31. Serena
Serena
“Nooo—Alex showed up? Why would he show up?” Grayson’s voice booms through the living room, and Georgia shoots him a look that says, shush.
He’s pacing, shaking his head, obviously very affected by my story. My other roommates are gathered around, listening intently.
When I got back to the house, my roommates were, once again, gone. They came home all at once, but from different places—Lillie from the grocery store, Grayson and Sid from the local basketball court, and Georgia from a study session.
Bianca is, mercifully, nowhere to be seen.
If I had the wherewithal to go looking in her bedroom, I wonder if I’d find her suitcase and many of her things gone. I can’t imagine her coming back here, after that scene at Onyx today.
Especially knowing I’ll be telling everyone else what she did.
I’d sat on the couch numbly, staring at the wall in the dark, until they got home.
Then, when they got back and flipped on the lights, they found me sitting here.
They draped a blanket over my shoulders like I was a survivor from a crime scene, sitting in the back of an ambulance with lights flashing over my face.
“Serena,” Georgia had said, kneeling down in front of me. “Tell us what happened.”
So, I started talking. I filled them in on everything that’s happened to me in the past few weeks. I’ve been so busy, going in and out, that there hasn’t been time.
When I told them the part about Ryan—running into him at the event, then again at the cafe, and finally sleeping with him at his place—Lillie jumps to her feet, her hand on her mouth, words coming out muffled through her fingers.
“Bitch, bitch, are you serious? Ryan Hudson? Why have I not met him yesterday?”
I’d actually managed to laugh at that, managed to smile despite everything.
Even with the sticky, rotting feeling in my stomach. Betrayal. The worst betrayal of my life, even including every set of foster parents that didn’t want me. Even including Alex leaving my things on the lawn and Travis leaving me in that hotel room.
Bianca was supposed to be my person. The memory of her there, standing behind Alex, still doesn’t quite make sense in my brain.
“So, yeah, Alex showed up,” I say now, voice hoarse.
We’re getting to the worst part of the story.
My stomach twists at the thought of telling them.
Right now, it’s exciting to recount the drama of each man walking in, even up to Alex joining the fray.
I don’t want to, but I force the words out: “And Bianca was with him.”
Just like I expected, all of them go quiet, just staring at me.
“Bianca?” Georgia sputters, shaking her head. “Like… our Bianca?”
I nod, and just like that, I’m bursting into tears again. Instantly, they’re crowding around me, even the guys, swaddling me in a tight hug until I can breathe again.
“What was she doing there?” Sid asks.
Wiping my face with the back of my hands, I stutter through a sob and say, “That fight we had the other night? I told her about, like, being interested in all three of them. You know her—I thought she might judge me a little, sure, but she was so mad about it. Said I was being messy. I realize now it’s because it would be messy for her.
If she’s with Alex, she doesn’t—doesn’t?—”
I interrupt myself with a hiccup, and Lillie leans in, wrapping her arm around me. Patchouli is all around me, and it reminds me of my grandma, which only makes me cry harder. Grief can slam into you at the oddest of times.
“I can’t believe her.” Georgia leans back, running her hand over her hair and shaking her head. “Do you think—I mean, do you think that’s why he did that to you in the first place?”
It takes a moment for my brain to process that.
Since seeing her in that room, I’d just assumed, automatically, that Bianca went after him following the break-up. That it was the stuff-on-the-lawn incident that signaled her opening. It never crossed my mind that she could have been with Alex before that.
That my best friend could be the reason my things ended up on the lawn. That she could have cheated with my boyfriend. That she could have been a catalyst for the record player I’ll never be able to use again. Music I will never hear the way I heard it sitting in my grandmother’s living room.
My stomach turns when I remember that I was on the phone with her that day. That she heard, firsthand, the account of the humiliation. Did she know he was going to do that? Was she involved? I try to think back to what she said, to her tone, to anything that might have given it away.
“Why would she do this?” Sid asks, wincing slightly when I hiccup again. “I mean, it’s not like she’s ugly. Surely she could have found someone better than that dickhead.” He glances at me quickly, “No offense.”
I hiccup again, “None taken.”
“It could have something to do with her family,” Grayson wonders.
“You mean like,” Lillie says, “her grandfather and stuff?”
I nod because it makes sense. “He always said awful stuff about her only being good for marriage. No matter what she did—getting her master’s, landing that really awesome internship—he didn’t care. So maybe she went after Alex because it could get her an in with a powerful family.”
I feel sick again, and bring my hand to my mouth. It’s a nightmare. They lean in again to comfort me, but before they can, Sid’s phone chimes loudly from his back pocket.
“One sec,” he draws back, checks his phone, and frowns. “What the fuck?”
Grayson leans over his shoulder, sucks in a breath at whatever he must see on the screen. “Dude, are they in the bushes? Who the hell is that?”
As though “they” can hear us, there’s a flash just outside the window, like lightning. We all glance over, deer in headlights, to see a camera lens pressed against the glass like an eye, pointed in our direction.
I let out a short, warbled scream.
“What the hell?” Georgia cries, jumping up from her spot next to me.
Then, everyone is up. Lillie pulls the curtains shut, Georgia shouts a question about calling the police. Meanwhile, Sid is grabbing a baseball bat—with a sock on the end?—from the closet. He and Grayson head for the door.
“Wait!” Lillie grabs his arm and pulls him back, her lilac-colored hair swinging violently with the movement. “Wait, shouldn’t we think—like, what are they doing—like, why, before we open the door?—?”
What the guys said about Stephen Oakley flashes through my head, and I feel even more nauseous. I should have thought about this—I should have listened to them. But I didn’t, and now I’ve dragged the paparazzi back to my friends.
Alex’s vengeance—even after what he did to me.
Sid looks pale and keeps glancing to the window where the flash came from. “I’m really not cool with pictures of us getting out.”
“I think it’s—they’re here for me,” I stammer, in a small voice. “They told me that Alex would try to get revenge.”
“What the fuck?” Sid growls, face going stormy. “Revenge by sending a bunch of perverts to crawl around your house? That’s a major invasion of privacy.”
Grayson puts a hand on Sid’s arm, clearly trying to calm him down, especially since Sid is still holding the bat, and there’s a decent chance that he’ll burst outside and start swinging.
“Yeah,” Lillie says, slowly, and we all look at her. She’s staring down at her phone, which illuminates her face eerily. “I think they’re here for you, Serena.”
When she turns her phone around, the images that stare back at me from a gossip magazine website grab me in a chokehold.
Snaps of Travis and me at the hotel, some of me and Ryan in his restaurants.
Then, impossibly, one of Graham holding me that first day, when he kept me from hitting the ground at Ryan’s place.
It looks incriminatingly intimate, though it was completely innocent.
Photos of me with all three of them. And I didn’t even realize they were being taken.
There’s a loud knock, then a thump against the outside of the house, almost like the press are trying to scale the siding and get to the roof. It makes me feel like a fish in a barrel, panicking, swimming in circles with nowhere to go.
“This is like a zombie apocalypse,” Grayson breathes, his face turned to the fireplace like the press might come flooding down through the chimney. I see my own anxiety reflected in his expression.
“It’s going to be okay,” Georgia says, turning to me and taking charge, clapping her hands together like a coach. It snaps me out of my panic. “Serena, you need to text Travis. Or someone—one of those guys. See if there’s anything they can do to get these fuckers out of here.”
I nod, hands trembling as I pull out my phone.
Just a few hours ago, I was walking out of Travis’s office, telling them I wouldn’t be fleeing just because of Alex’s threat. Now, I feel like an idiot, crawling back and begging for help. They were right, and I should have listened.
There’s another thump outside, and I type faster, skin crawling with the idea of those people prowling around the house, trying to get a picture of me. Of my friends. Poking their cameras in through the windows.
Sid is right. It’s a huge violation of privacy. And my roommates shouldn’t have to face the consequences of my actions.
I manage to send out a panicked, shaky text. My phone chimes in the next second with an immediate response from Travis.
Travis: We’re coming to get you. Do not talk to the press. See if you can get out the back door.
There’s another thump at the back of the house, and without meaning to, I let out a little yelp of fear. Georgia must have been looking over my shoulder to read the text, because she nods once and turns to Lillie, “Okay. I have an idea. But you’re going to need to grab a hat.”
Ten minutes later, Lillie is wearing my high-waisted shorts and floral blouse—the same thing I was wearing in two of the pictures with Ryan and Graham.
There’s a ball cap pulled down low over her face, and her hair is tucked into the hood of a jean jacket.
It’s not the best-looking outfit, but the goal is to make them think I’m her.
“Okay,” Georgia says, crowding around me at the back door, peering through the tiniest crack in the blinds. “Wait for her to walk out—they should swarm her. Then you’ll go. Are they almost here?”
I glance at my phone, where I’m sharing locations with Ryan and Travis. “Less than a minute away.”
“Okay,” Georgia says again, nodding. She leans over and puts her arm around me, squeezing tight. Dropping her voice, she says, “I know you’re thinking this is your fault. Sid’s going to be fine. Just… ask Travis if there’s anything he can do about stopping that picture, okay?”
I glance at her quickly, thinking about Sid’s comment.
Is there a more serious reason I don’t know about for him to need such privacy?
But I don’t have time to ask, so I just nod, then I hear the roar of cameras shuttering outside the front door and Lillie yelling, “Get back! Oh my god, get back! Get off of me, you creeps!”
Georgia puts a hand on my lower back, throws open the sliding door, and shoves me out, so I stumble into the grass. The blades are a little too long, wet with dew and ticklish against my ankles. I want to turn around, to look at the house, to see any of them one more time, but I can’t.
So, instead, I follow her instructions, running as fast as I can through the yard, until I hit the other side, skid into the road, and nearly get cut off by a sleek black SUV.
My heart thuds, hard, in my throat. Would Alex send someone to kidnap me? Is that the kind of thing they meant when they talked about Stephen being “ruthless?”
But the door to the SUV swings open, and it’s not a burly henchman looking at me, but Ryan, grinning and lowering a pair of sunglasses down to the tip of his nose, despite the fact that it’s nighttime.
Then, cheesing wildly, he says, “Come with me if you want to live.”