‘You’ve got enough baggage, honey. Let me at least carry this one. Tell me, how do you know hot stuff over there?’ She nods at Levi’s retreating backside.
‘We sat next to each other on a flight a few weeks ago and then we were on the same flight again today. He actually seems like a really decent guy. Ha, but then again, with my track record, he’s probably a crazed, axe-wielding murderer or something.’
Ruby drapes her arm across my shoulder as she leads me out into the heat.
‘Come on. Let’s drop your stuff home and get you changed.’
Slumping into the passenger seat of Ruby’s Toyota, I crank the air-con to full blast.
My phone vibrates with an incoming call.
Jayden.
I reject it and it rings again.
‘What doeshewant?’ Ruby snarls.
‘He wants to talk. He tried to tell me it’s not how it seems, which is exactly what Ethan said.’
‘What a douche. TMZ just broke the story about his engagement.’ Ruby holds her phone up as she settles into the driver’s seat.
‘What? Let me see that.’ Ruby has an obsession with celebrity gossip sites. She claims it’s research for work, but I know it’s just her guilty pleasure.
I scroll through the short article with a shaky finger.
Looks like Hollywood has lost another eligible bachelor. Rumour has it Jayden Cooper is set to follow his brother’s footsteps straight down the aisle. Twenty-nine-year-old LA Playboy and agent to Ryan Cooper is said to be engaged to twenty-five-year-old Lula Flores, a stunning beauty, originally from Toluca.
Though the two have yet to make an official statement, our inside source says the two are very much in love.
Pictured below is Flores, outside Cooper’s Santa Monica mansion, where she’s been staying for most of this year. No wonder we haven’t been able to get a glimpse of him out in public. He’s clearly been very busy in private.
Nausea swells in my stomach as I pour over a picture of Jayden’s fiancée standing in the garden of his familiar Santa Monica home.
Lula is absolutely stunning. With waist length hair and huge brown eyes, she’s every man’s Latino dream.
So much for, “it’s not how it seems.”
Are they together right now? Does he inhaleherhair when he holds her, the way he used to do with mine?
Stop it, Chloe. Stop it.
‘I can’t believe it. I feel like such a complete and utter fool.’
‘Neither can I.’ Ruby starts the engine, politely pretending not to notice the big, fat salty tears streaming down my face.
‘You sure you’re up to going out?’
‘It’s either that or sit and wallow at the villa on my own. I’d work on my emails, but I can’t concentrate.’
‘Don’t worry about work. That’s what you have me for.’
Two hours later, we’re in the same bar we were in the first night Jayden spent in Dubai. It was barely three months ago. Everything looks the same. There’s only one thing different.
Me.
Levi and Ruby are necking shots, engrossed in conversation, and if their over-familiar touchy gestures are anything to go by, utterly enamoured with each other already. I don’t need a fortune cookie to work out their immediate future.
I’m happy for her. I really am, but I should have opted to wallow at home. I’m nauseous, barely able to take three sips from the drink I’d so badly longed for.
