AllFreeNovel
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This is me we’re talking about, after all.
Let us not forget the depth of hatred with which I hate my life.
Like right now, for instance. I have my phone in my hand, ready to dial Spencer’s number again, when the damned thing starts to ring.
I almost throw it to the floor as if it’s sprouted flames.
Louisa.
I sigh, and accept the call. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Guess what?” Lou squeals in my ear. I hold the phone away from my face. “I’m right outside the yacht. Gosh, it’s huge! Tell your security to let us in or whatever, ok? I’m literally deceased right now.”
I put my head in my hands and groan.
As soon as they are aboard, Pooh leaps on my chest and begins to bathe me in saliva. I think I laugh for the first time since the Grammies. Lou gives me a peck on the cheek, while her phone immortalizes the moment for Instagram, and I beg her through gritted teeth not to share the location.
“Relax, baby,” she says. “They’ll take our phones away in a second. Just having a bit of fun.”
Well, they can’t take their phones away soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.
“Did you have a good flight?” I ask her, just to be polite. As she rattles on about her trip, I bury my nose in the spot behind Pooh’s ear and smell his doggy shampoo. My head hurts.
“It’s so gorgeous here,” Lou says, tipping her face up to the sun. “Take us somewhere, Issy!”
She is so beautiful it’s unreal. The contour of her face is perfectly symmetrical, her pink lips a perfect bow, her skin alabaster-rose and velvet-smooth. I think she is a little insecure of how she looks in her photos, secretly, but to look at her tall, model-like legs, which she usually bares for the photographers, wearing the tiniest skirts in existence, you couldn’t tell. But for once, today, she is not worried about how she looks at all.
I’ve never seen her like this, completely free, abandoned in the beauty of something other than her own face. But right now, she’s absorbed by the beauty of Greece. I know the feeling.
“Girls, have you said hi to our host?” she asks, her eyes still closed.
Immediately, there’s a flurry of obedience behind her.
Good Lord, her posse. Here we go.
Five girls follow behind her, dressed almost identically to her: micro skirts, hair down to their knees, pastel lipstick, glitter eyes. But they don’t have her sparkle.
All of them are aspiring singers, but they currently just do backup and dancing for her, and pretending to adore every word that comes out of her mouth so that she will befriend them and give them a leg up in the industry. I am so lucky to have not had to get through something like that. I feel sorry for Lou whenever I see those girls and the fake friends she surrounds herself with, because she might be a little superficial but she’s really talented, and deep down she has a good heart.
I think. I hope.
“Hi, girls,” I wave and they collapse into giggles.
Oh, this is going so well already.
Suddenly, I need to get out of this yacht. Right now.
“Lou,” I say, “where do you want to go? Do you want to leave right now?”
Lou claps her hands in excitement. “Honey, I am rea-dy!” she sing-songs. “I’ve found this just gorgeous little alcove… Here, let me share the location with you.”
Lou is always meticulously organized; she plans her every move months ahead. She gives off this silly girl vibe, but she is anything but that.
“Great, I’ll find it on the way. I’ll drive,” I add, suddenly eager to explore the island after staying inside the boat for two days. Her face lights up.
“Look, babe,” she says, “this is the place.”
We are going to need to have a little talk about her calling me ‘babe’, but I don’t have the energy for it right now. I lean closer to look at her phone, and she pushes herself up to me, her chest digging into my ribcage. Oh, jeez.
