“I heard you,” he muttered. “I also know that it won’t be long before he screws up and cheats on you. They all do eventually. He’s not the first
actor I’ve had to watch over. You’d be surprised to know the great lengths they go through to keep their little affairs hidden. Even the married ones
screw around.”
“Oh and I suppose if I was dating you, you’d be totally different from that. You’d never cheat on me.” I laughed mockingly.
“No, I wouldn’t. And if you were with me, I’d only take local assignments so I wouldn’t have to travel and be away from you,” he continued. “There
would be no reason for you to ever doubt me.”
“I have no reason to doubt Ryan either. You’re a man, he’s a man; either it’s in your nature to cheat or it’s not.” My throat felt like I’d been
swallowing razorblades and I was starting to run a fever again. It was time for him to go.
“And I can tell you, Kyle, that it’s not in my nature to cheat either. I love Ryan. That’s all you need to know. Now if you don’t mind, I’d really like to
rest.” I shook his coat in my hand so he’d get the message.
He stopped to look at me before taking his coat from my hand. “I’ll be watching and waiting. You’re an intelligent woman. You’ll come to your
senses soon enough.”
His assuredness was getting a bit creepy.
I was glad when he finally left. I watched him walk halfway down the alley to make sure he was leaving before locking up and setting the alarm.
Back in my apartment, I picked up my cell and hit the first entry in my phone book. It was time to come clean with Ryan.
By Monday my cold had morphed into something altogether more atrocious and wicked. The pain in my sinuses and chest was almost
unbearable and I could not stop coughing. My ribs and stomach muscles hurt badly from all the hacking and it was getting harder and harder to
breathe. Marie helped me into her car which was parked by the back door. I was relieved just knowing I would be seeing a doctor today.
“I told Ryan about Kyle,” I whispered between coughing up lung tissue.
She looked at me, waiting for my further explanation.
“He was livid.” I wiped my nose. “But then after he calmed down he was glad that I told him. He doesn’t know everything though. I spared him
some of the details.”
“What details?” she asked, patting me on the back as I coughed severely.
I shrugged, not knowing how to say it. “Kyle pretty much said that I’d be better off with him instead of being with Ryan.”
“No! He didn’t! What the hell else did he say?”
“He said I should consider dating him instead. He’d be better for me. He also brought me soup.” I coughed out my last words.
“Soup?” She laughed. “Oh, he’s good! What did you say to him then?”
“I told him I love Ryan and that he should leave. He sort of worried me a bit at the end. Like he didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Marie stayed in the waiting room while I went in to see my doctor. He informed me that I had a sinus infection and bronchitis. For as terrible as I
felt, I was wondering if there weren’t a few other lung infection terms missing from his diagnosis.
We stopped at the local pharmacy where I got a multitude of antibiotics, nasal spray, and an inhaler. I mistakenly glanced over the front of
Celebrity Weekly while standing in line at the checkout. The cover of the magazine had a by-line that stated distance was tearing Ryan and me
apart. He just left for Scotland this morning; how could we be split apart already?
“Why are you buying that shit?” Marie scowled. “As if you aren’t in bad enough shape already, you need to torment yourself more?”
“I’m not buying it.” I coughed violently into my sleeve. “I hate the media. Why do they do this?” I showed her the cover.
I had no intentions to spend even a penny on that crap. It was lies like these that enticed people to buy the garbage in the first place. And every
time someone bought one of those magazines, it allowed some idiot to keep his job as a purveyor of lies and gave another idiot incentive to exist
as an intruding photographer. Every dime spent on those rag magazines perpetuated the nonsense.
That’s when Marie informed me that a photographer approached her the other day and offered her two thousand dollars if she’d get him
pictures of the inside of my apartment. These leeches were now going after my friends. Of course Marie declined, but it was apparent that the
magazines wanted to get their hands on actual photos of our “love nest” as they put it. Now I was even more paranoid about having anyone in my
apartment.
Ryan called me every day while he was in Scotland, even if it was for only five minutes. He tried to describe the landscape and architecture so I
could visualize the experience he was having; he even sent me a few cell phone pictures, but I still wished I was there with him to experience it
firsthand.
It didn’t take long for pictures of the cast in Scotland to surface on the Internet. Ryan’s fan site was quite reliable with the latest selection of
candid photos. Tongues around the globe were sent wagging once the photos of Ryan and Suzanne’s “love scene” were leaked. Even Kat called
me to make sure I wasn’t going to go ballistic from seeing the scandalous photos.
For some reason the lies about Ryan and Suzanne’s rekindled romance didn’t bother me as much as it did when I first met him. I guess I knew
both of them well enough to know that Ryan didn’t have any romantic feelings for her despite how often his lips had to touch hers. I knew Ryan
harbored deep resentment for Suzanne and her antics. She had wronged him too many times in the past for him to ever let go of his grudge, let
alone ever love her.
I did however worry about Suzanne. Many of the little stunts she pulled all pointed to her being madly in love with him. I was onto her little game;
after all I too was once young and foolish. She didn’t try to break us up for Francesca’s benefit – I was wrong with that assumption. Her comments
and evil tongue only had one beneficiary. She had made additional comments after her little failed tryst with Ryan’s friend Scott, indicating that she
had hoped that if his friends thought she was good enough to sleep with that maybe he might feel the same way. Unfortunately, her actions had the
opposite affect on Ryan.
The media sure had fun with all these rumors and lies. According to the reports, Ryan was back with Suzanne, Suzanne reportedly told me to
stay away from her man, our relationship was over, and I was having a secret affair with my former bodyguard behind Ryan’s back. It was beyond
ridiculous.
“You feeling up to getting out of the house today?” Marie asked, interrupting my private viewing of several old Ryan Christensen interviews on
the computer. I clicked the video pause button and gave her a bit more of my attention. I’d been holed up in my apartment for an entire week.
“Tammy wants to take us to lunch. We have to stop at the jewelry store and then we need to go look at bridesmaid dresses,” she rambled
through the telephone.
I was feeling a lot better and getting out into the fresh air did sound appealing. I was also hoping to squash some of the new worries that
mysteriously cropped up in my brain.
Marie and Tammy had been acting, I don’t know - strange towards me for the last couple of days. I couldn’t pinpoint the specifics; I could just
sense it. Maybe it was the new way they both awkwardly smiled at me that caused me to feel weird?
I had been really ill and I was extremely thankful that my two best friends were there for me, but I couldn’t help but worry that they were getting
tired of me and my new life of drama.