It gives me a tingle just thinking about saying it.
But now, wearing this ultra-fashionable get-up with the pointy shoes at the Met Gala where everyone is watching and talking and judging… I feel something very un-tingle like watching my girlfriend talk to Bradley Cooper.
Yes, that Bradley Cooper.
I still hold her bag, the tiny little thing that surprisingly has room for a multitude of makeup. She still holds my heart, but I can almost feel fingers squeezing it.
I’m joined for my wall propping by friends Lavina—she of the one-word name—and Milo Stapleton-Shak.
“Ashton,” Milo greets me with the hint of a British accent. He has that in common with Lavinia. “Bradley Cooper.” He jerks his chin toward my Mera and that Bradley Cooper, like I might have missed the scene playing out.
Bradley Cooper has his hand on Mera’s arm. It slides around her waist as he gestures to someone. He smiles with those teeth and dimples and blue eyes that are even brighter than mine, and I feel—
Nausea.
Everyone sees them together; they look at them and then over at me. And then they look past me.
“What’s going on there?” Lavinia asks with an eagerness that annoys me.
“What does it look like?” I snap.
A reasonable man would know that they are most likely talking about some movie Bradley wants to make with Mera, and it’s nothing more than a mild flirtation happening. It’s Bradley freaking Cooper—I’d flirt with him if it meant getting into one of his movies.
But I am not a reasonable man. I am a man in love and imagining all the ways I could lose her.
Because I’m going to lose her. Mera is going to step away from Bradley Cooper and look at me, and she’s going to wonder what she saw in me. She’s going to think about that stupid fight we had last week and wonder why she’s bothered with me.
She’s going to realize she’s not really in love with me.
And then the world will see that I’m not worth loving. That I am nothing but a spoiled brat who spends daddy’s money and has nothing to show for himself. That I am too grumpy, too growly and too much of an arse to love.
And the world will judge me as not being worthy of a woman’s love.
It’s going to happen any minute. Any day now, Mera will dump me, and I’ll be alone. Humiliated.
That can’t happen.
Milo watches me watch Mera laugh with Bradley Cooper. “Lookscozy.”
“Yeah.”
“Is she talking movies with him? Because I would love an intro,” Lavinia says. She’s a model, same as Mera, but she’s not on the cusp of greatness like Mera.
Lavinia isn’t as hungry. Mera is ambitious and slightly greedy for more. My friend Lavinia—and Milo, too—are both children of billionaires.
Same as me.
It brings us closer together as well as sets us apart from others.
We’ve all got our thing—Lavinia is a model, Milo plays with start-ups, and I race cars for a living—but the world sees us as the billionaire brats.
There’s five or six of us in this group, who hang together, understand each other, and offer support on the bad days.
You’d think there aren’t bad days when you’re a billionaire, but nothing can be further from the truth.
Somehow, watching Mera laugh with Bradley Cooper, I manage to harden my heart. How could I ever think that I could love someone like Mera? Or anyone? It’s not worth feeling likethis, or how I’m going to feel when she leaves me, which is going to be worse.
That can’t happen.
