Chapter 13 #2
“What the hell?” Oliver demanded, looking up from the girl.
Alec cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at Oliver before glancing at me.
A look of pure confusion crossed his face when he saw me.
I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t get why he was being interrupted or if he was surprised to see me standing here. I hoped the second.
The room was silent as we stared at each other, both of us waiting for the other one to make a move.
Finally he pushed the girl away from him and took a step forward.
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but I didn’t want to hear whatever he thought would make this entire situation less uncomfortable.
“Hey, Oliver,” I said cheerfully, forcing a smile on my face and hoping he wouldn’t pick up on how upset I was. My stomach turned like I had eaten something rotten as I said his name. All I wanted to do was scream. At him. At the stupid girl standing next to him. At myself.
How could I be so stupid? I had known from the moment Oliver tricked Drew and me that he was trouble. He was the lead singer of America’s most popular boy band, for Christ’s sake! How could he not be a heartbreaker?
“Stella—um, hi,” he started to say, but then Courtney appeared from backstage, Xander trailing behind her.
“Is Alec here?” she asked, looking around the room, and then she spotted him. “Perfect. Let’s get started, boys.”
***
Cara picked up on the first ring.
“Stella! Oh my God. I’m so glad you called,” she blurted out before I even had a chance to say hi. “How’s Miami? Wait, are you even in Miami anymore? What about your new job? Is it everything you thought it would be? Are you having fun? And ooohh! How are things going with Oliver?”
I hadn’t wanted to call Cara yet—I mean, I did, I desperately did, but I hadn’t even lasted four days before needing to talk to her.
My plan was to call home on Monday after I had a full week of work under my belt in hopes that, by then, my homesickness would be curbed.
But seeing Oliver with someone else had the opposite effect.
It messed with my head, and now there was a dull aching in my heart for home.
“God,” I said, half laughing, half crying. “It’s so good to hear your voice.” I didn’t even care that Cara had bombarded me with questions the instant she picked up.
“You sound upset,” she said, her voice getting soft. “Are you okay? You’re not thinking about coming home, are you?”
“Not really,” I said quickly, even though the thought had crossed my mind. “I just feel so stupid.”
“Oh, Stel,” Cara said, and I could almost see the way her lip jutted up when she frowned. “How come?”
“It’s Oliver.”
“Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good. Tell me everything from the beginning.”
“Okay, well, I was super nervous about seeing him again,” I started.
“Like, so nervous I didn’t sleep at all Sunday night.
Things went well in the morning. It was a bit awkward at first, but Oliver gave me his banana for breakfast, which was incredibly sweet.
But then we went to this radio interview and Oliver started talking about some girl, which made me realize he didn’t like me.
” I paused before finishing my story, trying to work up the courage to tell Cara everything.
“I-I didn’t want to get hurt, so I told him that we should just be friends. Now he’s—”
“You did what?”
I flinched. “We’re working together now,” I said, trying to defend myself. For some reason, saying this to Cara sounded ten times stupider than when I’d said it to Oliver. Maybe that was because I knew she’d called me on it. “I thought it would be for the bes—”
“No, just no,” Cara said, refusing to listen to my explanation. “That’s a load of bull. Why in the world would you tell him that? How do you know the girl he was talking about in the interview wasn’t you?”
I opened my mouth to tell her otherwise but stopped.
During the interview I’d assumed that Oliver was talking about someone famous, someone Kelly had “heard of” to use her exact words, but Cara had a point.
Kelly had met me when we arrived at the station, which meant he could have been referring to me.
But it didn’t matter—not after seeing that girl at the band’s rehearsal. Even if he had been talking about me, that would mean Oliver’s interests had an exceptionally fast turnover.
“He. Doesn’t. Like. Me,” I said slowly.
The line was silent for a moment, but then Cara sighed. “You’re such an idiot, Stella,” she said. “He gave you his freaking number.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, letting my breath out in a quick huff. “He gave me his number because we had fun for a night,” I told her, “but that’s all. I was just another random girl to him, and if Paul hadn’t offered me this job, Oliver never would’ve thought about me again.”
“Do you really think Oliver Perry goes around handing out his number to ‘random’ girls?”
I could easily have ended this discussion by telling her the truth—that I’d seen Oliver cozying up to someone else.
That was why I’d originally called her, but now, just thinking about admitting what had happened made me feel sick, like my ribs were squeezing in on all the organs trapped between them.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let myself like him, Cara. I don’t want things to be awkward—I don’t want to be awkward. All I did was uncomplicate things.”
Cara heaved a sigh. “If you think it’s for the best, do what you want. But you can’t chalk it up to Oliver dismissing you if you’re going to do the same thing to him.”
Maybe she was right, but the damage was already done. I couldn’t revoke my friends-only request without Oliver thinking I was completely jealous and pathetic.
“Can we just forget about this?” I asked, suddenly regretting my decision to call.
“Sure, Stella.” I knew from the way Cara said my name that she thought I was making a mistake, but for once she let it go. “What else do you want to talk about?”
I did my best to push Oliver out of my thoughts and focused on another of my mounting problems. “Well, on Friday I have my first blog post.”
“Oh my God!” Cara gushed, her mood changing in an instant. “That’s so exciting. Are you pumped?”
“Not exactly,” I told her. Alec’s reassurance had helped settle some of my insecurities, but that didn’t mean my nerves were completely gone. “I know I’m being ridiculous, but I’m scared Paul’s going to take one look at my work and realize my pictures from the other weekend were just a fluke.”
Cara scoffed. “Yup. Totally ridiculous. He’s going to like them, Stella. Stop stressing yourself out.”
“But how can you be positive?”
There was a long pause in which I assumed Cara was giving me a look, even though I couldn’t see it. “Because I know you, Stella,” she finally said, “and I know what you can do. I also know that you overthink everything, which tends to induce pointless panic.”
And Cara was right. About both things actually—the pictures and the panic.
By the next morning, I’d chewed my fingernails down so far that, if I kept going at this rate, all I’d have left would be bloody stumps.
As I sat down with Paul at a café a few blocks from our hotel, I made a conscious effort not to bite them anymore.
But without a diversion, my fingers started to twitch.
“Let see what you’ve got so far,” Paul said with a smile. I slid my computer across the table to him, and then I tucked my hands under my butt to keep them from moving.
“Wow,” was the only thing Paul said as he clicked through the gallery.
Wow? Was that a good wow or a these-are-so-bad-I’m-shocked wow? My heart was hammering, and I felt like it was expanding inside my chest, leaving my lungs with no room to function.
“These are all seriously impressive, Stella.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said in a rush, but then I stopped.
“Wait. You—you think so? Because if this isn’t what you’re looking for, I can try to get some better stuff tonight.
” His praise was exactly what I needed to hear, but I still couldn’t believe him.
Part of my brain was convinced that I just wasn’t good enough.
“New stuff? Heavens no!” he said and laughed. “I’m more concerned that we have too much material. How am I supposed to narrow this down when it’s all so amazing?”
“Really?”
“Really, really.”
In the end we picked fifteen group shots, leaving out all the individual pictures I’d taken of the boys.
Paul wanted the initial blog post to be simple, but there were at least twenty more pictures he wanted to use, so I already had material for next week.
After showing me how to use the blog website and its different features, we added the images and spent an hour writing goofy captions.
“Looks good,” Paul said, scanning the page one last time. “I think it’s ready.”
I looked to him for instruction. “What should I do?”
He pushed the computer back over to me. “Hit the publish button, Stella. This is your blog. You should be the one to bring it to life.”
“Okay,” I said.
Okay, okay, okay. I repeated the word to myself to incite some courage as my finger hovered over the mouse.
My whole body was buzzing—I was excited and hesitant at the same time.
I’d never put myself or my work out in the world like this before, and once I clicked “Publish,” there was no going back.
“Stella?”
I cracked my neck. “Let’s do this,” I said, and then I slammed my finger down.
I probably used more force than necessary because the mouse skipped across the table, but I didn’t care.
A rush of adrenaline had flushed through my veins, and I couldn’t keep my knees from bouncing.
It took five seconds for the file progress bar to go from empty to the bright blue of fully uploaded, and when it did, a new box popped up on-screen.
It read: “The Heartbreak Chronicles” has been published.
I beamed at Paul. The blog—my work—was finally live.
“Take the weekend off,” he said. “You deserve it.”