Page 165 of Shy Girls Can't Date Celebrities
My heart skips a beat. “Ooh. I wanna see.”
Wyatt moves over to the desk, leaning against it as he thumbs through the pages. I stand close by, eyeing the hand drawn pictures and messy writing. He’s written diagonally, in a spiral, and downwards against the edge of the page. Every page is like a work of art I would happily frame and hang on my wall. Every pen stroke was a piece of his heart, forming a permanent mark.
I sigh, wrapping an arm around him. “Wow. This is so cool.” I then pluck his glasses out of my handbag. “Do you want to take a closer look?”
Wyatt takes the glasses and the journal and moves over to the bed, sitting on the edge.
The large OJ from the plane hits me, and I excuse myself for the bathroom. I leave Wyatt to read his journal, moving through the closet and into the black and white tiled bathroom. Thankfully, a housekeeper has cleaned this space.
When I move to the sink, I take a while cooling down with the running water. Melancholy washes over me as I realize my last moments with Wyatt are here. I get to see the recording studio with him, but then I return to the airport.
And that’s it.
The storybook is over.
Time for my regular life to resume.
After too long alone in the bathroom, I leave before Wyatt starts asking if I’ve collapsed or something. I moved back into the bedroom and find him pacing the carpet.
“What’s wrong?”
He rubs his forehead. “I need a pill.”
I swiftly retrieve the pill container from my handbag and give it to him. “Here.”
Wyatt takes the container and breezes past me and into thebathroom.
That didn’t seem like a usual headache. I’ve seen them hit him enough times over the past week. If anything, that seemed almost like an anxiety attack.
Before second-hand anxiety pulls me under, I force myself to take a seat on the bed. Beside me, Wyatt’s journal lies open on his bed and his glasses sit beside it. I can’t help becoming entranced by the page, littered with Wyatt’s handwriting. It’s not like the random scribbles of song lyrics or doodles that we flipped through earlier. This is an emotional dump onto the page. I don’t mean to read it, but when I catch my name, my heart skips a beat.
He wrote about me?
While he was famous, and we hadn’t spoken in years, he was still thinking about me?
I gingerly sit on the edge of the bed and lift the notebook onto my lap. I take a deep breath, and read the journal entry.
‘The worst part is that Josie isn’t part of my life anymore. Who am I kidding? She’d probably hate the guy I’ve become. What even am I? A sellout? A pushover? A product to sell?
I don’t know. I just know I’m not the guy she used to know. Dang, I wish I could just be that guy again. That I could just hit rewind and never step foot into this circus. I don’t even know how everything spiraled this badly. How did I get here? Why do I keep letting them force me into being seen with certain people? My stomach hurts at the thought of Josie seeing me with Portia.
I don’t know how Portia does it. She doesn’t even bat an eye when we’re told to act like a couple at some event. How could someone be so comfortable being so fake? I tell her I’m okay with it. I play along, because heck, we’re both stuck in this mess. It makes me sick, but what can I do? There’s this stupid contract hanging over my head. I’m trapped.
I JUST WANT OUT.’
The bathroom door opens and I put the journal down as Wyatt walks into the bedroom.
“You read this?” I ask, my heart straining to pump blood.
He clutches his elbows. “Mm-hmm.”
I stand from the bed and move over to him. “You know, I never thought anything bad about you.”
He nods at the journal, left open on his bed. “B-but you didn’t... Wh-what I wrote... Sounds like you don’t know who I became.”
I caress the sides of his face, rising on the balls of my feet in an attempt to meet his melancholy eyes. “That journal entry sounds like you were struggling. You were giving yourself a hard time. Outside of your team, people love you. I don’t think you ever became fake.”
His jaw flexes. “But we can’t know.”
