The Jacket Snatcher

Chapter 32- It Gets Complicated

"Oh, my god, are you Stephanie from the video?"

As I make my way back to the building after hanging up my phone, the use of my name pulls my attention to the three girls beside me.

"Eeeee! It is you!" the smallest one says, bobbing up and down. "Tell us! Who's the better kisser?"

"Uhh, I only kissed Calum in the video," I say, a little startled and massively confused.

Now the one with dyed red hair speaks. "We know. But then we saw this, and now we have to know! Which one is the better kisser?"

She holds out her phone to me. My eyes go wide when I see the tweet displayed on her screen. It's a picture of me on Luke's lap, kissing him. There's a caption that says: "Luke and Stephanie at his friend's barbecue."

How do they find out all this stuff? It only takes me a moment to figure out the angle of the picture and who is obviously behind this, but it's still alarming.

"Excuse me," I say before retreating as fast as I can.

"Wait! You never gave us an answer! Who's the best kisser?"

I duck under the barrier where Jerry is standing so that they can't follow me. Once behind safety, I do find some humor in the situation. Enough to call back to the girls over my shoulder, "Ashton!"

They gasp in unison, then start giggling and typing away furiously on their phones. I might have just sparked a wildfire, but I've got to have some fun with this, right? I open up my phone, planning to search for that tweet, but there's no need. I already have that picture in a message from Rachel along with about a hundred instances of OMG STEPH!

I know, I just saw... I type back to her.

They have your name!

I know. We'll talk later.

Love you! Good luck! xx

Since I have a pass around my neck, no one bothers me as I wander around behind the little stage until I find the boys' dressing room. I knock before entering, but it's no use, because when Calum shouts come in, I still enter to find three half-dressed boys. Michael is already ready and lounging on a couch playing Xbox. The other three are in various states of dress.

I approach Luke and toss him his shirt on my way over. "Put this on, we need to talk."

He looks a little worried as he pulls the shirt over his head and follows me to a corner. "Okay, so what did I do?"

"You didn't do anything. This one's on me," I say, bringing up the picture on my phone and holding it out to him.

His worried face falls to one of confusion at my words. Then he looks at the screen. His eyes go wide, and he plucks the phone from my hand for a closer look. After a moment he shrugs.

"Allie did this; not you."

"But I'm the one who kissed you. You didn't want to do it. You tried to tell her no, but I-"

"Hey, I kissed you back, so if you're trying to take blame, then I would have to take some, too. But I refuse to. This is all Allie's fault because she's a malicious witch."

I let his words hang there for a moment.

"What are we going to say to the guys?" I ask, glancing over my shoulder where they're currently playing a game of real-life fruit ninja.

"They already know about the kiss. I told them about how Allie was goading me and they want to hug you for shutting her up," he says with a smile.

"It was no big deal," I say, starting to get a little embarrassed by this conversation.