Spite and pettiness isn’t normally my style, but Hazel has been calling me all day and I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone. She goes days on end without even shooting me a reply through text, but the second I show up at her door with an amazing opportunity, she doesn’t want to stop calling me.
And for what? More money? Free dates? The thought alone brings an awful feeling to the pit of my stomach.
Regardless, even if I was in the mood for answering one of Hazel’s calls, I actually can’t. I’m on set. An actual movie set, as none other than the Starbucks Barista star of the show. My first real credit.
And I’ve got to be honest, I’m the only one on set with a smile on my face. Everyone seems so bothered to have gotten up so early. I’ve had to read my lines thirty times due to camera malfunctions or extras not being directed properly, and I’m still loving how this day is turning out. Even if I’m only on-screen for a couple of seconds, my face will be cemented in cinema history.
As these thoughts of stardom and positivity run through my head, I hear someone call my name. I turn completely around to see Hazel. On the outer side of a chain link fence waving at me. Nobody’s shouted “Rolling” yet, so I go ahead and sneak off to her, despite every instinct in me telling me to ignore her.
When I meet her on the opposite side of the fence, she thanks me. Not only for the great show of appreciation and support that was getting Phineas to buy her art, but for trying to do that as a way of cheering her up. Her words are heartwarming, but I still can’t accept them wholeheartedly.
“Well, I’m sure Scott can cheer you up a bit better than I can,” I say in her direction, hoping not to catch her gaze.
But I can’t keep on this facade of being angry at her. I’m only disappointed that she had to stoop as low as Scott and cheat on me. That’s the one thing I can’t forgive. “Look, you could have broken up with me if you wanted to get back with your ex,” I tell her. “I know our engagement was fake but I thought that what we had was not only real, but special.”
Hazel stays quiet for some time. Then she bursts out in laughter.
“Scott?? You think I’m back with Scott?”
Once her laughter subsides, she goes on to, first, reiterate that she would never get back with Scott no matter how much he begged, and second, explain that Scott hadn’t finished screwing with her when Phineas and I crossed paths with him the night before.
“He wouldn’t stop banging on my door until I let him in. And all he did when I finally opened the door was cry about how Brittany is cheating on him and how he wants to get back together with me. It was like a broken record of everything he had already asked of me and I’d rejected. He begged, and cried, and begged some more,” she explains.
“But—,” I try saying.
“But that wasn’t enough to get me to start dating him again. Nothing will ever be enough. He’s a worthless little bug. The exact opposite of what you are to me, Liam. I told him to hit the bricks. He kept insisting you told him that you were just with me to get back at Brittany, and that it was hard to deal with me.”
“I so did not,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says. “And I so did not sleep with Scott. I can’t believe we’ve let him come between us like this. Both of us thinking badly of the other due to him.”
I can’t believe it, either. I am such an ass. Of course, she wasn’t sleeping with Scott, what in the world was I thinking? I start laughing, realizing I’ve made a total ass out of myself by playing this uninterested asshole for a whole day and ignoring her messages.
“By the way,” she tells me, “I told my parents I’m going to be an artist and nothing else. They weren’t too supportive until I mentioned the fifty-five thousand dollar check your friend handed me for one painting. Now they’re over the moon with the idea of having a famous New York artist for a daughter.”
She holds my hand through the spaces in the chain link fence and apologizes for being so distant when all we needed to do was actually talk to each other instead of disconnecting entirely. I can’t help but agree. We were both real doofuses when it came to this whole Scott scenario.
“Liam, do you want to be with me?” she asks, her pretty hazel eyes staring into mine. “I’m sorry I let Scott screw with my head. My heart has always been with you.”
“Of course I do,” I tell her. “There’s nobody else in the whole world I’d rather be with.”
We kiss through the chain link fence, an act that in retrospect may not have been the most hygienic regardless of how romantic it may have seemed. But I don’t care. I just want to touch her, taste her, feel her, see her. I feel like it’s been months since we’ve been together, even though I haven’t even known her for months. My body and heart and mind just feel like they fit with hers, and need to be with hers.
I ask her to meet me back at my place around nine, wearing the sexiest number she owns. I even give her a spare key to my place, to make things really official and show her how much I trust her and how much I know she trusts me.