Nothing.
No tears surfaced. I thought I’d exhausted myself of them. All that came was the heat from the shame as it branded itself like a scarlet letter to my chest. All my self-doubt led me there. Had torn apart the first real thing I ever felt, like a cancerous sore.
If only I had trusted myself. My instincts.
My gut.
I had a jar full of if-onlys.
“Come on. Get up.”
Poppy’s voice poked through my dream, followed by a sudden rush of cool air.
“You’ve done enough self-torture,” she continued, pulling my limp arms forward. “Any more crying and you’ll turn into a puddle of saltwater.”
I groaned at the thought of having to go anywhere outside, of showing my face. If I couldn’t even face my own reflection, how could I look anyone else in the eye?
“I don’t want to hear it. As your best friend, I’ve given you an acceptable amount of time to feel sorry for yourself, but that time is up. So come on. Get up and shower. We’ve got a date with a diner, and I refuse to go out with you looking like a nest of wild animals have taken up residence in that mop of yours.”
I touched at my hair, then shrugged in agreement. She was right. My hair was one Bob Marley song away from becoming dreadlocks.
“Fine. I’ll shower. But I don’t feel like going out.”
“Tough shit.”
By the way her hands were anchored on her hips, I could tell she wasn’t going to budge on the matter. I tugged in a long stream of oxygen, feeling it touch every crevice inside my lungs, every hollow spot, imagining it pushing out all the ugly of these last few days.
“Look, he said when he gets back that you guys will talk, right? You have to have faith in him. Don’t do what I did. Don’t… doubt him. Yourself.”
“But what if… what if he realizes he didn’t really feel anything for me? I mean, I hurt him, Poppy, in the worst way possible. What if he decides he can’t trust me ever again?”
She waved me off. “Don’t be ridiculous. Love doesn’t work like that. You don’t just fall in and out that easily.” She paused. “He’s a guy, Prim. He has a sense of pride, and that was damaged when the article went live. He knows Quinn, and he knows you. Let him sort through it, then you’ll see everything is okay.”
The first ray of sunlight poked through my heart. “You really think so?”
Her grin grew. “I know so. He loves you, Prim. Everything will work itself out, and you’ll get through this. One shove by me at a time.” To drive home that she meant it, she gave a light shove to my back. “Go on. Go get squeaky clean, my hopeless little pet.”
I tossed her a look, but did as she said, feet dragging the entire way. Once I was under the warm spray of water, a long overdue sigh pressed past my lips. Though I wouldn’t admit it to her, a warm shower did wonders for a broken heart. With every scrub, I felt like I was washing away the scum of the past couple of days. A little more like myself, a little less like the lovesick zombie I’d become.
Poppy was bent over, staring at Newt when I returned. “He’s a creepy little fucker.” She annunciated her statement with a full-body shiver.
“Hey.” I bumped her aside with my hip. “Don’t talk about my Newty like that.”
“Newty?”
Reaching into his tank, I ran a finger down his back. “Yes. Newty.”
She peered at my hand as if it were diseased when I retracted it. “You’re going to wash that, right?”
I pumped a small bit of hand sanitizer in my hand, then wiggled my fingers at her. “All clean.”
The diner was only a block away from my apartment and packed with the morning rush. It had been days since I’d seen the sun. Felt its warmth against my skin. I felt like an entirely different person stepping out into the world. Everything appeared less shiny. Less propitious. It was like all the color had been removed from my eyes, dulling the world in monochrome hues.
“Come on,” Poppy said, linking her arm through mine. “Let’s get some real food in you.”
The next morning, I woke with a renewed sense of hope. Maybe things weren’t so grave. I loved Grayson and he loved me, and we’d sort through it. That was what love was, wasn’t it? Fighting for each other? Forgiving?
The anxiety I felt over seeing him was whirling out of control inside my chest, constricting it. Surely, he’d reach out to me soon enough, and we’d talk about our future. He’d hug me and tell me he forgave me, and I’d promise to never let anything come between us again.
As I sat at my kitchen table, talking to Poppy on the phone, sorting through my emails, a notification pinged on my Facebook. I’d been tagged by someone.
I clicked onto the notification, only to find a picture of Grayson standing outside of his apartment.
Only, he wasn’t alone.
That women, Monica, from the convention, had her lips pressed against his. The caption read: Is the Serial Dater Recycling his Playbook?
The floor flopped out from under me as all my fears towered over me like black shadows waiting to swallow me whole. I didn’t… I didn’t understand. He said we’d talk. He said…
I closed the link out with an eerie calm. Stared straight ahead, trying to keep the floodgates from opening.
“Prim… I just saw it, too. Are you…?”
“I deserve this. It wasn’t real, Poppy. It never was.” I thought about the nights I’d laid in bed with him, running my fingers over his skin. Wishing I could kiss him one more time. The images faded away, dissolving like tissue paper submerged in water.
“Fucking prick. Who does he think he is?”
“Grayson Pierce. Serial dater.” I stood, the ache in my chest deepening.
“Are you going to call him?”
“Why would I? You saw the picture. The entire world saw it. There’s no reason to ask him what’s going on when it’s plainly clear. His lips on another woman’s says it all.”
Did it, though? Judging him as I’d done before I knew him hadn’t been fair. So why allow myself to judge him again before I knew the truth?
“I can come over, and we can make a voodoo doll of him. Poke him in the balls a few times for fun.” I could hear the strain in her voice. She wanted to make me laugh, but somewhere deep in her heart, she knew it was a lost cause.
“Maybe another time. I’m feeling tired, Poppy. I think… I think I’ll go to sleep.”
“Okay.” The word sounded sad.
We hung up. Pulling the blanket over my head, I stared at the screen. At the pictures I’d taken of us in bed. On his roof. At the library. Regret made a home inside my chest. For one fleeting moment in my life, I’d known what love felt like. I’d discovered the importance of hope.
I’d lost it.
I’d lost it all.
The Media Devil
The city air scorched underneath the sun beating down on me.
A mirror of the way I felt on the inside.
Heated and writhing. My skull felt like it had cracked in two, but I welcomed the pain as I sat outside Prim’s apartment, wondering when she’d return.
Once I realized she wasn’t home, I waited for hours. Checked my phone every few minutes, desperate to hear from the only person who wasn’t blowing up my line.
I knew what the tabloids had said. What the article said. The picture that circulated, spreading lies. Tearing into the one person I loved most.
The moment I had been cornered by Monica outside of my apartment, I should have known something was awry.
“Hey,” she’d said, a slippery smile on her face. “I read that article about you.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to get around her. I was set on seeing Prim. On fixing things.
“Checking up on you. We both know writing about you is a big no-no.” She sidled up to me. Ran a finger over my arm. “I can help take her off your mind if you’d like.”
Every nerve in my body stiffened with alertness. “I don’t want to take her off my mind.” I
removed her finger from my stinging flesh. “In fact, I’m headed to meet up with her now. And yes, we’re still together.”
Her mouth fell slightly ajar as I left her standing there.
A second later, she grabbed my arm, stilling me. “You really have changed, haven’t you?”
I glanced down at her hand with a frown. Waited until she removed it.
“Why her?” she’d called as I started to walk away. “What’s so special about her?”
“Because I love her.” It was as simple as that.
She jolted. “You don’t know the first thing about love, Grayson Pierce. I gave you my heart, and you stomped on it.”
Haughty laughter ripped from the center of me. She had nerve. “You gave me a good show and a flashy smile. That was it. And you ate up the publicity like a starved animal. Tell me, did you get that modeling contract you were chasing?”
A ripple of red spread across her face. “It went both ways, and you know it. But what we had was fun. This… this so-called love you feel… it won’t last. People like us, we aren’t capable of it. And I’ll prove it to you.”
She closed the distance between us. Flicked her eyes to her left, at something I couldn’t see. Waved her hand in that direction. A second later, she pressed her lips against mine.
I jerked away with a curse as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A winning smile plastered on her lips.
“That’ll be uploaded within the next… hmm… how long will it take?” She turned to a guy who stood on the other side of the sidewalk. He gave her a thumbs-up.
“It’s already being uploaded now.”
“You see, I already gave them the headline. I just needed the picture to go with it. She won’t want a thing to do with you once she sees this, and I’ll be waiting for you to come crawling back.” She licked her lips. Glanced at her phone. “Ah. There it is.” She held the phone out to me. “It’s amazing how fast the internet works, isn’t it? See you soon, Grayson.”
They slipped inside the vehicle before I could get my hands around the guy’s neck. Left me standing there
That was all it took.
That was the trigger pulled.
The second I realized what had happened… what it meant… I took off for Prim. Found the first taxi I could while I dialed her number, praying I could get to her first. When her phone went to voice mail, I knew. She’d seen it, and surely, she believed it.
I glanced up to Prim’s window, my heart a limp, sad thing.
I’d wait for her. Wait until she came home so I could explain everything to her.
Prim never returned home.
I had to accept the fact she didn’t want to see me. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I tried to see her at work, but they said she’d been out sick. I tried to get in contact with Poppy, but if she’d gotten any of my messages, she never acknowledged them.
For days, I’d waited to hear from her. But as they slowly slid by, the realization she’d truly given up on me began to sink in.
“Dude,” Finley said, nudging me. “What are you going to do about it?”
My shoulders fell with a hard slump. “What can I do? She won’t return my calls. She isn’t home. I have no idea where she is.”
“Women,” he said with a shake of his head.
“I should have never left her the way I did. I shouldn’t have walked out angry. I love her, Fin. I was just…”
“Being human?”
I felt like one giant hangover.
“Listen, man. Don’t let something that good go because of misunderstandings. If anyone can offer that advice, it’s me.”
I glanced up at him. At the shadows that lived in his eyes.
“If you love her and she loves you, then make it work. Find a way. You work at Stud for heaven’s sake. If anyone has a platform to stand on, it’s you.”
His words paraded through my mind, spinning, hovering, forming into something solid.
I paced the floor. Looked up at him. “What if… what if I wrote mirror of what was written about me? The version of how I came to fall in love with her?” Hope burst through my veins when I knew exactly what I needed to write. “How to Turn a Player into a Stayer. An Inside Look at How New York’s Notorious Serial Dater Came to Fall in Love.” I stilled, words already forming in my head. “I’ll take back the headline and make it my own. For her. For us.”
Fin stood back as I rushed past him, hurrying toward my room where my laptop rested.
“You’re welcome,” he shouted after me.
And then I shut my door.
The Come-Up Queen
“Have you checked your social media recently?” Poppy asked as she turned from her desk to face me. She tended to me like a wounded bird, continuously finding things to ask me about to try to distract me from my reality.
“No.” Social media was the last place I wanted to be on.
“You have almost twenty-thousand followers, Prim. And look at your Insta. It’s the same.” She was gawking, scrolling like a fiend. “They’re calling you the new come-up queen.”
“Great.” I continued typing the story Quinn wanted on her desk by the afternoon. My mood was a giant blur of gray.
“Prim… “
There was that tone again. Sympathetic and worried. It was like nails being dragged across my skin. I was so sick of everyone in the office staring at me with sympathy in their eyes.
And I was on the verge of losing it.
A sniffle pulled our attention in Brinley’s direction.
Finally, something to focus on other than my mess.
We stood and tiptoed over to her. Her desk was a battlefield of tissues.
“Brin?” I asked.
She busted into another round of tears, her face splotchy and red. “He broke up with me,” she sobbed.
Shit.
“Luke?” I asked, feeling a quake in my stomach. An echo of something I refused to hear pushing toward the surface.
Her head dropped in affirmation.
“But… you were so happy.”
Her shoulders lifted a fraction before falling.
“Men,” Poppy said with a collected sigh. “If only we could give them a good swat. On the head. Preferably with something hard and debilitating.”
That warranted a small grin from Brinley.
“Listen, I know I give you a hard time, Brin, but Mr. Right will come along one day. He’s probably just held up in his room writing some lonely boy poetry that will melt your panties off. You’ll see.”
“You’re wrong.”
Poppy’s gaze cut to mine, her smile wavering.
“Love doesn’t fit in here. You were right,” I said, feeling the hole widen in my chest. “Not for you. Not for Quinn. Not for me. And now… not for Brinley. This place is cursed.”
“Prim, no. I was just—”
“What? Trying to make me feel better?” I felt it then, the hot sting rushing up the base of my throat and pressing behind my eyes. “Well, guess what? I don’t want to feel better. I want to feel like shit, because that’s what I deserve. He trusted me. Me, Poppy, and all that was tossed down the drain the moment Quinn—”
“Quinn, what?” Quinn said, her voice trailing over the top of my cubicle. “Boosted your career into stardom? Published a truly remarkable piece that not only aided you in your career, but also our blog as well?”
My mouth clamped shut. I returned to my computer, trying to remember what it was I was typing.
“Look, Prim. I’m sorry he didn’t take it well, but you’ve got to pull your head out of the tissue box and see what all you’ve accomplished in such a brief period of time. People are hearing you. You can’t tell me you wanted to be a journalist just to sit in the back of the room.”
I caught Poppy giving Quinn the kill sign from the corner of my eye.
Quinn’s sigh was heavy. She shifted her stance, pivoting away, but then turned back to me. “Check your social media. I think there’s something on it you’l
l want to see.”
And with that, she strode away.
I didn’t want to follow her advice. To fall into another one of her traps. Was it another photo of him with some other woman? Another piece of evidence for her to use against all men in this world?
“Prim, she’s right,” Poppy excitedly said a second later. “Come here. Look.”
On her screen was an article published by Grayson. An article about him. About us. About me. His version of how we came to meet and how he fell for me. It took everything Virago wrote about him and expanded on it. Tackled some of the facts Quinn managed to over-embellish. Gave himself entirely over to the world in an exposing way.
I swiped at the tears spilling over my cheeks. A bubbling, freeing laugh pressed out from my chest when Poppy put her arm around me. He still loved me. Honestly believed that what we shared was real this time.
“Man, you guys kill me with that gushy kind of love,” Poppy said, closing the article. She turned, her gaze going serious. “You’re going to go to him, aren’t you? Or are you going to do that serendipity thing again?”
I grinned. “I can’t let serendipity have all the fun, now can I?” Standing, I reached for my purse, the chains around my heart finally breaking away.
“Want me to say you were sick?” Poppy called as I started for the door.
“Yeah. Lovesick,” I shouted over my shoulder as I went to reclaim my forever.
Serendipity
The moment I hit publish on the article, I felt the many years I’d been carrying on my back fall away. The lies. The truths. They were all out there in the open now.
Immediately, my phone began to go crazy. Interviews were sought. I told Harrison I’d be taking the rest of the day to sort through the mess I’d made. There was no doubt in my mind Prim would see the article.
I only hoped she’d read it.
Once home, I plopped onto my couch, staring at the wall. I screened every call, every message, that came through my cell, hoping it would be Prim. As the hour wove on, doubt wrapped its grimy hands around my throat. Maybe she had read it. Maybe she just didn’t care.
Virginal Headlines: Love Between The Headlines Page 24