The Scandal

2. Panic

People say sex is different for boys and girls. It means something different. Most boys think of it as pure fun, just pleasure, while most girls imagine it as a soul-connecting, world-shaking, emotionally deep experience that we only want to do with the perfect guy. The One.

I guess that held true.

The next week, when I got on set, I refrained from skipping excitedly to Leo. I didn't want him to think I was desperate. So I just walked, as casually as I could, to where he was standing, and I spoke, as simply as I could.

"Hey." I had to smile. There were bubbles inside me, beating at my heart and finding their way up to my face, shining through undoubtedly.

Leo turned to me. He looked at me for a second, then turned his attention down to his own hands. "Hi."

I noticed his discomfort, but I thought I could fix it.

"Hey, um, after we're done here, we should go get lunch or something," I suggested.

He shook his head. "No, I can't today. I actually have... this thing... I have to go to... with my parents... maybe another time."

The way he said it, I knew "another time" wouldn't ever arrive.

Every bubble I felt rising in me had popped, and suddenly I was that girl in the movie who slept with a guy who didn't actually want anything to do with her, but she expected more, and everyone felt bad for her.

I refused to be her.

If Leo didn't want me, I didn't care. I would be fine. I was fine.

Let me be clear: 'fine' meant laying in bed and crying all day.

For all he knew, though, fine really did mean fine. In front of him, I acted normal, and pretty soon things really were back to normal. We never talked about what had happened. We just moved on.

Everything moved on with us, too, and soon it was Christmas, and I was in Mississippi with all my family I didn't ever get to see anymore.

Usually, I would enjoy that time, being able to hang out with my cousins and my aunts and uncles. I never got to do that. We'd all end up at my Grandpa's house, and he had a lot of land, so we'd go out in the back and ride four wheelers or play Capture the Flag. It made me forget about Hollywood, forget I was anything other than a regular small-town girl.

But the day we got there--the very day, because it had to be that day--I woke up feeling sick. My thoughts were immediately cluttered with the most obvious obvious explanation for it all, and I felt even more nauseous at the thought of that being true.

It didn't feel real anymore. What happened with Leo seemed like some weird dream. It was so far-fetched; it wasn't something I would ever do. So it just felt like some kind of imaginary event I had made up in my head.

To make it more dreamy, I'd forgotten the details, so when I tried to think back to it I thought of it with a white vignette coating the edges and a slow motion kind of effect.

It just wasn't him. It just wasn't me.

Except it was. I didn't know what that made us, what it meant, but I knew the evidence was creeping back up on me, like something I couldn't deny. What we had done was real, and it must have been some moment where I lost my mind. I felt disconnected with myself.

Who the hell is Olivia Holt?

It sounded funny, that question, because I imagined so many people around the country would be able to answer it with no hesitation, but I, in the real body of that girl, couldn't even think of one good word.

Well, maybe something like: slut.

It made everything worse having to be around my family at that time. I had to look them all in the eyes and smile and fake some kind of happiness that I had lost somewhere way far inside me a while ago.

Where had that gone? Positivity and smiles and the feeling of joy constantly streaming from my fingertips? Did it leave with my innocence or did it run away longer ago?

I thought for a second that maybe Luke had taken it with him, but then I discovered that if he was the one who held it, it was never mine.

I liked to brush off thoughts like that most of the time, but that Christmas they kept coming back and back, like waves on a shoreline, and I couldn't predict when the high tide would engulf me completely, when I would break down crying at the mess I'd created, when it all got too real and too much.

On Monday afternoon, the day before Christmas and soon after lunch, all my cousins went outside to ride bikes or to race or whatever—it didn't matter to me. I felt like I'd throw up if I so much as stood, so I stayed inside, laid on the couch watching Rudolph. It always made me feel like a kid.

I was almost asleep when my Grandma came up and placed a gentle hand on my back.

"Olivia?" she said soothingly.

I opened my eyes. "Yeah?" I answered her tiredly.

"Why didn't you go outside?"

"I didn't feel like it."

"Are you sick?" she asked me, and she put a hand to my forehead, feeling for warmth.

I pushed her hand away softly. "No, I'm just... tired."

She nodded at that, then she took a seat by my head, and I moved so it rested in her lap. Just like I was five. And she put her arm around me, moving her hand up and down on my back like she used to do to get me to fall asleep.

"Well then you just take a nap. Santa's coming tonight," she reminded me happily.

I kept my eyes closed as tears formed in them, because she didn't know. She didn't know what I'd done, and she didn't know she'd get a damn great-grandchild so much sooner than she expected. She just knew me as her granddaughter, the one who used to sing made-up songs dancing all around the house with bows in her hair and play heels on.

Maybe she didn't think that I could change. Maybe she thought she and my mother raised me to stay perfect and shining my whole life. But I'd grown to pale and I'd lost what made me worthy of their unconditional love, as well as God's (I hadn't forgotten Him, but that was another problem for another time).

I just felt all wrong laying there. My eyelashes were wet with the tears I hid behind closed eyes, and I faked sleep. I couldn't actually sleep; my mind raced. It sucked because each time I slept, I thought that maybe I would wake up feeling completely normal, just like myself, and all my problems would disappear. I truly thought that because I remembered being a kid, and getting stomachaches, and taking a nap to make them go away. I always woke up feeling better.

But even if the sick feeling left me, the hollow feeling stayed. I was reminded of the loss I'd suffered, the loss of who I was supposed to be, and the shame surrounding all that I really was.

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A/N: please comment and vote if you're reading so chapters will be written/posted sooner :) and thanks for the activity on the last chapter!