Page 12 of Faking the Pass

Surrounded On All Sides

R osie

I felt slightly better after a long bath and a thorough cry.

A bath almost always made everything better, and the tub in Presley’s bathroom was nothing short of fantastic.

I was trying to keep things in perspective. I mean, what was done was done, right?

So, they’d gotten some pictures of me to add to the thousands that were already out there. Not the end of the world.

Yes, these photos were taken the day after I’d run away from my own wedding, but at least I was alone, clothed , and not doing anything particularly interesting.

If Presley was right and no one knew this house belonged to him, maybe I’d get through this thing without total and utter ruin to my reputation and manage to slowly start rebuilding my acting career.

That was if Randy decided not to follow through on his threat to completely blackball me in the industry. Ugh.

Part of me wondered if I’d done the wrong thing by running away.

Maybe I should have just gritted my teeth and gone through the motions of the ridiculous fake wedding then filed for an annulment later.

In the moment yesterday, it hadn’t felt like I’d had a choice. All I could think was that I had to get away from him as soon as possible.

Even now, the thought of walking down the aisle toward Randy’s smug face and letting him kiss me made me nauseous.

I wasn’t sure I was that good of an actress.

Oh well, it was what it was. I couldn’t unmake the decision I’d made, so the only thing to do was move forward. I’d get dressed, see if Presley had been able to get his phone working, and use it to make a plan to get out of here today.

Somehow.

Then it dawned on me I had nothing to get dressed in .

Pulling the towel more tightly around me, I cracked the door to the hallway and called out.

“Presley?”

“Yeah? Need something?”

He stepped into the hall, and I narrowed the crack to just enough for my voice to get through.

“Is it okay if I borrow another t-shirt? And maybe some… underwear?”

He cleared his throat. “Oh. Yeah. Second drawer from the top for the t-shirt. Boxer briefs are in the next one down. I’ll search around and see if I have a safety pin or something in case you need it to hold them up.”

“Okay thanks.”

I went to his dresser and found what I needed. Everything was way too big on me of course, but at least the boxers had some elastic to keep them from sliding to the floor.

Seeing myself in the mirror above the dresser, I was struck by an out of body moment of unreality.

I was in Presley Lowe’s house.

Wearing his underwear.

Presley Lowe, who’d broken up with me with no explanation and basically never talked to me again until last night.

Presley Lowe, who’d shattered my teenage heart and was the first to show me I couldn’t trust it.

I’d have sworn back then that he’d felt the same kind of attraction and fascination with me as I had with him.

Obviously, I’d been wrong.

The same way I’d been wrong about Randy.

Well, my stupid heart wasn’t going to get another chance to steer me wrong because I was putting it in a permanent time out.

Noticing the TV remote on top of the dresser, I decided to check out the entertainment news channels to see what people were saying about the wedding that wasn’t.

What Randy was saying about me .

Without my phone, I’d been completely out of touch with the outside world. He may have already put out some fabricated sob story and ruined my name beyond repair.

I sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through several of the channels. There didn’t appear to have been any official statement from him yet. There were a few sound bites from wedding attendees who said the venue was gorgeous and the food had been great.

Nice to know someone had a good time at my wedding.

One of the guests they interviewed said how sorry she was that I’d been too sick to go through with the ceremony.

So that was Randy’s cover story.

I was sick all right—sick of his lies. Still, the pressure in my head lessened a bit. It wasn’t the worst thing he could have said about me.

But then the presenter intro’d some drone video footage. It took a second for me to recognize what I was looking at.

The screen showed an overhead view of me in the dinghy. My heart dropped, my elbows pressing into my sides as I gripped the comforter on either side of my legs.

The little boat moved slowly, and the camera stayed with it all the way to Presley’s cottage, like the aquatic version of that OJ Simpson slow-speed highway chase.

That was how they knew where I was.

Turning up the volume, I listened to the beautiful show hosts chatter, waiting for them to identify the cottage owner, to say that I’d left my poor groom at the altar and was shacking up with a star athlete.

They didn’t, but they did speculate, in gleeful tones, about how I’d been able to pilot a boat if I was so sick and why I wasn’t coming forward with any sort of public statement.

They wondered aloud why I wasn’t in the hospital or maybe recovering somewhere with my beloved Randy—and when the rescheduled wedding ceremony might take place.

A cold day in hell, that’s when.

Then the hosts speculated that my illness might have been more of the mental variety rather than something physical.

Information vacuums were dangerous. People came up with all kinds of crazy stories when they weren’t given one to fill the void.

It was probably time to borrow Presley’s phone to call my agent, craft some sort of statement to put out, and not wait around for the inevitable avalanche of misinformation.

But what to say?

I didn’t exactly relish the prospect of going along with Randy’s lie, but I was legally not permitted to tell the truth.

And honestly? I didn’t want people to know the truth. It was too embarrassing.

The truth made me look like a complete fool.

Maybe it was best to say nothing at all. Without fresh fuel, maybe the story would sort of die out, like a candle deprived of oxygen.

Maybe the celebrity news churn would just move on if I stayed in hiding somewhere and kept quiet long enough.

I started to brainstorm, trying to think of a place I could go and lie low—without any money.

My maid of honor, Danielle, would absolutely welcome me with open arms, but she was the single mom of two kids, and they lived in a very small apartment in Los Angeles.

She’d only been able to afford coming to the wedding because Randy had paid for her flight and room. Which he’d complained about, by the way.

Plus, I wouldn’t want to expose Danielle or her children to the media frenzy that would inevitably follow me.

My stomach churned just thinking about it. No doubt she’d been calling and texting me non-stop on the phone that I didn’t have with me. She must have been worried sick.

One thing was for sure—I couldn’t stay here and keep bothering Presley. I knew he wanted even less to do with this mess than he’d wanted to do with me back in high school.

A knock at the bedroom door startled me.

“Can I come in?” his deep voice asked.

“Sure,” I said, then hurriedly pulled down the hem of his t-shirt so it covered the boxers.

When he entered the room and saw what I was watching, he held his hand out, silently asking for the remote. I gave it to him, and he turned off the TV.

“Fuck em,” he said. “Who cares what they think?”

“Um… everyone in my industry?” I answered in a snarky tone.

Then I corrected myself, letting out a sigh.

“I know you’re right, in theory,” I said.

“But all I can think about is all the years of cleaning houses so I could afford acting classes, and performing in low-budget theater shows in front of a dozen or less people, working so hard to get better and earn a break. I thought I’d finally gotten one—and now it’s all over. Just like that.”

“It’s not over,” Presley said in a searching tone that told me he really didn’t understand my predicament.

He took a seat on the edge of the mattress beside me. “I mean, no, yesterday wasn’t the best day of your life, but it’s one day. Nobody gets through life with zero mistakes.”

“Yeah, but I’ve made a lot of them,” I said. “And my latest mistake has Steven Spielberg’s personal number.”

I groaned and flopped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Randy has millions of dollars, a massive PR budget, and an ego the size of a planet. Who knows what he’ll say when it gets out that I spent the night here with you on what was supposed to be my wedding night?”

“Wilder’s working on keeping that under wraps. Maybe it won’t get out,” Presley said.

“What if it does, though?”

He appeared to think for a moment, pressing the knuckles of one big hand against his lips.

“You could just get out in front of it and tell the truth. I mean, anybody with half a brain would understand why you walked out and didn’t go through with the wedding.”

Gesturing to the window, he said, “There’s basically a press conference gathered outside right now. You could just walk out there, say hi to everyone, and tell them the truth—that Randy Ryland is the worst kind of scumbag. That you and I are practically strangers, and nothing happened between us.”

I shook my head rapidly side to side.

“Once your identity gets out, Randy’s cover story about me leaving the wedding venue because I was sick and that I’m recovering in the home of a local ‘friend’ will be blown,” I said.

“Then he’ll feel cornered and get vicious.

He’ll say I’m an unfaithful slut who used him to get ahead. And they’ll believe it.”

I waved my hand toward Presley in an up and down gesture meant to encompass his whole… irresistible-ness.

“No woman would spend the night with you platonically,” I said, then added, “I did, but I mean someone you’d actually be interested in. They don’t know about our past.”

Presley shot me a funny look, as if that had been a strange thing to say.

“Besides, I’m not allowed to tell the truth,” I told him. “I signed an NDA.”

“Oh.” His eyebrows lifted. “What happens if you violate it?”