Dating Hollywood's Bad Boy

Chapter 26: "This is ridiculous."

A little jump into the future :D

***********

Chapter 26

18 Months Later

I crossed the busy LA street, happy that the air was cool for a winter day. I was supposed to have classes that day, but my agent had called and said that I should skip. Normally, I would have brushed her off, said that I needed every minute in the classroom that I could take so I could have the great career I wanted, but she’d insisted it was very important.

Absentmindedly humming under my breath, I reached the door to the agency, walking into the small reception. Carol smiled at me from behind her desk, calling my agent in her office to let her know I was there. I sat down and took off my scarf, looking around the room.

“You can go back now,” Carol chirped. Dang. It must have been really important. Usually I had to wait for at least twenty minutes while my agent was on the phone with someone.

“Thank you,” I said happily, making my way through the hallway. The moment I entered the office, Krystal practically jumped on me.

“Have you heard?” she asked quickly, her words beginning to slur together she was talking so fast. My eyebrows furrowed together.

“No . . . ?” I said curiously. She sighed loudly, running her fingers through her dark hair, stepping behind her desk. She picked up a magazine and nearly threw it at me. “What page?” I asked automatically. Since I’d been “dating” Jack for a long time, when someone gave me a magazine my brain was tuned to know something in there was about one of us.

“Fifty three,” she said bitterly, sitting down in her chair. I closed the door to her office as I began flipping through the pages to find it, seating myself in a comfy chair. I read the summary statement at the top, my confusion quickly disappearing and replaced by a surfacing anger.

Headlines: Was it all a sham?

Kaylyn Bradford, Jack Stone’s “girlfriend,” was seen Saturday with an unknown man. The two were spotted at a café in LA, and appeared to be flirting with one another. Was her relationship with Jack ever real?

“Who wrote this?!” I demanded, looking up at my exhausted agent.

“I didn’t bother to look,” she answered. “I can have this all sorted out for you by tomorrow morning. I already have people working on getting these off the newsstands.”

“Thank you,” I sighed, knowing there was nothing I could personally do. I continued reading the article, shocked when it started to bring up other appearances of me with random guys. One they even mentioned, was actually AJ. They had apparently failed to do their research.

“This is ridiculous,” I grumbled.

“Take the rest of the day off. Make some tea, take a bath, just relax,” Krystal suggested. I nodded. Standing up, I was slightly surprised when she embraced me.

“This is the worst yet. I’m so, so, so sorry I let this get out,” she said, worried out of her mind. I pulled back, looking at her carefully.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’ll all blow over soon.” But I didn’t even believe my own words.

Once I was back at home, I ran my through my hair, which I’d recently hacked off just above my shoulders. I’d decided I’d wanted a change, and my hair was the one thing I could alter without having my whole life flipped upside down.

I read the article once more when I got to my room, but then snapped the magazine closed. Did they not realize Randy was just my friend?! Jack would understand. He knew I wouldn’t cheat on him, even though we were only pretending to date.