Page 42 of I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life

Do you know how to kill a news story?

The Terminator

I don’t, but my publicist does. Why?

I’d forgotten he typically stayed in the library when he dropped off Cassidy, and he popped up to give me a questioning look through the window.

Nalini

Misty thinks I’m being paranoid, but I was telling her about us.

And she was telling me about Cassidy not being on your socials, and then suddenly someone ran out of the room. Could be nothing but…

The Terminator

There’ve been more people than I want to admit who’ve tried to leak Cassidy’s name and picture to the news. Every one of them has been pulled.

I’ll make sure Mel knows to look out for it.

Nalini

Thanks

I might've also mentioned you’re thinking of getting RaineFall back together

Any of that would be a story, but all three?

The Terminator

Mel will take care of it. If it’s a problem, she’ll fix it.

As soon as the message came through, I saw Kam on his feet leaving the library, looking like he was dialing someone on his phone. I didn’t envy the conversation he'd have with his publicist, but I still felt guilty I was the cause of it. There was still a chance everything I'd been worried about, everything Kam had tried to assure me wouldn’t happen, was one leak away from being out in the world.

I watched the kids write; the joy they got from the activity was typically infectious, but now it just made me wish I could be like them. Instead, all I could think about was how I was a breath away from everything being ruined.

Chapter thirty-two

Kameron

After a long, tense phone call with Mel telling her about the situation, and then a longer, awkward phone call with Noah wanting to know when I’d tell him I’d started dating Nalini — I finally understood where her anxiety came from. Sure, it didn’t help that Noah was hanging out with Mel, because, of course, his best friend was our publicist. Even if that was weird. But things were already spreading faster than I’d anticipated, and we weren’t even official yet.

However, Mel was good at her job, and I knew she was a master at killing stories before they ever got traction.

Nalini seemed to believe it too, because despite her earlier panic, she’d fully settled down by the time Cassidy had gone to bed. And for someone who claimed she didn’t celebrate Christmas, she had bit of an obsession with cheesy Christmas movies. She’d pulled them up for almost every night for an impromptu marathon that seemed like it’d last until the holiday, and while they were predictable and some of them were terrible, it was clear she loved them.

We’d talk during the commercials; she’d cuddle into me like it was the most natural thing in the world. The acting was bad, the sets were terrible, and I was pretty sure we’d watched the same movie three nights in a row, but I wasn’t going to tell her to stop. Not when I got to see her this happy.

Until a new one started — and a sense of weirdness washed over me when I realized it was clearly based on me and my brothers.

“Do people really think we act like that?” I asked after what felt like the millionth time the trio had dramatically flipped their hair.

“I’m pretty sure I saw you practicing that exact move in the mirror once,” Nalini giggled, “Right after you'd finished frying your hair within an inch of its life.”

“Don’t remind me; I looked so stupid,” I grimaced. “And nobody even had the guts to tell me how bad it was. I don’t know why I stuck with it for so long.” She burst out laughing, and I attempted to pay attention to the movie. The one based on Jack was the main character, which wasn’t surprising; most of the thinly veiled RaineFall fanfic was focused on him. Noah and I’d always been cast as the brothers who only existed for Jack to shine.

“What’s with the look?” Nalini asked, “Is the movie too weird?”

“No… well yes, but not in the way you’re thinking,” I answered. “I’ve never watched this sort of thing before. I guess… I didn’t realize how many people thought of me as a joke because I was in Jack’s shadow. I always told myself I was okay with it; I knew I wasn’t popular — at least not in the way Jack and Noah were. I figured it was because I was married, and the fans didn’t have the fantasy of trying to get with me. Especially because they loved Julia and me together, they were weirdly respectful about any potential crushes. But it also turned me into…” I paused, motioning at the caricature of myself, “It makes me wish I’d done things differently back when we first started.”