I open my mouth to reply to this, but, before I can speak, my phone pings with a message, and I glance at the screen to see the name I’ve been hoping for, but which now sends my stomach spiraling.
It’s Jett.
“We need to talk,” his message says. “I’ll send a car.”
That’s it. Eight words, nothing else. Not even an emoji or two to help me work out whether he wants to talk like two good pals who had themselves a fine old time in a bathroom cubicle the previous night and need to fill each other in on what actually happened, or whether we need totalk-talk. Like an A-list movie star, say, and the woman who’s pretending to be his girlfriend.
“Is that him?” Summer says eagerly, leaning forward. “Is that Jett? Oh my God, Lexie, I can’t believe this. You’re so lucky.”
She starts jumping up and down on the bed, before stopping to high five me, as if I’ve won the jackpot. As she’s leaving, though, she pulls me in for a hug — which is unlike her, because we’re not really huggers — then looks at me searchingly.
“Promise me you’ll look after yourself, Lexie?” she says, uncharacteristically serious. “And tell Jett that if he hurts you, he’ll have me to deal with, okay? I’m not joking.”
“Oh stop it,” I say lightly, waving her away. “I’m a big girl, Summer. I can look after myself.”
Up until now, that’s always been true. As my friend’s footsteps fade away though, I’m suddenly not so sure.
Chapter 23
“Well, I guess you got me back for throwing up on you that time.”
Jett and I are sitting by the pool at his house, with a pile of magazines likeUs Weeklyand theNational Enquirerspread out on the table in front of us.
I’m deliberately not looking at them. I don’t have to see the evidence to know that Scarlett’s article in the Gazette didn’t stay injustthe Gazette. No, in the time it took for Asher to get a Google alert about it — and for me and Jett to have a laughing fit in a public bathroom — that article had gone all the way around the world, syndicated by all the major tabloids and surpassed in popularity only by the follow-up story, which contained Jett’s promise to fly me to Scotland immediately, accompanied by a series of photos of me appearing to collapse into his arms in gratitude.
It would be fair to say that this whole fake-dating thing is not going well for me.
Or for anyone, really.
“I’m fired, aren’t I?” I say bluntly, fiddling with the mug of coffee that’s been placed in front of me, but which I’m still too hungover to drink. “I mean, I know you can’t really fire me, because I already quit, but that’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? Just tell me. It’s okay, I can take it.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you’re not getting fired — or quitting, for that matter. Can you even imagine how bad it would make me look if you disappeared now? People would think I’d dumped you right when your mother’s at death’s door, and then things would be even worse for me than they are now.”
Jett leans back in his seat, glaring at me in a way that’s the exact opposite of how he looked at me yesterday. That was in front of the cameras, though. Now it’s just me and him — well, and Asher, who thinks we can’t see him hiding behind the curtain in the French windows behind us — and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the “Mr. Considerate” act he put on last night reallywasjust for show.
“Okay, I get it,” I mutter sullenly. “You can’t afford any more damage to your precious reputation, which is the only thing that matters to you. Are you trying to channel Asher right now, by the way? Because you’re doing a great job, if so.”
I’m deliberately trying to provoke him now. I know that. I’m doing it because I want the Jett of last night to come back. The one who laughed with me about absolutely nothing, and then told me he’d do anything for me. I want to believethatJett was the real one, and this one, with his baseball hat crammed over his eyes, and his lips pouting sulkily, is the act.
Iwantto believe that. Who wouldn’t? The thing is, though, I’m not that stupid. I know it’s not true. That’s the whole point, really. We’re creating a narrative that isn’t true, and if I have any sense at all, I’ll just treat it like the job it is, and not let myself get emotionally attached to the man in front of me, whose character keeps changing, as if he’s doing his best to remind me that I don’t know him at all.
Which I don’t.
Before Jett can respond to my sarcasm, there’s a flurry of movement in my peripheral vision, and Asher steps out from behind the curtain, as if he’s about to do a magic trick.
“This doesn’t have to be quite as much of a disaster as it seems,” he says, taking a seat at the table next to us, and speaking only to Jett, as if I’m not even there. I’m getting used to that.
“On the plus side,” he goes on, “Miss Steele’s little fainting act has definitely helped her claw back some of the sympathy she lost with the whole ‘abandoned mother’ article.”
He shoots me an appraising look.
“Well played,” he says, speaking as if the words are being pulled out of him against his will. “Very well played.”
“I wasn’t playing, I really did faint—” I begin indignantly, but Asher keeps on talking, ignoring the interruption.
“The problem we have now,” he continues, helping himself to my untouched cup of coffee, “Is that, having told the world’s media you’re taking her to Scotland, you’re going to have to follow through with that. Or you’ll look like an asshole, quite frankly.”
My heart sinks. And if the look on his face is anything to go by, Jett’s does too.
