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But he would belong to me. Only me.
My fourteen-year-old girl’s dreams almost came true. For a moment there, I felt it. I lived it.
And now it’s gone.
“I hate this stupid canopy.”
Rachel is quiet for a moment, probably shocked by my subject change.
“I’m serious. I need to redo my room. It looks like a little girl’s bedroom,” I explain.
“You should redo it then.” Rachel’s voice is gentle. I wonder if she thinks I’ve lost my mind.
I sort of feel like I have.
“I’ve changed, Rach.” I sit back up again so I can look her in the eye. “Since being with Tate, I’m not the same person I was. I can’t sit here in this bedroom and pretend that nothing happened. That my life will just go on and I’ll be okay. It doesn’t feel like I will ever be okay. I’ve lost him.”
Rachel frowns. “What do you mean, you’ve lost him?”
I burst into tears, covering my face with my hands. I hate wallowing in my sadness, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t change what happened. We’ve been exposed, and it’s been such a humiliating experience. I feel like I can’t show my face. Can’t go out in public. Can’t post on any of my accounts. I didn’t take the coward’s way out and turn off my comments, though I probably should’ve. I’m sure people are leaving all sorts of horrible comments, letting me know what they really think of me.
God, I don’t care. I hope they forget me forever. I would trade all the followers, all the adoration, and all the free stuff companies sent me if I knew that Tate was still mine.
Once I get the tears out of me, I explain to Rachel what happened. How Tate treated me that day when we found out. How he hasn’t reached out.
“Maybe he’s trying to take care of a few things before he contacts you,” Rachel suggests, trying to be... what? An optimist?
“Like what? What can he do? What’s done is done. If he really cared, he’d already be putting together some sort of formal statement and announcing to the world that yeah, maybe we started out as fake, but we actually fell for each other,” I say. “Unless he didn’t actually fall for me. Maybe he was playing me all this time.”
“No,” Rachel starts, but I shake my head, cutting her off.
“He could’ve been. I got caught up in it all. He might’ve too.”
“Are you saying that what you felt for him wasn’t real?”
“No, but maybe those feelings weren’t as intense for him as they are for me.” I grab a tissue from the box on my nightstand and blow my nose. “If I don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’m blocking him.”
Rachel frowns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I refuse to sit around and wait for him. He can reach out. He needs to say something to me, Rach. I feel like I’m dying over here,” I practically wail.
“He’s an asshole,” Rachel says fiercely, scowling.
“He is.” I close my eyes, fighting off the tears that want to fall. “But I think I’m in love with him.”
Rachel is quiet, and when I open my eyes once more, I find her peering at me. “Really?” she asks, sounding shocked.
I nod, misery coursing through me. “Yeah. Why else would I feel so awful? So... alone? I just spent a few glorious weeks with him in Los Angeles. We were together constantly when he wasn’t at the studio. Everything between us grew so fast, and our experiences together, our feelings, it was all heightened. Overwhelming. We were in it together. No one else would understand what that was like. Just him.”
And just me.
“Maybe you should reach out to him,” Rachel suggests. “Maybe he’s scared you’re mad at him or whatever.”
“I’m scared too,” I confess. “What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? What if he’s freaking out? He’s watched his career disappear before.”
“That was his fault,” Rachel points out. “This situation is a little different.”
“Still his fault, though. Mine too. Everyone involved knew the risk. We just didn’t think we’d get exposed.” I cover my face with my hands, hating how my head is spinning with too many things. “I don’t know what to do.”
