Authors: Stacey Kade
Adam pulls his phone from his pocket, taps into it, and then lifts it up to show me.
I lean forward in Chase’s chair to see. And sure enough, the first three items on the Trending list are #AmandaGrace, #ChaseHenry, and …
“Hashtag AMASE?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
“It’s your ‘couple name,’ a mash-up of your—”
“I know what it is,” I say. I’m just stunned to learn of its existence. “I was only in a basement for two years, not the last century.”
Adam flinches, but my words don’t dissuade him from continuing. “I think they’re saying it like Amaze,” he says with a casual shrug that seems a little forced. “But you can always ask Chase.”
Now, there it is.
This is what his windup has been leading to. I can feel it, like I can feel tension emanating from him, despite his relaxed position on the floor. And yet, I have to ask, the words burbling up like vomit, “Why would Chase know or care?”
Adam blinks at me, all innocence again. “Because he’s the one who started it.”
With another tap, he has a profile up for Chase Henry on his phone’s tiny screen. The small photo in the header is definitely Chase, but taken from the side. He’s wearing sunglasses, the same ones from this morning. His head is tilted back in laughter, his face lit by what appears to be either late afternoon or early morning sun. It is a surprisingly intimate picture. He seems relaxed, happy in the presence of whoever is taking the photo.
“Verified” is stamped across the upper left, taking away the possibility of an imitator trying to convince the world otherwise.
The most recent posts are mostly benign—talking about going for a run or staying in for a quiet night with lots of misspelled words. Each contains the #amase tag, though.
And the first one, just a day ago, is nothing but #amase, #amase, #amase, #amase, #amase, #amase. Just the hashtag repeated over and over again, to start the trending process.
That causes something in me to shift, metal tearing into soft vulnerable flesh. My heart pushed into an oversized meat grinder. Chase was on his phone last night when I came to talk to him. But he put it aside, telling me it was nothing.
It shouldn’t hurt. It really shouldn’t. It’s just part of the process, no different than boosting his profile with the pictures of us. But we never talked about this, and somehow that makes it feel more exploitative, instead of the partnership I thought we had.
“I mean, I think it’s awesome how much you’re willing to help him. But I’m just wondering what you’re getting out of it, especially when you’re just sitting over here by yourself.” Again, his studied mix of casual concern and indifference hits the wrong note in me.
I eye him carefully. “It is awfully considerate of you to be so concerned with my feelings, Adam.”
He gives an aw-shucks shrug. He doesn’t know me well enough to hear the sarcasm underneath. Too bad for him.
“So, what’s in it for you?” I ask.
His mouth works silently in surprise. Then he shakes his head. “I’m just thinking about you and that it’s not fair—”
“Not fair to me or to you?” I persist. I might have been naive and trusting enough once to miss the selfish motives at play here, but I am not that stupid anymore.
Anger flashes across his face, then vanishes beneath precisely cultivated amusement with a touch of condescension. “You think I’m making it up? Oh, honey.” He reaches out as though he would pat my knee, but stops himself.
I shift away anyway. “No, I don’t.” Sadly, that is the truth: the posts exist under Chase’s verified name and that’s an uncomfortable reality that I’ll have to absorb somehow. But that’s not what I’m after right now.
His forehead creases with confusion. “Then why are you giving me—”
“I know why he’s doing what he’s doing. Why are you?”
But I’ve given him too much time to rally. He just looks at me with distaste. “Sad that you can’t even recognize the good from the bad anymore.”
His words strike home, an extra slap on an already sore spot, and I draw back, pulling in a sharp breath.
As Adam pushes himself up and walks away, Chase’s gaze finds mine, his eyebrows raising in question.
Okay?
he mouths.
I don’t know how to answer that right now. My head is full of questions, and the sensation that I’m missing something, if I could just pull back enough to see it.
I nod, though, because this isn’t the time or place for that conversation, even if I were ready. And I’m not.
But Chase frowns, not convinced by whatever he sees on my face.
Fortunately, Max calls for places and the resumption of filming before Chase can make his way over to me.
As Mia hurries back to my side, breathless with excitement, I’m struck with a sick feeling, wondering how these pieces I’ve been handed fit together and exactly
how
I’m being played. Because at this point, it’s not really a question of “if” anymore.
Chase
The knock at the adjoining door makes me jump, even though I’ve been half-expecting it, hoping for it. The dull rumble of voices from the television, mixed with the higher pitches of Amanda and Mia talking, stopped a while ago.
Not that I was eavesdropping, exactly. Just trying to pick my moment to go over and talk with Amanda, without a lot of luck.
After I finished on set for the day, well after ten o’clock, with Karen’s words of caution circling in my head, we all went back to the hotel: me, Amanda, Mia, Emily, and Ron. And the silence was awkward and huge, punctuated only by Mia’s various proclamations and observations from what she learned on set.
Amanda nodded politely or made the occasional comment in response to her sister, but she was a different person from this morning. I didn’t know what Adam said, but whatever it was, it caused a distant, troubled look in her eyes that the intervening time had not erased.
I should have followed my instincts and punched him, no matter how much trouble it would have caused.
Amanda spent the rest of the time on set with her head bent over her phone, and the few times she looked in my direction, her expression was vague, like she was seeing through me.
I didn’t know if it was in reaction to whatever Adam said or if it was because I was keeping my distance for the moment. Karen was right: I needed to think it through and make a decision without hurting Amanda.
But the problem is, even now, I’m not any clearer on what I want, except that I’m not ready for her to leave tomorrow. Maybe that’s enough of a place to start. Either way, with Amanda at my door, my time’s up.
I chuck my pages for tomorrow on the table and get up to open the door.
“Hey,” Amanda says with a tentative smile.
But my voice is lodged in my throat, as I stare at her. She’s wearing my shirt, and nothing else. The top three buttons are open, showing that she’s not wearing a shirt underneath this time, and her long bare legs poke out beneath the hem.
I know it shouldn’t matter; I should keep my focus on what I need to say. But I’m only human. A human with an instant hard-on, apparently.
“Oh.” She makes a face, her cheeks flooding with color. “Sorry. Mia ransacked the clothes I brought. I know I need to get it back to you.” As she brushes her hands down the front of the shirt, I can now see that she is wearing those same boxer sleep shorts from last night, the hem barely peeking out from beneath my shirt.
That doesn’t help much, though, because the mental image of her in the shirt alone, false as it is, is burned into my brain.
I clear my throat, trying to recover my voice. “No,” I manage. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Keep it as long as you want.”
Forever.
But the tiny wrinkle of concern in her forehead suggests that my words are not entirely convincing. That, or she thinks I’m having some kind of breakdown, which is, sadly, not far from the truth.
“Okay,” she says, the drawn-out sound another indicator of her doubt. “But that’s not why I’m … I wanted to talk to you,” she says. She squeezes her phone between her palms, interlocking her fingers around it.
“Okay,” I say warily, dread accumulating in the pit of my stomach.
I step back to let her into the room.
“So, Adam is kind of a douche,” she says, moving past me and settling on the couch, folding into a cross-legged position on the farther cushion.
That is not what I was expecting. The tightness in my gut eases a little.
I close the door and join her on the sofa. “What are you talking about?”
“He went out of his way to talk to me again today. And I think I figured out why. Well, at least his tiny-brain reasoning, but there’s more to it.” She hesitates. “Sorry, I’m not even sure if this is something you want to hear about…”
“No, tell me; I want to know.”
“So, he came over to talk to me today mainly, I think, because he thought it might make you, uh, jealous.” She shifts uncomfortably, her gaze darting from me to the table and back again as if she’s not sure enough about that possibility to state it as unimpeachable fact.
“He’s right,” I say flatly. Faker asshole that he is, he is evidently good at picking up genuine emotion when he’s in the same room with it.
Her mouth opens in a surprised O.
“Sorry,” I say. “I have no reason to make that claim—I get that. It’s just … I was.” Admitting it actually makes me feel temporarily worse, more exposed.
But then Amanda smiles at me, that bright, perfectly perfect smile that speaks to all that she’s been through. “I’m not unhappy to hear that,” she says softly.
Then she shakes her head and holds up her hand, as if we’re getting distracted. And we were. “But that’s not all. I think he’s pissed you’re getting more attention than he is, and he wanted to see if he could do something to disrupt it. To disrupt … us.” Her words quicken now with distaste and anger. “He showed me where we, you and I together, are trending on all these sites. Hashtag Amase.” Her mouth twists in distaste. “It’s our names put together.”
Suddenly I have a very bad feeling where this is going. I deleted the account and all of Elise’s stupid posts last night. But that just deleted the app off my phone. It didn’t get rid of the accounts entirely. Like, say on the phone or tablet of the person who created them.
“Amanda, I…” The words crowd in my throat—
I’m sorry, Elise, I said no
—but all jammed together like that, none of them emerges.
“Then he showed me the Chase Henry account where it supposedly all started from. The hashtag Amase thing.”
She clicks on her phone and shows me a screen: the verified Chase Henry account on Twitter.
Even though I’m expecting it, the sight of it makes me freeze.
Seeing Elise’s words in black and white—her stupid text-speak, the stuff about running and the quiet night in, plus a post she did not show me with nothing but #amase in it—makes my vision cloud temporarily with rage. She did not, at least, post the photos she took in my room.
But this is bad enough. Amanda will see it as an intrusion, a violation. And she’s right.
A crushing weight settles on my chest, and I slump back against the couch. This is it. It’s over, right here and now. Fuck.
Swallowing hard over the lump in my throat, I close my eyes. “Amanda, I know you have no reason to believe me, but I didn’t write or post any of that stuff. And I tried to—”
“I know you didn’t,” she says quietly.
The words are so different from what I’m expecting that it takes me a second to process them. My eyes snap open, and I blink, playing back what I thought I heard.
“You … what?” I ask, sitting forward.
“They don’t even sound like you,” she points out. “And the hashtag?” She rolls her eyes. “Please. Not even with a gun to your head, I don’t think.”
I’m staring at her, my mouth open in amazement.
“What?” she asks with a frown. “I do pay attention.”
She knows me. Enough to recognize something that’s not me. The real me.
“Anyway, someone is pretending to be you.” Amanda hesitates. “Your ex, maybe? I don’t know. But there’s a way to report it,” she says with that calmness and certainty that is a balm to the craziness we’re currently embroiled in. “Mia showed me. It takes a few days, though, and—”
Relief washes over me in a great wave. I know what I want now. “Stay with me?” I blurt out.
She goes still. “What?”
“I wanted to talk to you about this before. I’m sorry if I seemed off today,” I say, the words spilling out quickly. “I just wasn’t sure if … I’m here until Saturday and I was hoping you might—”
“Yes,” she says.
“Really?”
Her mouth curves in a smile. “Yeah.”
She knows me. And she’s staying.
With the rush of adrenaline from her answer fueling me, I lean over and kiss her, drawing her bottom lip into my mouth. She responds eagerly, moving toward me on her knees to close the gap between us.
Her tongue teases mine, moving in and out, mimicking the motion I want elsewhere. I pull back, laying open-mouthed caresses down her throat. She smells so damn good. Her skin is smooth and heated beneath my tongue, and I feel her swallow reflexively.
With my nose pressed against the point where her neck meets her shoulder, I give in to temptation and nip at her collarbone, and she makes that noise, that involuntary exhale, something between a sigh and a gasp. It makes my head buzz and my blood hot.
She rises up on her knees, her hands clutching my shirt as she meets my mouth again. I rest my free hand on her bare leg, rubbing my open palm up and down against the silky flesh, and her hips move in an instinctive thrusting motion that stops my breath. It’s hard to think.
Sliding my hand up the outside of her leg, beneath her shorts, I grip her hip, drawing circles with my thumb on the skin exposed above the line of her panties.
Her breath is coming in shuddering pants between kisses, and I can feel the heat of her against me. Every instinct I have is telling me to lean against her, guide her onto her back. But that’s a no-go.
Something has to happen, though. Or I need to start the cooling-off process. My dick is pressed so hard against the button fly of my jeans, there might be permanent marks.