Chapter six
Ashley
The awards show had been like nothing that Ashley had ever experienced before. The glitz and the glamor had been spectacular. She had been seated close to the stage with the rest of Cameron’s team. She’d been worried at the start of the night about how Cameron would cope without drinking, but he’d done better than she could have ever expected.
She pushed open her apartment door with a happy sigh. She’d had a good night. She hadn’t expected to but had. Cameron had been the perfect gentlemen. It was almost hard to believe that he was the same guy that she’d met drunk, only two-weeks before. She closed her door and made her way to the bedroom.
She was tired. She’d had a couple of glasses of wine to toast Cameron’s award and they’d gone straight to her head. She fell, face first into her sheets and closed her eyes. Her body felt light against the mattress. She rolled over so she could get some air and crawled underneath her sheets.
Her phone vibrated against her bedside table. She picked it up and looked at the brightly lit screen. It was Cameron. He’d texted her to say thank you for the night that they’d spent together. She stared at the screen, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Should she write back? Should she tell him that she’d had a good night too?
She put the phone back on the side without sending a message. She knew she’d done the right thing, even if she couldn’t take her eyes away from it. She couldn’t be friends with Cameron. It would complicate things too much. She knew that given half the chance he’d see her in his bed. She couldn’t let her guard down. She couldn’t let that happen especially when her professional career was on the line.
She put her head back against a pillow and thought about her choices. She could continue to help Cameron so that her legacy was in turning him around. She could become his friend, blur the lines and start rumors, which would make sure that nobody in the television world would ever take her seriously.
The second option wasn’t even an option. She wasn’t going to allow Cameron to stand in the way of her dreams. She didn’t care how much he changed. She didn’t care how well she fixed him. He was broken and she had no intention getting cut on the pieces she couldn’t glue back together.
She fell asleep soon after that realization. Her dreams were calm and mild against the troubles of the waking world. She didn’t wake up until just before noon. Her cell phone was ringing. The ringtone had drifted into her dream, forcing her to realize that nothing she was experiencing was real.
She opened one eye angrily and reached over for her phone. “Hello?” she asked, because she hadn’t checked to see who the caller was.
“Ashley,” Cameron’s worried voice played through the speaker. “Have you seen the papers?”
She sat up quickly and opened her eyes. “What did you do?” she asked accusingly. She tried to think back over everything that had happened the night before. There wasn’t anything popping out at her, but then again, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes firmly on Cameron for the entire night either.
“No,” Cameron said hesitantly. “This isn’t something I’ve done.”
“Then what is it?” Ashley asked her heart beating hard in her chest. She could tell that Cameron wasn’t happy about whatever he had seen. She couldn’t deny the worry that brought her considering how cool and calm he normally was about the tabloids.
“I think this is something you’re going to need to see for yourself,” Cameron sighed.
“Fat load of good you are,” Ashley snapped and hung up the phone. She was still wearing the dress she’d gone to the awards show in. She pulled it off quickly and grabbed a pair of jeans and sweater from her closet so that she could resemble somebody who was actually living and not the living dead.
There was a newspaper stand at the end of her street. She stopped and looked down at the grayish sheets of paper that were supposed to be reporting the news. They weren’t reporting news though. They were reporting something that wasn’t even true. It was her. She was splashed across the pages of every one of the papers the clerk had in stock. She glanced over the headlines. How had they got it so wrong?
She grabbed a handful of the newspapers and threw some money over at the guy standing next to the stall, before turning on her heels and heading back to her apartment. She opened the first paper on the pile and looked down at the story they’d written to go along with the picture of Cameron helping her into her car.
She stopped, when she read the word floozy. This wasn’t happening she told herself, as she climbed the stairs in her building. This couldn’t be happening. They’d got it totally wrong. They were going to have to retract the story, before everybody in the country had heard about it.
She pushed open her door and dashed through to her cell phone that was ringing. She answered it quickly. “Hello?”
“Have you seen the papers?” Cameron’s tone was full of worry. “Have you seen what they’re saying about us?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry,” he sounded genuine. “I’m so sorry that I’ve put you into this position. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I don’t know what I can do to make it better,” Cameron said desperately. “They’ve already printed the story. People are going to believe what they want, even if we tell them otherwise.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Ashley said weakly, as she realized that Cameron was right. If the newspaper retracted the story, it would do little to undo the damage already caused. She was stuck, her reputation ruined and all because of Cameron.
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