by Kelly Oram
“Fine. Maybe you guys have a point, and I promise I will start making more of an effort to be proud of myself. But let’s start with some cute short-sleeve tops or a skirt, okay? I’m not ready for this.” I lifted the pile of lingerie in my hands for emphasis, and then set it down, flicking the tacky black thong at Jason. “Besides, how is anyone supposed to feel sexy with a string tucked up their crack?”
Everyone laughed again, but as we started to leave the store, Juliette grabbed the teddy. “Fine. If you won’t, I will.” She shot me a smirk and headed for the cashier. “Merry Christmas, Ella.”
“Good idea,” Ana said, grabbing the pink set Erik had picked out. “I wasn’t actually going to get you a gift, but I’m feeling generous now.”
I rolled my eyes, but then I saw Erik’s grin, and I blushed. “I really do like the pink one,” he said. “If you ever get tired of your boyfriend, give me a call.”
Vivian snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen. You’re going to have to stick with Juliette.”
Erik’s eyes drifted toward the sales counter where the twins were making their purchases. Juliette’s gorgeous locks were falling down her back in big ringlets, and her mile-long legs were on display thanks to the short skirt she had on. “Not a bad deal,” he said.
He was still checking her out as she approached us. He slid his arm around her shoulder and tucked her to his side. “So, beautiful, I’ve got to get going, but before I leave, do you have plans for New Year’s Eve yet? I’ve got an invite to a killer party, and I still need a date.”
Juliette shrugged nonchalantly. “I have plans, but maybe I could be convinced to ditch them for a better offer.”
“Well then, I’ll just have to convince you that mine is the better option. Give me your number, and I’ll text you later.”
He handed her his phone, and as she programmed her number in for him, she shot me a sly wink. I shook my head with a laugh. I never would have guessed I could be so close with a girl like Juliette, but I really did love my new stepsister.
. . . . .
I came home from the mall empty-handed, but at least some good came from our hours of shopping—Juliette was glowing as we came into the house that evening. She’d played it cool with Erik, but the second he was gone, she went nuts with excitement, claiming he was the nicest, funniest, hottest guy she’d ever met. I was happy for her. Jules needed a good guy, and even though Erik had picked out a sexy bra and panty set for me, I could admit he was cool and that it would be okay if Juliette started dating him.
Dad and Jennifer were down in the family room watching Love, Actually, but Jennifer paused the movie when she heard us come in, and they came upstairs to greet us. “How did it go?” She plucked a bag from Ana’s hands. “Can I see the goods?”
“Mom!” Ana shrieked, yanking the bag away from her. “Your present is in there. Stop trying to peek. You’re as bad as Dad.”
Juliette laughed. “Yeah right. No one is as bad as Dad.” She shot me a sardonic look, clutching her own shopping bags as if her life depended on it. “There’s a reason we wait until the last possible minute to shop for our parents.”
She glared at Dad, who was inching closer to her as she spoke. “What?” he asked, with an expression so innocent I burst into laughter.
“Did either of you peek at the gifts I got you?” I asked.
One look at Dad’s face, and I knew. “Dad!” I whacked his arm.
“What? You left the bag on the kitchen counter. I thought it was groceries.”
Sure he did. “I left it on the kitchen counter for five minutes, because I couldn’t carry everything at once, and I warned you not to look.”
“Come on, Ella. You can’t leave a surprise for me on the counter, tell me not to look, and then leave the room. What did you expect?”
It was odd to see such a formidable attorney who was used to cross-examining ruthless criminals sputtering without any defense. It humanized him a little, and even though I was busting him, I still cracked a smile. “Ugh. You’re as bad as Brian. I should take it back and get you something else.”
“Don’t do that. I’ve needed a new briefcase for a while, and I love the one you picked. I was tempted to ask if I could have it two weeks ago.” Dad grinned at whatever exasperated look I gave him. “I really do love it. Thank you in advance.”
“Whatever. I need to go rest for a while.”
Dad’s face fell. “Did you overdo it at the mall today?”
“A little bit.” I shifted my weight off my bad leg with a sigh. Both of my feet ached, and I was throbbing all the way from my toes to my hip. “Daniel will probably say the exercise was good for me, but I’m going to have to soak in a hot bath for a long time tonight if I want to be able to move tomorrow.”
“Use some Epsom salt, if you’re swelling,” Jennifer said. “And don’t forget the lavender oil. If you’re really sore, try mixing some bergamot and eucalyptus in there, too.”
Jennifer was big on essential oils. I used to think she was just a California fruitcake, but I can’t deny her tricks have been heaven for my body. “I will, thanks.”
It took me a while to get in the tub. I was sore enough that I was moving like a ninety-year-old woman. I really had overdone it physically. Walking is something I can barely do, and it wears me out. We’d been at the mall all day. I’d often had to sit down and wait for the girls while they browsed. But even resting periodically, I’d done a lot more walking than normal.
This was the first time since my accident that I’d been on my feet most of the day, and my body was voicing its protests. Still, it had been worth it. Wandering the mall with my two best friends, shopping, gossiping, and picking up boys made me feel like a normal teenager again. Well, minus the handful of times I was recognized. The fame thing was not normal no matter how you looked at it. I wondered if it would ever feel less strange.
So exhausted from my day, I accidentally dosed off after my bath. After getting dressed, I’d lain down on my bed just to rest for a minute, with my hair still twisted up in a towel, and didn’t wake up until the next morning.
I woke to the sound of my phone receiving an incoming text. It took me a minute to comprehend where I was, and that I’d fallen asleep after my bath. Yawning, I untangled the towel from my head. My hair was dry and crusty from not being brushed after my bath. I’d have to wet it down again if I wanted it to be the least bit manageable. Filing that thought away for later, I stretched and blinked several times when I realized it was morning.
My phone dinged again—another text—and then it dinged again. And then it rang. As odd as that was, I ignored it. I was still too groggy, and it was probably just Brian wanting to whine at me for not calling him last night. He could wait long enough for me to brush my teeth. Or maybe he could wait another half an hour…
I rolled over and snuggled under the covers, but that only lasted about two minutes before Juliette barged into my room. “Ella! Get up! You have to see this!”
“Go away,” I groaned. “I’m sleeping.”
“No, seriously.”
She grabbed my laptop and climbed onto my bed. I yawned again as she booted the thing up. “What is it?”
“Don’t you check your phone?”
“Not this early in the morning. Brian can wait until I’m out of bed.”
“You might want to call him back.”
What the heck was so urgent? I grabbed my phone while Juliette pulled up the Internet on my laptop.
My texts were from Vivian and Rob. Both seemed urgent and told me to check out this website called Get Real Hollywood right now. There were multiple exclamation points used. Even Rob’s text used one, so I knew something big had happened.
As I rubbed the sleep out of my face and slowly sat up—I was beyond stiff after having rested on my sore muscles—Juliette shrieked. “No way! No freaking way!”
“What is it?” I asked.
She was too focused on the laptop to explain, but I coul
d tell her shock was not from any kind of good news. She looked a scary combination of horrified and pissed.
I moved my legs over the side of the bed with a groan. Daniel was going to kill me in my next PT session for overworking my body so much. Probably right after he told me it was good for me and recommended I do it more often.
My phone started to ring, but I ignored it. Whoever was calling was only going to tell me to look at the website Juliette was gawking at. “What’s going on?”
“That sneaky rotten bastard!”
“Juliette!” I snapped. It was the only way to break her concentration.
Juliette’s face was stark white except for the angry red splotches on her cheeks and the back of her neck. When she met my confused and curious gaze, her eyes misted over. “Ella, I’m so sorry.”
She moved my laptop onto my lap. I looked at the screen in front of me, but it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. “Hey, that’s me. Is that lunch at the restaurant yesterday? What…? Where…? How…?”
“Erik,” Juliette whispered. “He’s some big-time celebrity gossiper.”
“What do you mean?”
She clicked out of the video and went back to the home page for Get Real Hollywood. It was a celebrity news website. Erik’s picture was in the upper left corner with a short bio. The lead story was front and center, and huge: Cinder’s Ella Gets Real About Her Physical Relationship with Brian and Her Own Insecurities. The video of me at the lunch table in the mall yesterday was right beneath it.
“We were totally duped,” Juliette said. “He must have known who you were from the start. That’s probably why he stuck up for you. He’d probably been following us for a while, looking for some kind of opportunity to talk to us. We fell right into his trap.”
I wasn’t ready to believe this yet—still in the denial stage of my shock. “How was he recording this?”
Juliette shrugged, staring once again at the video playing on the laptop. “I don’t know. He must have had some kind of hidden camera on him.”
“Is there audio?”
Juliette’s grimace answered the question for her. She clicked on the video, and my voice rang out loud and clear. “…whenever I ask him to give me a hint, he says he doesn’t need a gift. He just sings me that stupid song: ‘All I Want for Christmas is You.’”
My stomach rolled. Bile clawed up my throat, and I had to swallow it back down as I realized exactly what Erik had captured on video and posted for the entire world to see. “How much did he get?” My question came out shaky.
Juliette scrolled forward through the video and swallowed. “It looks like the whole conversation at lunch…and everything in the lingerie store.”
I cringed. “Everything?”
Juliette nodded.
I fell back against the bed, so shocked that I didn’t even notice the physical pain the movement caused. That conversation at lunch had started with Ana telling me I should give Brian my virginity for Christmas and only got more personal from there. I felt ill. The room started to spin, and my eyes began to sting. “Jules…” My voice started to shake.
“I know,” she whispered, equally distressed. “And all of us only made it worse. Ella…”
My phone rang again, and when I saw Brian’s name on the caller ID, tears pooled in my eyes. Unable to answer the phone, I threw it across the room and slapped my hands over my face. The phone went to voice mail and immediately started ringing again. Juliette retrieved it and held it out to me. “Talk to him, Ella.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. If he’s calling me, he’s already seen this. He heard that whole conversation at lunch about him being a grown-up and me being his silly little prude of a girlfriend. He saw me refuse to buy sexy underwear and confess that I wasn’t ready to sleep with him because I’m insecure about my body. He heard that. The whole world is currently hearing it.”
Juliette wiped a tear from her cheek. “Ella, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Still, I feel—” She cut herself off when the phone started ringing a third time. “You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t. Not yet. I need a minute to freak out.”
Across the house, there was an earth-shattering shriek, and then seconds later my bedroom door burst open. “Did you see it?” Ana cried.
One look at me answered her question. She began pacing. “That asshole! I’m going to kill him!” She glared at me. “Did you know who he was? Did you let me make a complete ass of myself on purpose, knowing he was filming all that?”
Was she kidding?
“Shut up, Ana,” Juliette snapped. “Not everything is about you.”
My tears vanished, and, for once, I probably managed a scarier glare than her. “Oh no, this is totally about you, Ana,” I argued, taking the easy target to vent some of my anger. “I totally called Erik up and invited him to come secretly film us making fools of ourselves at the mall. And I totally confessed to him that I’m not ready to sleep with Brian because he’s perfect and my body is a horrific mess because I wanted the whole world to know that. And I totally asked you to bring up my sex life and drag me into a lingerie store. You got me. That was all my big, evil plan to make you feel stupid.”
Ana glared again, but she wasn’t pissed off at me. Her angry look turned to one of frustration as she plopped down into my desk chair with an angry huff. “This is a nightmare.”
“On the bright side,” Juliette said, glaring at the laptop so severely I feared for its safety, “Dad is going to destroy him in court. That jerk messed with the wrong family.”
“NO!” Ana and I shouted together.
Juliette flinched, startled to be so heartily opposed.
“Dad will kill me if he sees that video,” Ana said.
Yeah, I might have looked stupid and insecure, but Ana came across as pretty skanky. She’d never be allowed to date again if Dad saw this video. “And he’ll want to have some kind of awkward father-daughter talk with me,” I added. “If he doesn’t just launch into another lecture about his disapproval of me dating Brian.”
Juliette scoffed. “I hate to break it to you both, but Dad is going to see this anyway. It’s going to be everywhere. If he jumps on it now, maybe he can get a cease and desist order before it makes it into Kenneth Long’s monologue.”
A loud knock made me groan again just as Dad’s nervous voice rang out. “Girls? Are you all decent? I found the website on Ana’s computer. Can I come in…?”
Juliette frowned at Ana. “You woke the whole house screaming and then left your laptop open when you came running down here? Good job. Way to keep Dad from finding out about it.”
“Girls?”
“Go away, Dad!” Juliette yelled.
Apparently go away means come on in in Dad speak, because he opened the door and poked his head in. When he saw that we were all at least covered, he stepped fully in the room. “Dad, please,” I begged. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Whatever expression I wore on my face was enough to make my dad pause. His face fell, and he sighed. “Sweetheart, you’ve chosen to date a celebrity. As long as you’re seeing Brian Oliver, things like this are going to happen.”
I didn’t want to fight, but the man knew exactly how to push my buttons. “This wasn’t Brian’s fault.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll beg to differ on that, but it’s a moot point. What I’m saying is, you can’t let these things control your life. It’s already happened. There’s no use hiding from it.”
Ha! I’d beg to differ on that.
While we were locked in a stare down, the doorbell rang. I didn’t need three guesses to know who was here. I didn’t even need one. Sure enough, once Jennifer answered the door, Brian’s voice rang out loud and clear and full of concern. “Ella?”
When he appeared at the threshold of my room, I lay back down and pulled my covers over my head. “UGH. Ella’s not here right now. GO AWAY, PLEASE.”
“Ellam
ara,” Brian cooed. “Relax. It’s going to be okay.”
For once, his voice did nothing to soothe me. “No, it’s NOT!” I was so worked up my voice cracked on the last word. “How could I be so stupid? I said stuff, Brian. We got caught up in our conversation, and I wasn’t thinking. I said some really personal, embarrassing stuff. I’m sure you’ve seen it all. We joked around in a lingerie store. Juliette and Ana bought me Christmas presents when I wouldn’t buy anything for myself. The whole world is going to see that.”
I sucked in a breath as a sob hit me. I swallowed it. I didn’t want to cry. But no matter how hard I tried, I still sniffled. I’d been tricked. I felt violated.
When the weight shifted on my bed, I knew Brian had traded places with my father. He plucked my blankets off my head and gently pulled me into a sitting position. When he wrapped his strong arms around me, I broke. I collapsed against his chest, letting my tears flow. “How could he do that to us?”
Brian squeezed me tighter and quietly said, “May we have a minute alone, please?”
I didn’t look to see if they listened. I knew they would. When Brian used his serious voice like that, he tended to get his way. Oh, I’m sure my father shot him a nasty look, and I didn’t hear the door click shut because he, no doubt, refused to shut it all the way with Brian in the room. But when Brian pulled my face out of his chest and tucked my hair behind my ears, I knew we were alone.
I took one look at his pain-filled eyes and broke down as if I were at a confessional. “I’m so sorry. We had no idea who he was. He—”
He shook his head and spoke over me, unwilling to let me keep apologizing. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault. The guy’s name is Erik Clarke. He’s notorious around town for stunts just like this. He doesn’t get the celebrities as often because we all know to look out for him, but he tracks down the families and friends of the celebrities and gets them talking. He gets all kinds of dirt on people.”
