21. Chapter 21
Presley
I hate this so much.
“Presley, over here!” a paparazzo yells.
“Declan! Look this way!” another one says.
We’ve just exited Nobu, and thanks to my publicist—and I’m sure my mom—there are plenty of photogs here to get my picture with Declan Stone. We are officially back together. Only, we’re not. Because he’s with my mom now, and also, I don’t like Declan like that. I never really did, even when we actually tried to date for that little bit.
My apology video went as expected: Hated the first week, and then all the fuss died down and has pretty much been forgotten about, just like my publicist predicted. I’ve been too busy to think about it all that much. With meetings, press conferences, and costume fittings, I feel like I haven’t had a moment to myself. Filming starts in less than a week, I’ve got so much to do, and right now I’m having to pretend to be back with Declan.
I’m playing the game again. I’m not being real. In fact, I’m being the most unreal I could possibly be, standing here with this man, his hand on my lower back. He looks like he always does, handsome in a rugged way. Dark hair perfectly coiffed, clean-shaven jaw, in a dark-gray suit and blue shirt that makes his eyes pop, but unbuttoned too low in my opinion.
“Wave and smile,” Declan says in my ear, his breath causing creepy little tingles to move down my spine. Mostly because I don’t like his breath on my ear, but also what the hell did he eat in there? An entire clove of garlic?
But I do as he says, pulling my lips up into a fake smile, leaning my head away so I don’t have to smell his breath. The sun is setting, and the lighting is perfect, we’re here to give everyone a show, and a show is what they’ll get. But really, what I’d like to do is run away from my mother’s boyfriend.
Presley James, get yourself together.
“Lower that hand any farther and I’ll cut you,” I say through my teeth, keeping the grin bright on my face, posing for the cameras in a little black strapless dress and matching shiny patent leather heels that I had delivered today because I hated everything in my closet. It was after I tried this dress on that I realized I just hated the thought of getting done up for tonight, and it had nothing to do with my clothes .
“You wish,” Declan says, his smile bright and intact.
We’ve gotten so good at communicating through our smiles that it’s like second nature and no one is the wiser.
“Your breath smells like a butt,” I tell him, my cheeks starting to ache from the strain, while turning to my side and wrapping an arm around him from the front.
We are just adorable right now. The picture of love and affection.
“Your face looks like a butt,” he says through his teeth, waving at no one in particular.
“I hate you,” I say through my teeth. I don’t actually hate Declan, I just don’t like him.
We pose and preen, and everyone eats it up. The flashes are going off, and the paps are yelling questions for us to answer, which neither of us do. We just let them speculate like they always do. It’s kind of dumb how easy it is. Show up together for dinner, look cozy as you leave, and voilà, you’re front page on the gossip sites and someone has made a countdown clock for your future wedding and added more pictures to their Presclan fan page.
“Give him a kiss,” one of the paps yells, and at the request I almost upchuck the spicy tuna roll I ate earlier. I’d hate to do that; it was a really good roll.
Declan leans in and gives me his cheek, tapping it with his finger, which makes the photogs all awwww together in unison. My gosh. How have I been putting up with this nonsense for so long?
At least Declan has offered his cheek and not puckered up for our little audience. I’m grateful for the gesture because I absolutely am not kissing him on the lips, especially not after I had to peel him off my mom not even an hour before we came here.
What is my life?
I smile for the cameras and then lean in, giving him a little peck on the cheek. Then I turn my head toward his ear so no one can see my lips and from an angle it looks like I’m telling him something secret and private. But what I really say is, “Seriously, what did you eat?”
Declan, apparently as done with this torture as I am, waves one last time and then takes me by the hand, and we start walking toward the car, another celebrity couple exiting after us and thankfully taking on the attention.
My smile falls as soon as we’re out of the limelight, and I tear my hand away from Declan’s and follow him to the waiting black SUV at the end of the walkway.
But just as I pass the last of the paparazzi, I see someone who looks familiar and I blink a couple of times, not fully comprehending.
Standing at the edge of the group, a camera in her hand is . . . Betty. Rude Betty? That can’t be right. I walk toward her because I have to know. My mind could be playing tricks on me, or I’m about to have a nervous breakdown and this is the initial warning, but I need to make sure it’s her.
“Betty?” I ask as I approach her. There’s no massive visor on her head, but it’s absolutely her.
“Betty?” she questions, tucking her chin in, one brow lifting high on her forehead. “My name is Deborah.”
“Um . . . What are you doing here?”
She gives me a wicked-looking smile. “My job,” she says.
“Your . . . job?”
“Presley,” Declan yells, and I hold out a finger toward him, the universal signal for hold on .
I’m so confused right now, and my brain is attempting to put everything together.
I ask the most obvious thing as I try to parse through all the questions filtering through my mind at once. “You’re paparazzi?”
She wobbles her head side to side. “I prefer media photographer .”
“But you were on the island . . . on Sunset Harbor. Did you follow me?”
“Oh no,” she says, waving the idea away with her hand. “It was just luck, really. I was trying to get the scoop on Noah Belacourt. See if I could get anything juicy. But imagine my surprise when I saw you there. Presley James, fallen-from-grace actress, sitting on that bench in the town square. ”
“You didn’t even have a camera,” I say, remembering how she lectured me to sit up straight. I thought she was just a crotchety older woman who lived on the island.
“Ah,” she says. “But that’s how I get all the good pictures, you see. I hide my camera in bushes and use a remote.” She gives me a wink and pats her pants pocket, where I see a rectangular shape popping through. “And no one thinks a sweet older lady would be taking secret pictures of them. It’s a magic trick. I get you to look one way while I’m doing something else over here.” With her finger she points upward and then to the side.
I’m a little taken aback by the sweet older lady thing. Has she met herself?
“Wait, so it was you,” I say, pointing a finger at her, my brain finally putting the whole thing together. “You took all those pictures of me with Briggs on the island.”
She stands up a little taller then. “And I got paid a pretty penny for it. I’ve almost got enough to retire to Boca Raton.”
“But how did you get the ones in his mom’s backyard?”
“Easy,” she says. “Especially on an island where everybody talks. It works the same way in small towns. I just got people talking and made some friends, told them I like to go bird-watching, and suddenly I’ve got easy access.”
I hate everything about this, and it was a complete violation, but I’m also slightly impressed .
“Were you the one taking pictures of us that morning on the beach? Hiding behind the tree?” It didn’t look like her, but now that I know she’s an evil sort of genius, maybe I didn’t realize it.
“Oh no,” she says, shaking her head. “He hid behind a tree? What an idiot. I’d never do that. I have no idea who that was. I’d already sold the pictures I’d taken and left the island the day before. I think that was just a regular old paparazzo who’d caught wind of you being there. Little bastard jumped on my train.”
I’m sort of in shock right now, facing this same woman, clear across the country. And then my stomach does a sort of turning thing, and it’s not the spicy tuna from dinner.
“I blamed people for those pictures. Innocent people.”
She nods. “I can see how that might have happened.”
I blamed Briggs’s mom and sister for those pictures.
I’m an idiot. Not that I would have ever suspected that this grouchy woman was taking pictures of me, but why was I so sure it was Briggs’s family that I refused to consider there was another option?
I look her in the face. “Betty—”
“Deborah,” she corrects.
I breathe out my nose. “Whatever. I’m really glad I ran into you, but I’m probably going to have to get a restraining order against you. ”
She gives me a shrug like it’s no big deal. “It’s all in the game, right? You wouldn’t be the first, but you just might be the last. And stand up straight. You really do have terrible posture.”
I don’t know why, but I put my shoulders back and stand a little taller.
“Also, no one is fooled by you and Declan Stone,” she says. “Plus, I’ve got pictures that no one wants to buy of him snogging some older woman.”
Oh gosh.
“But that guy on the island,” she goes on. “That’s the real stuff right there.”
Briggs. Oh, Briggs. She’s right. This crazy lady is right. And I messed it all up.
With that, Deborah—who will always be Betty to me—gives me a nod of her head, like she didn’t just rock my world, and then, lifting her nose up toward the sky, she walks away.
Later that night, I’m sitting on my bed, wearing the white T-shirt that Briggs let me borrow after having spilled iced coffee on me the first time I met him (I never returned it and am not giving it back now; it’s my favorite souvenir from the island). I’ve written approximately five thousand different versions of a text to him. Nothing seems right. I want to tell him what happened and apologize, but the words all look wrong on my screen.
Me: Hey, Briggs, turns out you were right. It wasn’t your mom and sister who took the pictures. Hilarious, right?
Me: Hey, Briggs, remember when I accused your sister and mom of taking pictures of us and selling them to a gossip site? Turns out I was wrong. It was that weird lady with the big hat instead. Hahahahaha. Anyway, please forgive me. Pleeeeeeease.
Me: Hey, Briggs, I feel terrible, but it turns out I was wrong about the pictures. Anyway, hope life is going well for you!
Me: Briggs Conrad Dalton, I am miserable without you and I messed up and will you forgive me and can we run away together and I hate hate hate how things turned out between us and can you forgive me please I hate it here nothing feels right and I miss the island and your face and your hands and you were supposed to tell me your middle name and I wish I could see you right now and know if I screwed things up so badly that we can never have a chance and could you please tell me your middle name?
The last one was a bit of an unhinged run-on sentence that I’m super glad I didn’t send .
In the end, I don’t send him anything. It just feels wrong to text him. I could call him, but would he answer? Is it pointless to even try? He deserves to know that he was right, and I was a stubborn fool who should have believed him, and would he just forgive me and take me out on that boat and make out with me again?
There I go once more with the run-on sentences. I fall back on my pillows, my phone in my hands. He deserves to know, and I’ll tell him. I just have to figure out the right way to do it.