by Nova Raines
“Not yet. I’m waiting for someone. He’ll be here soon.”
She inclines her head and walks off.
I stare at the expensive menu for bit. I never really paid much attention to prices before, but now that I have no money, I’m painfully aware of how much I can’t afford this lifestyle. I put down the menu and look around at the crowd.
An older actress and her husband are seated against one wall, and a Lakers player is at another table with a girl hot enough to be a supermodel. She probably is one. A rowdy group enters the restaurant, and I instantly recognize the girl at the front. Neon blue hair, porcelain skin, and lots of dark makeup. Kennedy Rose. This is an exclusive restaurant, no doubt about it. The people in here are used to seeing celebrities in this part of Los Angeles. They don’t bat at eye, which is nice. Even though a few people have glanced my way, no one is gaping outright.
Although they might once Kaidan gets here. If he ever gets here.
At 9:20, I try calling him, but his phone goes straight to voicemail, and my throat closes. I hang up without leaving a message, because I know if I talk I’m going to sound pathetic and desperate. Why isn’t he here yet?
I polish off the edamame and drain my glass.
The waitress arrives almost instantly with another bowl and refills my water. “Are you ready to order?”
“My date will be here soon,” I say lamely.
She nods, her expression polite, but as she leaves my table I can see she’s a little irritated. I’m taking up one of her tables. And the sad truth is, I can’t order anything even if I wanted to. I spent all the cash Rowan gave me on gas. What I have left won’t even buy a single piece of sushi in this place.
“Hayley Wade?” I jerk to my left and see a very drunk girl stumbling my way. It’s Kennedy.
I sit up straight as she crashes into my table and leans close. I focus on her bloodshot eyes, the smeared bright-red lipstick at the corner of her mouth. I’m pretty sure I could get drunk off the fumes of her breath alone.
I press my back to my chair to put space between us, but she just leans closer. “You’re Hayley.”
“Yes?”
“From one Stone Slut…” Kennedy jabs a finger at her chest to punctuate her slurred words, then points to me, “to another Slone Stut. Slut.” She giggles. “It’s my job to warn you. Kaidan’ll fuck you hard, then fuck you over.”
Kennedy lets go of her tight grip on the table and pulls out the chair across from me so she can collapse into it.
Now the people around us are definitely staring, irritated at the way she’s interrupting their dinner. My chest flutters. I’m mortified. What if Kaidan gets here, and she says this crap to him?
“Kennedy, I—”
“No.” She holds up a finger to silence me, then grabs my water and chugs the entire thing. She wipes her wet mouth sloppily on the sleeve of her fishnet shirt and then starts to cry.
I stare at her in horror, unsure what to do next. I don’t even know this girl. I saw her one time ever, at the Stone mansion party, but I never even spoke to her.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she slurs through her tears. “Fuck him like it’s your job, but never ever give him your heart.” Her voice drops to a choked whisper. “I loved Devon. I really did.”
She puts her head in her arms and starts to sob loudly.
“Kennedy!” A dude with the best guyliner I’ve ever seen comes up to the table and grabs Kennedy’s arm. “Come on, love.”
She lets him lift her out of the chair, and he sends me an apologetic look before throwing an arm around her waist and helping her out the door.
The entire restaurant seems to be staring at me now. I whip out my phone to pretend to be busy. It’s 9:30 now, and Kennedy’s words have me on edge. Why the hell did she say that stuff? I go online to prevent myself from texting Kaidan yet again.
I check my empty e-mail inbox and surf around randomly before giving in and bringing up ScandalLust. There are new headlines about my dad’s death.
Slash Wade Overdose Death—One Source Describes Wild Parties, Scandalous Orgies, Unlimited Cocaine
I let out a grunt and skip past that one. Yeah. Unlimited Cocaine. I’m paying for it. A few days ago, the tabloids moved from mere announcements of my father’s death to a bunch of stupid speculation and exposés on what a shitty drug-addicted person he was. I refuse to read it.
I scroll down, and I can barely breathe as I read the awful new headline halfway down the homepage.
KaiHay Stops Traffic, but is Kaidan seeing Peyton behind Hayley’s back?
My lungs seize, and my heart’s in my throat as I scan the article, dated today. The first picture is of me straddling Kaidan in his car, engaged in that steamy makeout session we shared yesterday right before we realized the paps had found us.
And below it, there’s a picture of Kaidan leaving a cafe. And right beside him, a hand on his arm—is Peyton. Is this the reason Kennedy just randomly approached me?
KaiHay stopped traffic yesterday with a public makeout session. But today Kaidan and Peyton were sighted having coffee in Los Angeles. Is KaiHay over just as soon as it began, or is Kaidan stringing his new doppelganger along, seeing Peyton in secret? Who do you think’s gonna make it? KaiHay or KaiPey? Sound off in the comments!
My stomach’s in knots, and I stupidly scroll down to the comments section. You never, ever, ever read the comments. That’s, like, the #1 rule of reading articles about yourself on the Internet. I don’t know what I hope to find in the comments—maybe some tabloid junky invalidating this picture, claiming it’s from months ago.
Because I don’t want to believe my eyes. I don’t want to believe Kaidan just took Peyton out to coffee today. Is he standing me up for our date? Is he with Peyton right now? I know reading the comments is a mistake, but I can’t stop myself.
LustLush219: KaiPey for LIFE. Hayley’s fucking fat and ugly. Look at the dumb whore. A cheap Peyton knock-off. Pey’s so much hotter and so sweet and talented. Hayley’s nothing!!!!!! She has NO talent. She’s only famous because of her dead daddy.
EnderVarronesHo: ha ha lush so true. No one will even remember her name in a few months.
StonesBabyGirl6382: Dump em both Kaidan! Fakeass blond bitches. He needs a real woman not a plastic doll.
TakenByLiam: I think Stone’ll keep goin back to Peyton. He’s addicted to her. They’re the perfect couple!
CheapHANDBAGS9483294x8347: Get the LATEST Prest handbags and sunglasses from THIS season by CLICKING HERE!
SparkleCowboy415: I vote KaiGAY! Seriously Kaidan you can do WAY better than Hayley Wade.
EnderVarronesHo: LOL Hayley should just kill herself like her parents did.
I have to stop there. I can’t read any more of this. I bet these trolls would be ecstatic if they knew I actually read what they wrote.
It’s 9:45. I look toward the door again, my jaw tight, my eyes burning, but Kaidan hasn’t magically appeared, and the restaurant’s starting to empty out a bit. My gaze lands on my waitress, who is standing by the hostess stand with a manager at her side. They all glance my way, and I can tell the waitress is pissed off I’m sitting here eating free edamame and drinking water.
I call Kaidan again, breathing too fast. Please answer. I want to know why he’s so late. He has to have a good reason. That article can’t be the whole truth.
What happened between us in the car? He said I was different, that he’d turned down so many girls to find me. Am I so naive that I couldn’t tell bullshit when I heard it? I really believed him. He seemed… real.
Then again, he thought I was real, and I’ve been hiding all kinds of shit.
His phone goes straight to voicemail again, and I hang up and get to my feet. I gotta get out of here. It’s clear he’s not coming.
I walk out of the restaurant, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. Anyone who has been in here in the past hour can see I got stood up. I can only handle so much humiliation in one day.
I walk faster
once I’m out of there, practically jogging down the street to where I parked. The tears come, and I wipe them away, not caring anymore about my make-up.
Flashes erupt behind me, casting their light on the dark sidewalk ahead of me, and I whirl around.
A familiar-looking pap in a patched vest and a giant gold earring is tailing me, and he’s snapping away less than a foot from me.
I hold my hand over my face. “Fuck off!”
His eyes widen, and he grins at me. The deranged pap pirate keeps snapping away, and the hot anger I felt earlier at my brother is back. I’m sick of everyone, of everything. And now this douche will make money off pictures of me crying.
KaiHay OVER! Hayley Ditched On Their First Real Date
I stumble back, trying to cover my face and then give up. I reach into my purse and pull out the pepper spray. “Go away!”
He doesn’t even care or blink an eye. He just steps closer to get a shot of my face now that I’m not covering it.
I flip up the safety and let loose, spraying his camera lens and his face.
He lets out a little scream and falls to his knees, dropping his camera to the pavement, rubbing at his eyes.
I hesitate, panic and guilt warring within me, but he wouldn’t stop—I told him to stop. He didn’t think I had it in me to actually spray him. Well he was wrong. Everyone’s wrong. They don’t know me or what I’m capable of.
I tear off my heels and run to my car barefoot as fast as I can. I can’t think straight as I make my getaway and drive back to my penthouse. I just hold back new tears and pay attention to the speed limit.
When I get home at 10:30, I rip off my tight dress and fall into bed in my underwear. My phone’s next to me, silent, no messages from Kaidan, and I reach over to the bedside table to flip on my MP3 player. A rap song comes on.
“She drags me down, don’t know what to expect. All my niggaz say, that bitch be a train wreck.”
Ugh. That’s me. A train wreck. I slam off the player and stare up at the ceiling in the dark, tears leaking from my eyes. I feel hollow, completely empty. Kaidan stood me up. And he’s probably with Peyton.
I have no solution to my money problem. I mean—I can get a job, but what job am I qualified for that will pay me enough to live on and also enough to pay what my dad owed the drug dealers? They’ll just keep adding more and more interest… and will they hurt me when I don’t pay up?
I never told Rowan dad owed them eighty grand. Maybe if I had, he would have reacted differently. I was too angry, too thrown off by catching him fucking some slut in his booth.
My phone rings, and I snatch it up. It’s Kaidan.
I take a deep breath and answer. “Hello?”
“I am so sorry,” his voice is deep and full of what sounds like genuine guilt and regret. “I didn’t realize how late it was, and—”
“Kaidan, stop.”
He goes silent.
“I really don’t want to hear you say you’re sorry anymore.”
There’s a long pause. An exhale. “I screwed up again.”
“Yeah. You should have called earlier if you couldn’t make it.”
I hear him take a deep breath. I want to ask about Peyton, but I don’t want him to know I’ve been reading the tabloids and believing them.
Kaidan breaks the heavy silence first. “There’s something big happening with work… I got caught up in it and lost track of time. There’s just a lot going on…”
My imagination is running wild with images of him fucking Peyton on top of his big wooden desk. Is that the kind of stuff he’s referring to?
He takes my silence as an invitation to keep talking. “The HIT music awards are tomorrow night. Will you come with me?”
The lump in my throat is so big I can’t answer.
“Please, Hayley. Let me make this up to you.”
“I can’t go,” I choke out. I want to tell him this is over, that I’m done playing doppelganger, that I no longer trust him or anything he’s told me, but I can’t seem to make myself say it.
“Come with me,” he repeats.
“I don’t have anything to wear.” I really want to punch myself in the face right now. I should be telling him off, not talking about clothes.
“Every designer will be fighting to dress my date. Don’t even worry about that.”
“I can’t go. I’m busy.”
And with that, I hang up the phone and turn it off, because I can’t stand the sound of his lying voice anymore.
I close my eyes, my chest aching, and run a finger over my lips. I hate myself for still wanting him. I wish he’d show up at my door to apologize in person—to kiss me again like he did at the mansion… to finish what we started in his car. I think if he did that, I’d relent. I’d forgive him, and I’d believe anything he told me.
But it doesn’t happen, and it’s not going to. He forgot about me tonight. And now I need to forget about him.
Sleep clears my mind and gives me perspective, so I feel a little better the next morning. I’m not giving Kaidan any more chances, and my determination to fix my own problems is strong… until I realize I’m out of coffee. A caffeine withdrawal headache kicks in around noon as I start typing up my first-ever resume.
I have a degree. That’ll look good. Too bad I have no prior work experience. Oh, and a criminal record. Ha ha. This will be fun.
My mood sinks when I have to eat a can of peas for lunch and drops even lower as I try to pad my work experience and fail miserably. I finally just start typing random crap to keep myself from crying.
College student (Retired) — professional party organizer, apothecary owner (chiefly pot and Adderall)
Rock Star Royalty (Current Position: Orphaned Princess) — battles evil villains, manages royal treasury, raises money by attending charity balls
Diamond Thief (Current Position: In Training)
Char texts me, saving me from my misery, and says she’s standing outside my building. I glance around my wreck of a house. Screw it. I’m not even gonna try to clean it up. I’ve never in my life had to clean up a house this messy, and I’m overwhelmed every time I think about tackling it. At least I took the garbage out.
I throw on some jeans and a tank top and buzz Char in.
She bounces through the door in leggings and an oversized tee and boots, holding a tray with two coffees in it. She hands me my favorite drink—a coconut mocha with whip.
“Oh my God. Thank you.” I mean every word. My gratitude knows no bounds as I sip the sweet taste of it and get the caffeine working through my system. I shut off my computer and collapse onto the pile of blankets on my couch.
Char’s pretty almond-shaped eyes widen as she takes in my mess, looking at me like I’m nuts. “Are you okay?”
She gingerly removes a discarded dress from the armchair and sits down, her face a mixture of confusion and worry. “That’s it. You’re not dodging my questions anymore. Tell me what’s up with you.” She pulls out her tablet and hands it to me. “What the heck happened?”
I put my coffee on the table and look down at the article on the tablet. I choke down a frustrated growl. Fucking ScandalLust.
“Hayley’s Psycho!” Kaidan Ready To Dump Her After She Violently Attacks An Innocent Pap!
Under the headline is a picture of me beneath a street lamp with raccoon eyes, spraying that pap in the face. Of course he brought along some friends to catch me in action. “Shit.”
“Is that headline true?”
I sigh. “Half-true?”
“Which half? And what were you doing alone at night like that… crying?”
“Kaidan asked me out, then didn’t show up and blamed it on work.”
Char’s face falls, and I can tell she’s hurt I didn’t tell her sooner. “Ouch.”
“This stupid pap came after me as I was leaving the restaurant, and I just snapped.”
“He had a patched vest and a gold earring, right?”
“Yeah…”
She grimaces. “Damn. You pepper-sprayed Kaptain Krutch. That’s what they call that guy.”
“Huh?”
“He’s the pap pirate that gets in everyone’s faces and then sues them when they inevitably flip out and hurt him. Devon Stone punched that guy in the face last year and got arrested. You can look it up.”
I shove the tablet back at Char and sink into my couch, my head in my arms. That’s exactly what I need. A litigious pirate on my quickly growing list of people I owe money to.
“I’m worried about you, Hayley. I’m here for you. You know that, don’t you?”
She waits, but I feel too sick to answer.
“You’ve been avoiding my calls since the party,” she says. “I also saw the pics of you and Kaidan kissing in his car. And pictures of him with that werewolf bitch. How could you not call me?” Her voice rises. “And this… This penthouse… Haven’t the maids been by since you got here? What’s going on?”
She’s right. About all of it. I’ve kept her completely in the dark. I stare at Char, at her perfect make-up, her red manicure, her straight black hair, glossy and styled into a smooth ponytail. If she stops being my friend because I’m broke, then she was never really my friend, was she? I guess it’s time to find out.
I exhale and meet her eyes. “First of all… I’m done talking about Kaidan. And I’m done with him. We’re not talking about him. Ever again. You have to agree.”
She furrows her brow and searches my face but nods.
“Second. No, the maids haven’t been by. Because I’m having some… trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Trouble with my inheritance.”
“Like… how?” Char asks, drawing the words out.
I groan and walk over to my window to peek out. The thugs never came back. Maybe this means they’re gone for good and they gave up.
I turn back to Char and fold my arms across my chest. “It’s just going to be a little while until I get the money—and my allowance was cut off, too, when my dad died. So… I’m really, really broke.”