Hired | b.w.s

Prologue

I throw my body down onto the sofa after a long day of rehearsals for tour. I love doing it, but god is it exhausting. Heavy eyes blink longer and longer and I'm finally about to drift off when Joe storms in.

"Guys we need to talk." He says sternly, making me sit up straight. My manager throws a newspaper at me, it hits me in the face and I groan. Scrunching it away from me, I open it drowsily.

"Page seven." He harshly tells me. I flip to the page with confusion.

My eyes widen as I see the report on me and my bandmate James. A picture of us hugging fills the double page spread with a huge title reading:

B O Y B A N D B A E S ?

I roll my eyes at the article written telling the world that me and James are secretly in love, hiding our passionate romance from the world out of fear of judgement. The things the media will do for attention is insane. I pass the newspaper to James and he scoffs at it. They've been posting stories like this for a few weeks and each one is worse than the other. The fans don't help the situation either, a small handful of them encourage the rumours and try to prove that they're true, which just creates a cycle of pain for me and my friend. We've gotten to the point now where we don't even want to talk to each other in public when we know there could be cameras around.

"We can't have this. It's ruining the image of the band. We need girls to be wanting you, not thinking you're into guys and they've got no chance at all." Joe scolds us as if it's our fault.

"Well they don't have a chance anyway." James rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

"If they want to believe that we're together then whatever, let them." I shrug.

"Brad." Joe sighs. "We have to fix this. I've been chatting with some PR companies and we've planned something for the both of you. It will sort this all out easily." He says, looking nervous.

Obviously, we aren't going to like it.

"What is it?" I ask him with suspicious eyes.

"Fake girlfriends."