Cigarettes [Bennoda] ✔

Chapter 23

Mike's POV
After I said my goodbyes, I unwillingly left Chester's house. I didn't ever want to leave his side, but I knew I had to. After I left, I drove five hours back to LA and went to my house because I had about an hour before the meeting. I put my things away and put on some different clothes. As I was going through my clothes that I had worn at Chester's, I realized that all of my clothes smelled like him. I was definitely not going to be able to wash those for a bit. I needed that strangely comforting smell of Marlboro and Axe around for the next few weeks until I saw him again.

I went to the studio I had been renting and went to the room with the big meeting table in it. I wondered why there was even a table that big in there. No one ever had meetings that big there. There were always only a few people involved.

I sat down and realized I had about twenty minutes until it started so I decided to text Chester and see how he was.

Me: Hey love. How are you?
Chester: I'm not doing so good. How are you?

My heart was instantly hurting. Just hearing that he wasn't doing good upset me so much. There could be so much he could be upset about, and I hoped that I wasn't one of those things.

Me: I'm fine, but what's the matter? What happened?
Chester: Can you call?
Me: Of course.

I called and it rang a few times before he answered. I didn't even give him time to say anything before I started talking and asking him questions. I needed to know how he was and if something bad had happened, I would make another trip to Arizona without thinking twice.

(This is just repeating the phone call between Mike and Chester again, but from Mike's point of view this time. So if you wanna skip ahead, you can totally do that.)

"Hey baby? What's the matter? Talk to me." I said when he answered. It was kind of quiet after that for a few seconds. He was sniffling and breathing hard into the phone. That made my heart break even more.

"There's an article about us." He said quietly. "What?" I said not sure if I heard him correctly. "There's some article that someone posted about us this weekend. They have a picture of us kissing and in the mall together. Apparently I'm your "Mystery Blonde"." He said.

I didn't know what to say. We had only been dating for one full day and the paparazzi were already posting about us. It made me so sick. I know that Chester didn't like to be the center of attention, so this was probably horrifying to him.

It bothered me because I knew Chester wouldn't like it, and also that was our day. Our perfect day and little did we know that we were being watched the whole fucking time.

"Baby, I'm sorry. I knew something like this would happen. Everytime I step out of my fucking house, stupid gossip sites have something to say about me. I never wanted this to happen." I said. "It's not your fault. I'm just afraid that I'm going to ruin your career." He said. I furrowed my eyebrows together.

"You won't ruin anything Chester. It's going to be okay. Just take it easy and don't worry too much about it. If you need to stay home from school to take time for yourself, then I suggest you do that. I'll pay the fucking fine you get for missing more days. It's so stupid that you get fined for shit like that." I said.

"I'll try to not think about it. I just can't get over the fact that we were being watched on our perfect day and we didn't even know. It's so fucking creepy." He said. "I know baby, but that's just the thing you have to deal with when you get into the music business. The paparazzi and gossip sites watch my every move, and my family members' moves. Now that we're dating, they'll probably be watching you too. I understand if you can't handle that, and don't want to be with me..." I said trailing off.