He lied
He lied
Okay, he left out a few lines of the song there, but now’s not the time to nitpick. This is an SOS text from him if I’ve ever seen one, so I ignore the hands-free law, pick up my iPhone and dial him without giving myself time to wonder what’s wrong.
“I need you.” His voice is so quiet, so weak, I wouldn’t recognize it if I didn’t know it was him on the other end of the line.
“I can come over tonight, but I can’t miss this class right now, kid.”
The silence is deafening, and I know what he’s asking. And he wouldn’t be if he weren’t really struggling right now. I know what I have to do, and it’s not even a debate.
Seventeen minutes later and I’ve made it to his new house. The one he bought with his first big paycheck. It’s nothing too over the top, but for a nineteen-year-old to own it outright? Having purchased it with their own money thattheymade? It’s pretty sweet.
The car is barely in park before I’m launching out of the open door (I didn’t bother buckling up, this is an emergency situation, spare me the lecture about safety) and running to his front door. Fumbling with the key ring to find my brand new key to this bachelor pad, I let myself in and run straight to the back of the living space, where the floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the outdoor living space and backyard. Did I say it was a boring house? It’s definitely not. It’s just not as fancy as you might expect an up-and-coming TV star to live in, but it’s way cooler than anything either of us grew up in. Picking this place out together was one of the highlights of our lives so far.
Sure enough, there he is. Sitting in his favorite leather chair, staring out into the courtyard, seemingly frozen in space and time. I slow my pace to a gentle jog so as not to alarm him (I’mgoing for being acalmingpresence here), and plop down to my knees at his feet, settling in between his Vans where he doesn’t have to move a single muscle for us to make eye contact.
“Hey, kid.” My voice is almost as soft as his was on the phone, but hopefully more soothing, not so frightening.
A small, relieved grin breaks out on his face as soon as our eyes meet, and I rest my hands softly on his jean-covered knees, where his own come to cover mine.
“Thanks for coming. My little Gem.” Something inside of me dies in the best possible way when he says that. It’s so rare he uses that particular nickname for me, but I’d give anything to hear him call me his day in and day out. I try to push the flutters out of my insides and focus on getting him back to himself.
“I’ll always be here for you,” I whisper, meaning every word of it. He looks less stressed already, and I know I made the right decision. Even if my professor threatened to drop me from his syllabus if I missed another class. Who needs a degree when your best friend is famous, anyway? Not like I even know what I’d do with a degree if I had one.
“So what happened?” If he’s not going to start, I’ll ask, but a large part of me doesn’t want to know what set him off this time. There’s no staying impartial for me when my best friend, this incredible, kind soul in front of me, is turned into a shell of himself by the actions of stupid, selfish and greedy people who don’t deserve to know him and the joy he brings to those who do.
“I couldn’t breathe.” His chest begins rising and falling rapidly at the memory of his panic attack, and one of my thumbs runs soothingly over his knee automatically.
“You can now. Breathe for me.”
Aaron takes a few deep slow breaths, following the rhythm I set with my own inhales and exhales, and after a minutehe opens his eyes again. He lifts one hand off mine to reach down beside him and pick up a magazine that’s folded open, already on the page he wants to show me. It’s one of those “spotted around town” photo spreads, where stars are caught in the act of everyday shit, and it’s supposed to count as news or something. Before you know it they’ll be reporting that celebrities, too, have to shit and piss, and pretend it’s groundbreaking information.
I use both hands to take the magazine from him, my eyes rapidly scanning to see what set him off this time. It’s a picture of Aaron, looking adorably boy-next-door as he’s leaving a restaurant, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the door open behind him for whoever is walking out next. He looks great in the photo, like he’s just had a good meal, a small smile on his face, and I’m not sure what about this could have triggered an episode, but then the caption catches my eye.
Aaron Stone, 19, looks like he’s staying distracted from his pain after his recent breakup with budding socialite Mara Graves, 20, by having lunch out on the town with a mystery guest. Psst! Turn to page 142 to see what our exclusive insider has to say about the latest drama in Aaron’s life!
“They couldn’t just say I was having lunch. Or that I was out with a friend, or that I looked fuckinghappy. No. It had to be that I was ‘distracted from my pain.’ Literally everything gets spun by these people. I don’t think I can do this, Gem.”
I throw the magazine back to the floor and curse Mara for the seven hundredth time in the past six months. I’m not sure he’ll ever get back to who he was before she infiltrated his life and his trust. The fact that the fallout of her publicity stunt is making him doubt his dreams, the path he’s worked so hard to be on, makes me see fucking red.
“How’d you even get this magazine?”
Aaron’s gorgeous deep blue eyes fall to the ground and he actually looks sheepish. “My publicist sent it over, she thought it was good exposure and she wanted me to see it.”
“Fuck her,” I spit out vehemently.
“No—” he starts to make an excuse for her, but I’m not listening.
“No, fuck her, Aaron. We’ve told her alreadynotto show you shit like this, that it isn’t good for your mental health. You employher, not the other way around. There’s absolutely no reason you need to be focusing on what strangers think of your lunch that they weren’t even a part of, Stone.”
His shoulders relax a little, and I keep going. “I’m going to call her. And if she does drop another one off, you put it right in my room, where you won’t see it. And I’ll take care of it when I get here, okay?” I can guarantee she willnotmake the mistake of sending more crap his way after I get off the phone with her. So what if she’s twice my age and has a twenty-year career in Hollywood? She’s fucking with the wrong client, thinking she knows what’s best for him, his boundaries be damned. But she won’t make that mistake again.
He does a little nod, which makes his hair fall forward into his face. He’s got more on his mind, I can tell. It doesn’t take fifteen seconds before he spits it out. “Another fucking anonymous source is feeding them shit.”
“We don’t know that. Just because they’re saying it doesn’t make it true.”
“I can’t stand not knowing who I can trust, who’s using me to make a few bucks. Did my delivery driver last week tell them what my favorite Chinese food order is? Was it the gas station attendant around the corner? My old neighbor with the yappy dog? Or one of my ‘friends’ in the industry, making shit up because they’re jealous I landed the part we were both up for?”
