Fireworks 3 and 4

Chapter Twenty-Nine

    The breakdown of a celebrity relationship usually doesn't end with just ill timing of absences. When one party has burning questions on their mind and no one to answer them, that party often turns to the single most beneficial and harmful tool to have been created in recent times: the internet.

    And Mia knew better. Oh, did she know better. She paced in front of her laptop, nervously chewing on her bottom lip. Every once in awhile, she would glance at the laptop, and then look away. Nothing good could come from jumping down that rabbit hole. Once you started researching someone on the internet, especially a celebrity who had endless of information scattered about the web, it never ended.

    She walked away from the laptop - that day, and the following day. But the stories didn't let up. Online gossip sites dug up photographs of Drake with the woman claiming to be carrying his baby. They were happy-looking pictures, with a nice cozy restaurant as the backdrop. The woman continued to release screenshots of text messages conversations. In the text messages, Drake allegedly told her how much he wanted to see her again. These messages were said to have taken place prior to her informing him of her pregnancy.

    From that point forward, Mia cut off the television or radio whenever that story was mentioned. But she could only do so much to avoid it - after all, she was dating Drake. He was everywhere. He was in genres he didn't even belong in, and popped up at the most random places with even more random people. The man even had pictures alongside the cast of one of her favorite shows, Stranger Things. He was everywhere.

    Seeing as she wouldn't be able to avoid the stories any time soon, she stopped pacing in front of her laptop. She stopped walking away from the laptop. Instead, she sat down Indian-style on the bedroom floor and powered on the sleek silver device balanced on the edge of a decorative bench placed at the foot of the bed.

    Word to the wise: If you ever are blessed with the endless headache of dating an attractive male celebrity, think long and hard before Google-searching all of his dirt. Nine times out of ten, you'll find more than what you were looking for.

    The woman's name was Sophie. Nothing remarkable about her looks or her social media pages. If gossip pages hadn't blasted her for being an ex-porn star, Mia would have never guessed she was in that line of work. She just seemed like an average young woman, out living her life.

    Mia inspected the photos, checking them for dates or any indication of time. For all she knew, these photos were taken before she and Drake were official. There were no dates inscribed on the photos, and no televisions or objects displaying the date in the photos. Frowning in disappointment, Mia sat back and ran a hand across her forehead. Think, girl. Think. You don't need to see the date to have an idea on when a picture was taken. There are other things that can clue to that, such as... Leaning closer to the laptop, she eyed Drake's hairstyle. Low fade. Her eyes lowered downward. He was wearing a puffy yellow jacket. I know that jacket, she realized, touching her fingers to the image of him on the screen. I gothim that jacket. Which means...these photos aren't old. They're relatively recent. And that means...that there is a sliver of a possibility that this woman, this Sophie, isn't completely full of shit.

~~~~~~

    Three hours later and she was still searching. The photos and articles led her to his fanpages, to see what the tongue-wagging ones were saying, and those fanpages led her to the gossip forums. Contour Alley was full of threads detailing both factual and manufactured trysts of Drake's, including the Sophie encounter. Women claiming to be her friends divulged information that most people would consider intimate. When it came to these forums, there was no telling if the information could be trusted. People posting were anonymous for the most part - and the ones who weren't could be using fake identities.