CHAPTER 16

ALICIA

Kelly nearly choked on the chocolate chip cookie she was munching on when I told her that I’d agreed to go out with Jared. Her big green eyes, our father’s apparently, filled with surprise as she swallowed the treat and washed it down with her glass of water.

“Wait, how are you only mentioning this to me now?” she asked, crossing her legs underneath her.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking about just calling the whole thing off. We talked about it a couple of days ago, but we only made plans this afternoon.” And I’d been thinking about it ever since.

Kelly and I were in my apartment, settled in for a night of watching sappy romantic comedies, but even spread out on my couch with my plate of baked goodness on my lap and our first movie lined up, I couldn’t shake my concern about my date with Jared from my mind.

“Why would you call it off?” she asked. “He’s only one of the hottest guys on the planet, and I mean, he’s got to be loaded.” She grabbed another cookie from her plate and pointed it at me. “You’d be crazy not to take him up on a date.”

“You know I don’t care about the fact that he’s loaded. And if you knew him, you would know that turning him down wouldn’t be crazy. In fact, it would probably be best for my sanity if I did.” I took a sip of my water and reached for a cookie, hoping that it would settle my nerves.

“If I knew him, I’d still think turning him down was crazy,” she countered. “I mean, have you looked at the guy?”

“Unfortunately, I have. He’s beyond handsome, yes. And there’s just something about him that makes me feel like there’s electricity sparking over my skin when I’m near him. I’m the first to admit that I’m attracted to him, but he’s just so freaking pompous. His attitude drives me crazy sometimes.”

“So? Going on a date with him doesn’t have to mean anything. Just see it as a night out with a hot guy. What do you have to lose?”

“I already told you, my sanity.”

“Sanity is overrated. I’d give mine up in a second for a chance with a guy who looked like that.” She giggled, lifting a finger, leveling it, and making circles in the air beside her temple. “Being coo-coo over a guy like that would be so worth it.”

“You know that there’s more to him than just the way he looks, right?”

Kelly seemed taken aback by my tone. A frown settled onto her features as she unfolded her legs from underneath her and spread them out on the couch instead.

“Okay, so there is more to him than his looks, and you don’t care about his money, but you also don’t seem to like the guy very much. So, if it’s not his looks, his money, or his personality, then I’m confused. Why did you even agree to go out with him?”

I pulled the elastic band out of my hair to loosen my ponytail, only to gather the strands back and redo it to give my hands something to do. I didn’t understand why I was feeling so conflicted over Jared, either. But I had to be honest with myself, and by extension, with Kelly.

“Because it’s not that I don’t like him. I do. I just don’t like the way he acts sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But get this, the other day, he and his brother got into a fight. When he initially called to tell me about it, he refused to offer any excuses, but eventually, I found out that he’d gotten into the fight to defend Caleb. His willingness to defend his brother and his refusal to make excuses for it impressed me.”

The line between Kelly’s eyebrows deepened. “Yeah, I heard about the fight. Didn’t know that it was about Caleb, though. Forgetting that fun fact for a minute, although I’m dying to know the actual story, am I getting it right that you’re telling me that you both like him and don’t like him at the same time? Cause that’s confusing as balls.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Tell me about it. That’s the problem. Sometimes, it’s like there’s this real, decent person right beneath the surface. And you’ve heard his songs. There’s a raw honesty there. Someone who feels so deeply and who genuinely understands what people go through, but then you meet him, and he’s all arrogant player and generally just a bit of a dick.”

“He wouldn’t be the first, or the only, person who doesn’t share all of himself with the whole world, you know? He probably figures that he gives the world so much of himself in his songs that he has to keep whatever he has left to himself.”

She had a point. “I guess. Maybe. When did you get smart?”

Kelly smiled and downed the rest of her water. “I research and write about these people for a living, remember? I know that you don’t think they’re special, but even you can’t deny that their minds work differently than ours. They have to. I’m sure ours would have worked the same way if we were under constant public scrutiny. From what I gather, it changes a person, and while there is the age-old argument that they chose to live their lives in the public eye, that doesn’t mean that they should be stripped of their privacy altogether.”

I agreed with her, of course. A part of my job was to ensure that certain things about them remained private. What I didn’t know was whether Jared being a jackass was his way of protecting himself, or if that was just who he was. I could deal with it as a persona or a defense mechanism. I could even understand it. But if that was all it was, the guy was a pro at never letting a shred of his humanity shine through. And that was the problem. I wasn’t entirely convinced that there was still a likable human being behind that shell.

“I can understand that, but what if it has changed him so much from whoever it was that he used to be, that all that’s left is the public persona? I’ve been behind closed doors with him on a number of occasions. Alone or with the band and their manager only, and he’s like that all the time.”

Kelly gave me a long look and shook her head like I still didn’t get it. “And on all of these occasions that you were lucky enough to be alone with him, did you tell him all of your deepest darkest secrets? Did you let him in completely?”

“No,” I said. “But I wasn’t rude to him, either, and I don’t try to justify my bad actions by referring to myself as the Emperor of anything.”

Kelly stifled a giggle. “He really does that? I thought that was an act that he put on for interviews.”

“And there, you’ve uncovered what’s at the heart of my problem. It’s not an act for the cameras. That’s how he talks and acts all the time. Well, almost all the time, anyway.”

My sister nodded like she’d had some kind of revelation, staring off into the middle distance before meeting my eyes again. “If that’s true, then I see what you mean. But let’s face it, you also think that there might be more to him, so why not give him a chance? It’s one date, presumably a local one. If he’s really horrible and it sucks, you come back home. He’s probably not going to whisk you off somewhere that would make that impossible. At the worst, it’s a few hours with a jerk, but at least, he’s a jerk who can afford a delicious meal and a semi-decent bottle of wine.”

She wasn’t wrong. With a deep sigh and a firm nod, I decided to keep my date with him in a few days. If push came to shove, I could always climb out the bathroom window or just walk out the restaurant and come home.

“Speaking of wine, I think I have a bottle in the fridge. Let’s go grab a glass and move this party to my room. Since you were key in convincing me to do this, you’re helping me choose an outfit for the mistake I’m probably about to make.”

Kelly laughed and stood up from the couch at the same time as I did, following me into the kitchen and grabbing two glasses while I rummaged around for the wine. It was a bottle of dry rose that I loved, and I poured us each a healthy glass that we took to my bedroom for what was sure to be a Great Outfit Debate.

Settling on my purple comforter, Kelly sipped her wine while I started pulling out my options and laying them on the bed. Watching what I was doing, Kelly quickly objected. “Oh no. No, no, no. We’re not choosing like that. You’re putting it all on, and we’ll narrow it down from there. Some of these, I’ve never seen on you, and others, I don’t even remember what you look like in. The man might be arrogant, but he’s still a star, and we’re going to make sure that you look like you belong on his arm, even if you only end up staying on it for an hour or less.”

I raised both my eyebrows and held up a simple white dress in front of me. “Are you really going to make me change into each one of these? Can’t I just told them like this?”

Kelly shook her head, eyes wide, but insistent. “No way. How am I supposed to see if that dress, for example, makes your ass look fat or your boobs look flat, if you’re not wearing it. We’ve got the rest of the night and the next few if we can’t settle this tonight. You’re not getting out of this. The movies can wait. This is way more important.”

“I don’t remember you being like this the last time you helped me decide what to wear for a date,” I told her. “In fact, you weren’t even here. I sent you a picture of what I was thinking about wearing, and you texted back a thumbs-up emoji.”

Kelly smiled at the memory. “True. But Greg was just a normal asshole, not a famous one.”

I yanked one of the decorative pillows from the settee next to me and threw it at her with a wide grin. “That shouldn’t make any difference.”

She let out another peal of giggles and rolled her eyes up like she didn’t know what she was going to do with me and was asking for patience. “Let’s not go there. Whether or not you agree with me is irrelevant anyway, since I’m not letting you out of this room until you’ve tried on every last one of your options.”

“Fine,” I said, shedding my black pajamas with the little Batman logos on them. “But from now on, whenever either of us go on a date with anyone, we’re doing it this way.”

Kelly nodded with a resigned smile on her lips and saluted me with her glass of wine. “You got it, although I’m pretty sure this is the most exciting date either of us is ever going to go on.”

She was incorrigible, really. But I had to give it to her for sticking to her guns. “We’ll see about that.”

Slipping into the white dress I’d been holding up earlier, Kelly shook her head almost immediately. “No, that’s way too casual for a night date.”

She proceeded to veto at least nine more outfits, though it was starting to feel more like a hundred. Sometimes because I looked too sexy, sometimes because I didn’t look sexy enough. Other times because the outfit was flirty or conservative, and once because she said my skirt was just plain ugly. If anyone else had tried telling me that, I would have been offended or ignored them, but this was Kelly, and her opinion mattered to me, so I didn’t argue.

Eventually, we settled on a just-sexy-enough black dress. It hit just below mid-thigh, clung to my hips, and revealed a little bit more of my cleavage than anything I could remember wearing around Jared before. After pairing the dress with a pair of red heels, slinky silver jewelry, and even choosing out lacy underwear that matched the heels, Kelly smiled and put both her thumbs up.

“I officially declare our mission a success,” she said.

I didn’t quite know why I’d let her talk me into going so far as choosing the underwear. Even if the date went well, it was still only the first date. I knew that a guy like Jared probably got laid on every date, but I wasn’t sure what I would do if he tried to sleep with me.

Thinking about it was making me nervous, but it also made certain parts of my anatomy excited. I shoved the thought away after I reminded that part of my anatomy of how annoying Jared was. She didn’t seem to care much, but I reined it in and focused my attention on Kelly instead.

“Can we go watch that movie now?” I asked. It was finally time to just relax. No more Jared or Destitute. Just me, my sister, and our date with my couches.