Never Ever Gonna Happen (Complete)

Chapter Twenty Six

Jeanie took the last piece of her mother's clothing and dumped it in her overly pink travel bag. She wasn't exactly in the mood to face the paparazzi but it was the third day already and Bernard had made it very clear that he wanted her out of his apartment by the third day. She had also gotten tired of being locked in an apartment with the blinds down for fear that the paparazzi would climb up the apartment building and take a picture of her.

Her mother had called the night before but Gabrielle seemed ignorant of the situation at hand and Jeanie wasn't in the right state of mind to talk to her mother so she let the answering machine take the message. 

Turning from her mother's bag, her gaze brushed the mirror briefly and she halted in her tracks. Turning back around to face the mirror fully, a loud gasp escaped her lips. 

Saying she looked terrible would have been putting it lightly; a complete stranger stared back at her. Her eyelids had tripled in size, her skin was a pale-ash color, the tip of her nose was red and her face had an overall haunted expression.

Wrinkling her nose, she forced a smile and reached up to pinch her cheeks in a failed attempt to add some color to her skin. She was a horrid mess but she needed to look human long enough to take the walk of shame out of Bernard's apartment. There were obviously paparazzi still waiting outside for her especially because they knew Bernard had given her a three day quit notice. If she didn't succeed in putting a little 'human' on her face, she'd come off looking horrible in the News.

The next few minutes flew by with Jeanie jumping into action in trying to get her face to look a little better. By the time she was done twenty minutes later, her once tangled hair was falling to a mass of straight, lush locks around her shoulders, her face possessed a little bit of make up and her shoulders had somehow managed to straighten back up.

She gave the mirror a toothy smile that didn't even reach her eyes, before turning to leave the room. She pushed Bernard's room door wide open and stepped into the familiar room. It had been three days since she was last in here but she didn't think she could avoid it especially because she needed to remove her things.

With a sigh, she began throwing articles of clothing into her travel bag as well as trying not to focus on the fact that she didn't exactly have a place to go. She knew she couldn't take Bernard's cheque of a hundred thousand dollars; she couldn't take it because she had no interest in his money. Money couldn't take this aching pain in her heart away neither could it fix her messed up life.

A loud buzzing sound drew her attention briefly. For a while, she ignored it but when it was obvious the intruder wasn't going away easily, she made her way into the closet and glanced at the monitor.

Stacey stood on the street, her finger holding down the intercom button. A frown immediately settled on Jeanie's face at the sight of her backstabbing best friend.

Briefly, her gaze swept the streets behind Stacey and she could see clear as day, a handful of reporters just waiting for her to make her way out of the building.

What was it with these reporters anyway?! A loud groan escaped her lips as she turned from the monitor and made her way back to the room. Hopefully, both the reporters and Stacey would take the cue and just leave Jeanie alone! 

But the longer Jeanie stood trying to ignore the buzzing sound, the more convinced she was that they weren't going to go away. Neither Stacey nor Bernard nor the reporter nor the curse! Nothing was going away and the sooner she learns to accept it, the better.

With a loud groan, she stumbled down the stairs and made her way to the door where she pressed the button, giving Stacey access into the building.