Chapter Eight

Someone was staring a hole in the side of my face as I clean the table that's just been vacated. Any other day I would give in, look towards the person, offer them a polite smile and ask them if there's something I could possibly help them with. But that was before. Now when I feel someone's eyes on me, they're usually attached to pint sized pre-teens who look at me like they wish the bubonic plague upon me and that's not the kind of energy I'm looking to invite into my day.

Energy? Look at me, I hang out with those Hollywood types for a few days and I'm already thinking like them. I reminisce about the green juice I had for breakfast in the morning and make a note to self to never ever have it again in my life.

"You do realise you've been scrubbing the same spot for the past ten minutes?"

My boss Dee's voice makes me jump and the bystander, a girl a few years younger than me wearing way too much makeup glares at me and walks past us. She joins her group of friends at their booth and they resume their vigil over their phones as I assume they have heard the news.

"You seem a bit more distracted than usual, everything okay?"

DeeDee's has been in business for a long, long time. My boss had this diner since long before I was born and she hasn't kept it that by hiring absentminded waitresses. She's being kind by calling me distracted. Ever since hurricane Kyler rolled into my life, my work ethic has been shot. I've been taking down wrong orders, not getting the food to the customers in time and apparently it takes me half an hour to wipe down a table. I'm lucky she hasn't fired my ass and hired any one from the hundreds of applications that sit on her desk.

"I'm sorry, no I'm completely fine. I just couldn't sleep last night."

That is partly true. Kyler told me that his version of the story would be going out last night and to be prepared for the backlash the next day. Even though I couldn't care less what a bunch of strangers thought about me, it's still unnerving to be judged and watched like this. But maybe it's all in my head because I'm sure Maureen from the convenience store doesn't care about my love triangle with Kyler Blackwell and Alyssa Hargrove. But she'd been looking a bit too intently at me as I bought some milk this morning and it threw me off my game.

"You want me to switch your shifts with Mandy this week? You know she's dying to take the breakfast crowd."

"No! Please don't fire me Dee, I really need to work the mornings." I blinked back tears of frustration, hating that I had disappointed my boss. "I...I promise I'll do better."

"Honey," Dee's maternal instinct took over and she pulled me into a hug. "I don't know what's going on child but whatever it is, something tells me it's all going to be all right."

***

Sometimes in life certain choices are made for you, not by you. Who makes those choices, why the decision is taken away from you and the impact those choices can have on your life are afterthoughts. When something like this happens, just go with the flow and let life take its course. No matter how hard you try to control every single aspect of your existence, that's just not possible. Because one of these days, a wild card possibly an annoyingly gorgeous one with a face created to weaken one's knees will come in and destroy all your best laid plans.

At least that's what I was telling myself.

Inside my house the chaos has died down and within these four walls I'm reminded of why I'm helping Kyler in the first place. Yes, I was the one helping him not vice versa or at least that's how he puts it. According to him his reputation was shot and the studio producing the film that will propel him to teenage heartthrob status was threatening to fire him for breach of contract. But his team was better and somehow what Kyler had done had worked out in favour of the franchise. There was more social media buzz surrounding the movie than ever before and his and Alyssa's relationship had gone from being considered cookie cutter boring to a thing of mystery. I was the one who had thrown a spanner in the works and created a tension between them, were they a thing or weren't they? The fanbase was eating up the guessing game and so with the clarification of my being Kyler's childhood sweetheart today, there was bound to be some friction.

But the envelope that Kyler had handed me before he left last week still taunted me from my bedside drawer. I'd hidden it there, away from the prying eyes of my mom. I didn't want her to worry, didn't want her to think that I was doing whatever I was doing just because of her. I was doing it for both of us. I saw how overworked she was, saw the freelancing gigs she took on the side to make what little money they offered and how she'd shelved her dream project for those little jobs. I knew she'd been thinking about taking a teaching job when she'd sworn that was the last thing she'd do. We'd been worrying about money for so long that it felt ridiculous to look away when an opportunity was literally knocking at my door.

"That's a lot of money." Ree whistled as I FaceTimed her later that evening. In the background I could see her mother frowning at me. Hard as I tried the woman really didn't like me, it could be due to the fact that my best friend used me as an excuse to go sneak out and meet boys ninety percent of the time.

"Could you be a little quiet." I hissed and not just because of Mrs. Mcpherson's increasingly curious gaze at the mention of money. I'd signed an NDA and yes I was most definitely violating a few terms by sharing some of this information with Ree and I'd rather her mother not get involved. She was known to be quite outspoken at the ladies' crochet club and I didn't want to be the topic of their latest scandal.

"Oops sorry," I see her get up from the couch and with a parting look at her mother's disapproving face, Ree walks into her room and closes the door behind her. "I can't promise you that she isn't standing with her ear pressed against the door but maybe if we whisper she won't find out."

I roll my eyes, "Maybe this is a bad idea, maybe I shouldn't..."

"Ells, sweetie look at yourself. You have bags the size of Clair Worthington's Louis Vuitton holdall's underneath your eyes, Carter told me how you snapped at a bunch of eight-year-old's at the diner and you haven't posted on Instagram in a week! Your life is a mess and you clearly need a shoulder to lean on so lean away."

In my defence those twins were being really annoying and thought playing tic tac toe with ketchup and mustard on the countertops would be a really good idea.

"It's just that I feel taking his money makes me feel...dirty. Maybe I should return the check." The thoughts whirled inside my head and I took the offending envelope out of nightstand. Kyler had handed it to me the last time I'd seen him. He'd done it discreetly, quietly after Julie and Harrison had gone and he'd managed to corner me in the kitchen.

"This is for you." He'd slipped a small, flat envelope in my hand that gave a good indication of what it contained. "I know we haven't exactly hashed out all the details in fine print but Julie will be in touch soon with all the paperwork. She'll probably want you to sign an NDA as well. I'm sorry for putting you through all this Ella, I really am but you'll be doing me a huge favour. If you agree to this, agree to what I'm proposing it could save my career."

And that amount could save my house.

"If you're signing up for what I think you're going to be signing up for then it's fair. I know you can't tell me much but Ells you deserve this, take it. You can't spend your entire life doing things for other people and not expecting anything in return."

Ree was the voice of reason in all of this but I still couldn't get rid of the feeling that when money became involved it cheapened my relationship with Kyler. So maybe calling it a relationship was a stretch. So far our standout moment included a kiss and a punch and that does not a connection make. Still I remembered those we few hours we spent together at his house as some of the most special moments in my life, when I'd been able to let loose and allow myself to share a part of me with a stranger. The fact that that stranger turned out to be a rising star from Hollywood is just my bad luck. I know I shouldn't think about the night we shared as anything more than a fluke on his end and loneliness on mine but sometimes when it gets a bit too quiet in my head I begin to wonder whether he thinks of me too, thinks of our conversation or that kiss.

But then I look at the big fat check he handed me and realise that in his world there's a price tag for everything and apparently I must have been a really good kisser for him to pay me nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

"It's not exactly hard labour to pretend to be his childhood sweetheart, maybe I should try and renegotiate the amount."

"I swear to sweet sweet Shark Tank, you have the worst business sense out of anyone I know! Who the hell renegotiates so that they're paid less? Do you realise that by agreeing to be his fake girlfriend you'll be subjecting yourself to wrath of millions of scorned teenaged girls and some adult women who live vicariously through romance novels? That's a lot to face on your own so if he wants to pay you, let him. This is it Ells, this is your shot to make all your problems go away and if the solution looks as good as Kyler Blackwell? You'd be crazy not to take it."

I think about Ree's words for a long time, especially when I go down to my mom's office and find her fast asleep on her desk, glasses askew. She'd been doing this more and more, ever since Kyler and his team had swept through our house and she'd reached the conclusion that I'd resorted to some very questionable practices to get the money to save our house. I had to reassure her repeatedly that no, I did not have any kind of compromising videos or photographs of myself circulating on the internet, I mean I did but not the kind that she'd imagined. She'd taken on some extra freelancing jobs so that I didn't feel too much pressure but it was clear that the work was taking a toll on her. I picked up the empty wine glass next to her and cleared up her things the best I could. She'd come down to work again even if I woke her up and tried to take her to her room so I let her sleep it off here. The bills that she dragged with her everywhere and read and re-read as if the number would magically go down were right there on her desk.

My decision was made for me there and then.

***

"I'm not calling to chat."

"Hello to you too."

He chuckled and I hated his stupid annoying voice that sent chills down my spine. How the hell could one sound that good when they were a lying, cheating asshat and I had to constantly remind myself to not fall for his charm. He was an actor and being able to manipulate people expertly was part of why he was so good at his job so I couldn't take anything that he said to me seriously. It'd taken me a while to finally contact me like he'd pleaded I do when I'd made a decision. It sucked, tremendously so that he knew I was going through a tough time financially and that money would incentive enough to get me to agree to his crazy plan.But I couldn't let my mom age a thousand years overnight and if all it took to make her worries go away was to fake date Kyler then surely that was a hardship I could bear.

I just had to remind my heart to stay out of it.

"I know that Ella Grace. The bruise healed nicely by the way, nothing they couldn't cover up with a little makeup."

Kyler had flown back to LA on the very next flight after he paid me that visit. He'd been a bit cagey about his mom but there was an ad shoot he couldn't miss. Since then he'd texted me a few times but largely he'd given me the space to think about his offer.

I felt a twinge of guilt for hitting him because of course the man made a living off of his appearance I probably should've thought about that before I attacked him. I was lucky he wasn't suing me but since what I could offer him would barely cover a pair of those designer sneakers he wore, the joke was on him.

"I said I was sorry." I muttered

"Yeah well when you show up to set with a battered face and a scandal, the production company isn't your biggest fan."

"Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for you here?"

"No," he cleared his throat, "just thought I'd let you know that it's not all smooth sailing on my end too. I don't want you think that you'll be going through this alone."

Why the heck does he say things like this? Just when I coach myself into hating him enough for upending my life he goes ahead and says something so...endearing that I'm brought right back to the night of the party and the boy that I hung out with.

But I didn't know that the boy had a girlfriend the entire time.

"If I agree and I'm not saying that I'm fully on board, I need to know what I'm signing up for. I have some concerns..."

"Of course, I completely understand that what I'm asking of you is a lot." Music blares in the background, there's laughter of the female variety and I pause to wonder if he's out partying. I'd wanted to ask him about his mom who'd been hospitalised after a seizure. Carter hadn't shared much about her but said that she had struggled with epilepsy for a long time and knowing that a family that looked as perfect as theirs on the outside suffered so deeply had made my heart hurt.

But I guess I shouldn't be bringing it up now.

"Anything you want to know, any terms you have I'll be happy to discuss them."

"Right now? If you're busy, I can call later." Someone yells his name and he tells them to wait a minute.

"I'm actually back in town this week, we're all coming back, my parents, Mason and my sister. My mom wants to spend the summer there instead of LA so if you don't mind waiting..."

"Oh," I hadn't expected that. My heart begins to pound because in my head I thought I'd be seeing very little of Kyler. Whatever relationship I would have agreed to would be done online and through social media. From what I had discussed with Julie, I just had to make a few posts on some of my accounts to corroborate Kyler's narrative about us being childhood sweethearts. But him being here? For an extended period of time?

What would that even mean?

"No, that's fine, we can talk later. I...I should go then." I move to end the call, confused by own reaction and panic at his announcement. I need to decompress and revaluate, maybe get out a notebook and write these feelings down because I certainly can't make a sense of them in my head.

"No, Ella wait. Hold on a second."

I sigh, as though it was a huge burden to keep talking to him even though if I was truly being honest with myself, this was the most I'd felt of anything at all this whole week. "What?"

"I'm really looking forward to seeing you."

With that he quickly ended the call before I had a second to react and react I did, my mouth open and gaping like a fish.

How could he? How dare? Did he enjoy make me a confused mess who couldn't tell which was up and which was down? Ella Nichols did not get this flustered over a boy. Ella Nichols was sensible and made responsible choices. She did not let her heart get involved with a guy she barely knew and who was involved with someone else, complicated as that relationship might be.

I had to be on my guard.

I couldn't let him get to me.

I needed to get through this summer without allowing Kyler Blackwell into my heart, again. I could pretend to be his girlfriend for the public and save my family but in private, I'd seal myself up tighter than Fort Knox.

That wouldn't be too difficult, right? 

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