𝓟𝓪𝓹𝓮𝓻 𝓡𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 ; 𝓟𝓮𝓭𝓻𝓲

Chapter 1

I felt someone's hands shake my body, but my eyes stayed closed. Even though I was awake now, I was too comfortable to get up, so I pretended that I was still asleep. I made sure my body was still as a statue so Sofia couldn't tell i was awake.

"Amelia i know you're awake. Get your lazy ass up." My best friend, Sofia said. She took my blanket away causing me to shrivel up like a little child, I groaned in annoyance. "Come on get up, our manager just called, she wants to meet you in 10 minutes, it's important."

As i finally got out of bed, Sofia threw a short brown dress at me, telling me to quickly get changed.
"What's this meeting even about?" I asked her, as I slipped into the dress.

She appeared to be as clueless as I was

I ran into the bathroom of our little apartment in Barcelona which was a complete mess, because of Sofia. She doesn't know how to stay organized, her clothes were all over the floor, and her makeup products were scattered across the marble table. I quickly splashed cold water on my face and applied some light makeup.
My hair was a mess, but I had no time to style it, so I tied it back into a low bun.

Sofia walked in the bathroom, and sang in a cheery tone "Sin Señal." I let out a huge sigh, and went to put my Jordans on.
"Where does she want me to go?" I said, searching around for my phone. I went through my checklist, to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything.

"Citizen Café." Sofia answered. And with that, I was suddenly out of the door and onto the busy streets of Barcelona. Thankfully, the café was just around the corner.

As I was walking there, My favorite florist was setting up the many colourful flowers for display, I loved flowers, especially roses.

The smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the patisseries, my mouth began to water. My stomach growled. Damn, I hadn't even had time to eat breakfast.
I entered inside the busy cafe, smiling as I carefully walked over to my manager, Maria.
She looked excited, which was weird as she was normally grumpy, and always complaining about me.
I was about to say hey, but then I suddenly noticed an older blonde woman and young boy, who appeared to be around my age, sitting besides her. His brown eyes stared at me intently, as I sat down next to my manager.

"Is this the girl?" The blonde woman questioned, giving me a warm smile.

My manager, Maria, nodded. She squeezed my thigh underneath the table, causing me to jump and slightly squeal. "I'm Amelia." I said, trying to hide the pain shooting through my thigh. The blonde woman reached out and shook my hand.

The boy began to smirk from amusement. I noticed he had dark circles around his eyes, it looked good on him.

I also noticed that I knew him from somewhere... I'd seen him somewhere ...
"Nice to meet you Amelia. I'm Catrine, Pedri Gonzaléz's publicist."
My jaw suddenly dropped, and my eyebrows rose in shock as I made the connection. That's how I knew him, he was the famous footballer. Pedri Gonzaléz. I turned to face my manager, to see if she knew what was going on.

"Let me explain." Maria began. "Pedri's publicist, who is a close friend of mine, came to me with a business proposal. At first I wasn't sure, but after realising the benefits this can have for your modelling career, and for Pedri's public image, I think it's a perfect idea. You will both benefit from it." She smiled.

"Okay, so what exactly is this business proposal?" I awkwardly laughed, as the three of them stared at me.
"You and Pedri are going to fake date, for at least 2 months, until the public loves him again." Catrine handed me the contract paper and a black pen. I freezed for a second, I needed some time to think.
Why was I being told about this only now?

I sat up, shaking my head. "This is crazy, you expect me to fake date a stranger?" I shouted, earning some weird looks from others in the café. My manager grabbed the hem of my dress, and forced me to sit back down. "Ain't no way, I am not doing this." I firmly said, shoving the contract paper back to Catrine.

"Pedri is fine with it, so why can't you be?"
My manager said, shooting me a death glare.
"Uh just to clarify, I'm not fine with this either, but Catrine has forced me into doing this." Pedri interrupted, rolling his eyes at Catrine.

This boy was beginning to get on my nerves.
"I want to work my way up this modelling industry myself, because of my hard work.
Not because I'm dating Pedri Gonzaléz" I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

He clearly needed to be humbled.

My manager placed the contract paper in front of me again, and bought her finger to the first line. "If you actually bothered to read this, it says you will receive 5k in total if you go ahead with this. Doesn't that sound tempting at all?"
"I am worth way more than 5k." Pedri frowned.
"You're not going give up are you." I sighed to my manager, in defeat. I hated being controlled, but Maria was going to keep pestering me until I accepted. Plus, the publicity I'd gain from this, wouldn't hurt, I guess.

Although I wanted to succeed because of my own hard work, I had to be realistic. I wasn't receiving that many modelling gigs, and I needed something that would put me on the front page of every newspaper out there, which would help more fashion designers notice
me.

Fuck it.

I grabbed the pen, and quickly signed my name.

Maria and Catrine both looked happy and excitedly started talking between themselves. But Pedri had a surprised, almost disappointed, expression on his face. "I didn't think you were actually gonna do it." He muttered in disbelief,
scratching the back of his neck.

"Believe me, I'm not exactly thrilled about this either." I said.
"Right, you are both free to go now. Pedri , I'm going to send you Amelia's number, and I want you both to meet up tomorrow morning.

It's the first day of your official dating contract, so do something that will get a lot of attention." His publicist, Catrine, winked.
"Think of this as a game, as game you must both win." She added on, before walking away.

Pedri stayed silent, and simply got up from his seat and stormed out of the café.

Well this was going to be fun.

To be clear, Pedri got hate for some reason thats why they want Amelia to date Pedri so people stopped hating this much.
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