Smoke and Mirrors (Smoke #1)

[ 27 ]

I paced back and fourth in my apartment constantly looking at the time as I awaited for Marcus to meet me here.

Ever since the photograph was leaked, things couldn't have gotten any more worse. My Twitter notifications had been blowing up comments accusing me of stupid things like dating sport stars for stories, using Marcus because according to many people I was a gold digger and that this was only a publicity stunt for the newspaper. I had also got magazines calling me several times begging me for an interview which wasn't surprising seeing as tabloids like that cared for so called breaking news about celebrities being lizards or Justin Bieber eating sandwiches.

Ironically enough I had also gotten calls from a few club officials trying to my version of events which was stupid seeing as this wasn't a big scandal or whatever. The photograph affected Marcus a little but majority it affected me the most. What baffled me the most was how much people cared over a little photo that could have come from anywhere really.

As well as that, work hasn't really been the same with many of my colleagues suddenly treating me as though I committed a murder which in all honesty didn't seem like a bad idea with the rate of how everything was going. Even some of the boys were a little confused with the whole thing but thankfully they had my back and did everything they could to support me, this was excluding Michael who left me several angry voicemails which hardly concerned me since I never had his support in the first place.

I felt sick in my stomach, taking a seat on my couch as I buried my hands on my face. I was genuinely terrified about how Marcus was going to react to the media attention surrounding the pair of us, especially seeing how I've done nothing but push him away each time he'd get close to me.

Grabbing my phone off the coffee table in front of me, I bit my lip as the phone buzzed with a notification. I hesitated before tossing my phone aside knowing that the notification was only going to make my world more painful. Sitting down, I could feel myself on the verge as the loud ring of the doorbell entered through my ears.

Did Marcus know about the photo too? Because right now, I knew I could be in a lot more shit with him than anybody else if he had seen it.

A tear had rolled slowly down my cheeks as the doorbell rang. I took a deep breath, doing my best to calm myself down and headed straight to the door where I hesitated for a moment before opening the door, coming face to face with him.

I stared at him for a slight moment. He stood at the doorstep wearing a cold expression on his face and hair that was tousled, the mess reminding me of the one I was in right now. The clothes on his body looked cleaned and by the looks of his face too were cleaned, cleaned off the radiance and youthful vibrance Marcus would normally show off.

"Marcus." I said shyly feeling quite vulnerable at the moment with everything going wrong at the moment overshadowing my thoughts. I could feel my hands beginning to shake when he just nodded his head. I let him in, shutting the door behind him as I took a deep breath, allowing myself to hold it together. We both sat down on the couch and remained quiet as I looked at him, trying my hardest to put together a conversation in my mind but was interrupted from my thoughts when Marcus spoke up.

"Listen, if you've called me here only to say that a relationship is a mistake again, I don't want to hear it Scarlett."

"No please Marcus, I promise that this isn't going to be that kind of conversation again -"

"Then tell me Scarlett. Why is that you constantly push me away when you and both know that there are feelings between each other? I don't understand -"

"Yeah, of course you don't understand Marcus." I added bluntly as I immediately regretted the brutal words that came out of mouth. He slouched down, looking down at the ground quite coldly, his next sentence hitting me hard like a bomb on a war ground.