Chapter 36

CHAPTER36

SCARLETT

There’s a soft knock, and then my bedroom door swings open, revealing Rachel standing there, a worried expression on her face.

“Come in,” I croak from beneath a pile of blankets on my bed. “And shut the door behind you.”

She closes it softly before she approaches the bed, her eyes wide as she takes me in. “You look terrible.”

“Gee, thanks.” I love my friend’s honesty, except in moments like this.

“I’m sorry. Just trying to keep it real.” She settles on the edge of the bed, right by my feet. “Are you okay?”

“No.” There is no recovering from this. The media hasn’t stopped talking about me and Tate since our fake relationship was exposed Friday.

We had a meeting with the crisis-management team on the phone, and Tate was so withdrawn. So removed from the entire situation. He could barely look at me.

And I could barely look at him.

I talked to Mom, and she took care of my flight home. In the early-morning hours of Saturday, before the sun was even up, I left the house in Calabasas and was whisked away to the airport, where I boarded a private jet hired by my family and flew home to New York.

Leaving Tate behind.

He wouldn’t talk to me. Not really. He was in pure panic mode, and I don’t think he knew what to say. I’m sure he felt as if he were watching his entire career go up in smoke, and I get it. His career, the album, it’s all important to him.

But what about me? What about us?

I didn’t talk to him about it. I didn’t sleep with him that night. I went back to my room and packed my things. I lay in bed and cried, unable to sleep. He never came to comfort me. I don’t know if he heard me, but how can I try to reason with someone who essentially turned into a zombie the moment things got rough?

I couldn’t. That’s part of the reason I left. If he wanted me, he’d call. He’d text. He’d chase me to the ends of the earth and let me know how much I mattered to him.

But he didn’t do any of that. It’s Sunday. I haven’t heard a word. And the interest in our situation hasn’t died down. I swear it’s only grown. We’re all anyone can talk about, and it’s so weird.

Don’t people have better things to do with their lives?

“I saw an article that said they figured out who did it,” Rachel announces.

I sit up straight, pushing the covers away from my upper half. I’m sure I look terrible. I probably even smell. I haven’t taken a shower since I’ve come home, which is kind of gross. Okay, really gross.

But I don’t care.

“They did? Who was it?”

“Someone who worked at Irresistible. An intern with nothing to lose. Supposedly he made a quarter of a mil for selling you guys out,” Rachel says.

I fall back against my pillows, staring up at the ceiling. At the canopy that hangs above my bed. The same one I’ve had since I was fourteen and used to dream of getting together with one of the boys from Five Car Pileup. We could travel the world together, and I could watch him tour, all those fans screaming for him.

Screaming for Tate Ramsey.

But he would belong to me. Only me.

My fourteen-year-old girl’s dreams almost came true. For a moment there, I felt it. I lived it.

And now it’s gone.

“I hate this stupid canopy.”

Rachel is quiet for a moment, probably shocked by my subject change.

“I’m serious. I need to redo my room. It looks like a little girl’s bedroom,” I explain.

“You should redo it then.” Rachel’s voice is gentle. I wonder if she thinks I’ve lost my mind.

I sort of feel like I have.

“I’ve changed, Rach.” I sit back up again so I can look her in the eye. “Since being with Tate, I’m not the same person I was. I can’t sit here in this bedroom and pretend that nothing happened. That my life will just go on and I’ll be okay. It doesn’t feel like I will ever be okay. I’ve lost him.”

Rachel frowns. “What do you mean, you’ve lost him?”

I burst into tears, covering my face with my hands. I hate wallowing in my sadness, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t change what happened. We’ve been exposed, and it’s been such a humiliating experience. I feel like I can’t show my face. Can’t go out in public. Can’t post on any of my accounts. I didn’t take the coward’s way out and turn off my comments, though I probably should’ve. I’m sure people are leaving all sorts of horrible comments, letting me know what they really think of me.

God, I don’t care. I hope they forget me forever. I would trade all the followers, all the adoration, and all the free stuff companies sent me if I knew that Tate was still mine.

Once I get the tears out of me, I explain to Rachel what happened. How Tate treated me that day when we found out. How he hasn’t reached out.

“Maybe he’s trying to take care of a few things before he contacts you,” Rachel suggests, trying to be . . . what? An optimist?

“Like what? What can he do? What’s done is done. If he really cared, he’d already be putting together some sort of formal statement and announcing to the world that yeah, maybe we started out as fake, but we actually fell for each other,” I say. “Unless he didn’t actually fall for me. Maybe he was playing me all this time.”

“No,” Rachel starts, but I shake my head, cutting her off.

“He could’ve been. I got caught up in it all. He might’ve too.”

“Are you saying that what you felt for him wasn’t real?”

“No, but maybe those feelings weren’t as intense for him as they are for me.” I grab a tissue from the box on my nightstand and blow my nose. “If I don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’m blocking him.”

Rachel frowns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I refuse to sit around and wait for him. He can reach out. He needs to say something to me, Rach. I feel like I’m dying over here,” I practically wail.

“He’s an asshole,” Rachel says fiercely, scowling.

“He is.” I close my eyes, fighting off the tears that want to fall. “But I think I’m in love with him.”

Rachel is quiet, and when I open my eyes once more, I find her peering at me. “Really?” she asks, sounding shocked.

I nod, misery coursing through me. “Yeah. Why else would I feel so awful? So . . . alone? I just spent a few glorious weeks with him in Los Angeles. We were together constantly when he wasn’t at the studio. Everything between us grew so fast, and our experiences together, our feelings, it was all heightened. Overwhelming. We were in it together. No one else would understand what that was like. Just him.”

And just me.

“Maybe you should reach out to him,” Rachel suggests. “Maybe he’s scared you’re mad at him or whatever.”

“I’m scared too,” I confess. “What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? What if he’s freaking out? He’s watched his career disappear before.”

“That was his fault,” Rachel points out. “This situation is a little different.”

“Still his fault, though. Mine too. Everyone involved knew the risk. We just didn’t think we’d get exposed.” I cover my face with my hands, hating how my head is spinning with too many things. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What does your mom say? And your dad?”

I drop my hands. “Dad says I should forget Tate Ramsey for the rest of my life and put this entire thing behind me. Mom just offers me comfort and lets me cry on her shoulder. She’s given me no real advice besides letting me know it’s going to get better eventually.”

“What if he never does anything? Never reaches out, never makes a public statement, just . . . disappears. What then?”

I ponder her words for a moment, hating how my stomach churns at the probability of Tate doing exactly that.

It could happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did fall out that way.

“Then I know he never cared about me in the first place, and I’ll let him go. I’ve already let him go. If he wants to come back to me, he can.” I glance out the window, at the bright-blue sky with white puffy clouds.

That’s the weird thing about sadness. About losing someone who was so important in your life, even for such a short time. Life goes on. Nothing stops, while you feel as if your world just ended. It might’ve stopped for me, but everyone else is carrying on like nothing happened. To them, nothing did happen.

I’m the one suffering. And it feels like I’m doing this all alone.

I hate that most of all.

* * *

Monday night. It’s late, past eleven, and I still haven’t heard a word from Tate. The gossip seems to have died down somewhat. It helps that there’s another scandal already happening. Another singer getting in trouble for saying something rude about his ex-wife, who’s also famous.

I don’t know how celebrities manage keeping up this sort of thing for years. I can barely handle what just happened to me, and Tate and I were together for almost a month. That’s it.

My parents have tiptoed around me, and I know that’s my mom’s doing. Dad would be in here giving me a lecture on the daily if she hadn’t told him to leave me alone. It’s been nice. Peaceful.

A little lonely.

There is a rapid-fire knock on my door, and before I can say anything, it’s opening, my mother sweeping into the room clad in a pale-blue silk robe, elegant as ever.

“Darling. You need to come out to the living room and watch TV with me,” she declares, standing at the foot of my bed.

I haven’t left it much since I came home, and I’m starting to get sick of it. Sick of myself.

“Why?” I’ve been trying to avoid any sort of media at all costs, except for bingeing a bunch of movies. All of them romantic comedies full of the tropes Rachel told me about. They’re comforting. Though they probably also leave me with too much hope. Like everything between Tate and me is going to work out in the end.

My rational mind says no way is that going to happen, but my hopeful heart?

It’s holding out for a miracle.

“There’s something coming on that I think you should see.” She clasps her hands together in front of herself, watching me. “Just . . . come out and watch it with me.”

“Is Dad out there?” I really don’t want to hear it from him. I love my father, and for the most part he’s been leaving me alone since I came home, but I know he’s dying to give me a speech.

I’m not ready to hear it yet.

“He fell asleep about an hour ago. It’ll just be me and you. Come on.” She waves a hand. “Join me.”

“Okay, give me a minute,” I grumble as I throw my covers back and slide out of bed.

“Don’t take too long. It’s going to start soon,” she tells me before she leaves my bedroom.

I brush my teeth and pull my hair into a topknot. I don’t bother changing, though. I at least took a shower today, and I’m wearing a silky pajama-shorts set that’s a pale-pink color. A step up from the old ratty clothes I had on for the previous twenty-four hours.

When I enter the living room, I see Mom is perched on the edge of the couch, hunched over and staring at the TV. The moment she notices me, she aims the remote at the screen and pauses the commercial, a faint smile on her face.

“You look good.”

I shrug, settling into an overstuffed chair. “What do you want to show me?”

“It’s coming on right now.” She hits the remote again and fast-forwards through the little bit of commercial that she can. “Just watch.”

I wait, bored as the commercials drone on. The eleven o’clock newscast says goodbye, only to launch into more commercials. I’m checking my phone, but there’s not much to see, since I’m avoiding social media like it’s the plague, and I set it on the chair, my eyes going wide when I see what’s coming on next.

When they list the special guests.

Tate’s name flashes on the screen, and I realize . . .

He never canceled his talk show appearance.

“I don’t know if I want to watch this,” I say.

“You should,” Mom says, and when I glance over at her, I notice there’s a strange look on her face. “Just . . . let’s see what happens.”

Nerves chew at my stomach, and I sit up straighter, bracing myself. The talk show host performs his usual monologue at first, and I’m over it almost immediately. I just want to get to Tate. I want to know what he’s going to perform. What he’s going to say. I’m sure he’s nervous. Afraid the host is going to ask hard-hitting questions, and after everything that just happened, I know those questions are going to be all about us.

The host rambles for a solid ten minutes, maybe longer, and when it goes to a commercial break, I’m halfway out of the chair, unable to take it anymore. “I’m going to bed.”

“But darling, you have to watch Tate’s performance.” Mom leaps to her feet, rushing toward me, her hands landing on my shoulders as if she’s going to push me back onto the chair. “It’s important.”

“Why? Are you trying to make me even sadder? He hasn’t contacted me since I left, Mom. Not once. Not a single call or text or anything. Which is making me realize that what happened between us when we were together meant nothing to him.” The tears are back—I am so sick of crying—and I blink hard, trying to stop them.

But it’s no use. They’re streaking down my cheeks, and I feel like I’m on the verge of a total mental breakdown.

“Oh, darling. You really love him, don’t you?” When I nod, she pulls me into a crushing hug, holding me tight. “Can you trust me? Just for a little bit?”

“Why do you want me to watch it? Do you know something I don’t?” I pull away from her, staring into her dark-brown eyes, which are so much like my own. “Tell me.”

Her head shakes slightly, her lips parting, and I wait in anticipation.

“I can’t tell you. Just know that you need to see this.” Her expression is somber, and with a reluctant nod, I settle back into the chair.

And I wait.