chat
Drew:Learning to live as a single person again is so hard. No one gets it, but I know you guys do.
Alexandra:Times three for me as a single mom!
22
JAX SLATER STEPS INTO THE SPOTLIGHT AFTER A DARK DECADE
CAILIN
As everyone scattersout of the backstage area to get to their seats for the show, only crew members remain. I thank the media stragglers for coming and show them to the door, silently praying that they only run really nice stories and edit all lipstick stains out of their photos.
“I’d say so far things are shaping out exactly as we’d hoped,” Harry says.
