The Cate Blanchett Case {Cate Blanchett}

18~The Great Mortification

I don't know what was worse? The fact that my friends and I were going over to Cate's for dinner or the fact that I'd have to try and reject my unwarranted feelings for Cate while being in the same building as her.

I hadn't wanted to even think about the emotions, but now I'd have to actively work to keep them at bay.

This was going to go splendidly(!).

I knew it as soon as Cate opened the door and her eyes raked over the white pantsuit I was wearing. Under the baggy blazer I wore a sheer lace top, Amy had used the threat of embarrassment in order to make me wear it.

Amy has also tried to get me to wear these ridiculous stilleto heels, as soon as she'd launched them at me from her wardrobe I'd launched them straight back at her.

No way did I trust myself to be able to stay upright in a pair of shoes like that. So instead I sported a good old pair of leather docs.

Cate held the door open while Jasper and Amy walked into what they thought was her Palace, it was a wonderful place to live but I didn't do well in huge spaces.

As I went to walk past her, however, she leaned in close to me and her free hand gently took my own.

"You look divine," she told me, her voice raspy and almost seductive. I found myself having to consciously remind myself how to breathe.

This had to stop, the problem was, I didn't know if I wanted it to.

I flushed lightly, instantly tearing my eyes from hers. Those blue orbs, those eyes filled with so much emotion and intensity.

She'd verbally directed Jasper and Amy to the dining room and they were both too amazed to even notice my disappearance.

I looked down at Cate's clothes, she was wearing an expensive looking white jumpsuit. Underneath she had a wine red top on and the jumpsuit was zipped up just enough that you could see it peeking out from underneath.

She looked extremely elegant, she seemed to be able to pull of anything. She could have been dressed in a bin bag and I would have thought she looked amazing.

"You look great!" I hated that word and I hated the amount of false enthusiasm I'd put into it. Great didn't even begin to sum up how amazing she looked, it wasn't even the tip of the iceberg.

Cate gave me a look, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. She probably did, over a short span of time we'd been able to read each other, even if we didn't know we were doing it.

Maybe that's why I felt so close to her, maybe these feelings were just fake things I'd come up with in order to get a story out of her.

Yeah, definitely that.

I almost screamed when I felt her arm snake around my waist and she practically glued herself to my side. "Are we going to keep trying to be professional then, Thalia?" She asked me, damn, how did she know me so well?

"Cate," I cleared my throat as her hand rubbed deliberate circles into my hip, "this is-"

"Extremely unprofessional, blah, blah," she scoffed and then her arm left my waist, leaving behind a cold feeling from the loss of her touch.

Cate walked past me, heading to the dining room, as she reached the archway into another part of her house she turned to look at me. Her eyes dark and filled with that intense emotion I still couldn't place my finger on.

"We'll talk more about it later, for now I hope you like spaghetti," she smiled dazzlingly and then walked off.

Placing my head in my hands I groaned. This was not going to be good, I could always just leave.

Letting out another groan as I took my hands off of my face, I chased after Cate. I had to be strong, I was in control, this was my story.

~

I did indeed like spaghetti and for a while I did think the dinner would go smooth and it was going well. Up until Cate asked about the story.

Amy and Jasper had been almost too happy to tell Cate all about it.

"She's all you think about, Cate," Jasper said, grinning over at Amy from beside me. "Honestly, she's never doing anything else but writing or planning, or watching your movies,"

There was no point trying to butt in and stop them, they'd already started and they'd use whatever I said as leverage for more embarrassing stories.

"She's not left the house in days, the other day I'm pretty sure I found her scrolling through fanfictions about you," Amy piped in, Cate seemed to have caught on to what they were doing.

Making an effort to embarrass me, as per usual. The whole thing got 100 times worse when Cate decided she'd join in, in more ways than one.

When I'd walked in behind Cate everyone was already seated and it seemed there had been a seat intentionally saved for me which had been next to Cate, who sat at the head of her quite large dining table.

Now I didn't know who's idea it was but this all seemed to be planned out, everyone was conspiring against me.

"I didn't know you were such a big fan," Cate smiled, connecting our eyes and watching my reaction. It was then I felt her hand brush my thigh playfully.

Hell!

"I just thought I'd research, I didn't want to write something about someone I didn't really know," I admitted, shifting in my seat as Cate's hand became a permanent resident on my thigh.

I felt my face begin to get hot, I never blushed. Or at least, I made an effort not to, blushing was a clear indication to me being flustered or embarrassed.

Amy and Jasper knew this and when they saw me blushing they knew they were doing well so it only began to get worse from there.

The whole night they told Cate all the embarrassing things I'd supposedly said and how I'd gush over her sometimes, in a strictly professional way, they left that part out though.

Also, Cate's hand never left my thigh, every now and then rubbing up and down getting dangerously close to a part of me I hadn't shared with anyone, not even myself.

It took me a whole to realise this torture would go on for the whole night so I then made the worse decision possible.

I poured myself a glass of the red wine on the table. Now I was no stranger to alcohol, as soon as I'd been able to drink it, I had. The only problem was that I was an extreme lightweight, it's why I'd decided that I'd limit my alcohol intake.

But when I did drink it, it usually ended up with me blacking out and then Jasper and Amy having some extremely mortifying story to tell me the morning after.

Eventually, it got dark and with the setting sun I seemed to get increasingly intoxicated, so pissed I couldn't even hear whatever story Jasper and, Amy had concocted...