Page 4 of Christmas Crisis
It strengthened my resolve. No matter what happened between us, I needed to fix this.
During our call, the publicist, Lauren, told me to leave the post up but turn off the comments. Then we brainstormed ways to convince people that something true wasn’t (Stone and me) and something that wasn’t true was (Stone and Naomi). My head swam just thinking about it.
They asked me how Stone seemed, and I replied that he thought things would blow over soon. Shoshanna and the rest of his team had guided his career to extreme heights practically overnight, so he had a lot of faith in them. Also, he was a mellow guy in general. His amiability was something that had drawn me to him initially—the most authentic part of his otherwise curated image.
Shoshanna and Lauren spoke with Naomi’s people, and they decided the first order of business was to make sure the world saw Stone and Naomi together. Then we'd convince the public that Stone and I were just friends. Naomi would back us up,saying she knew me and had met me many times, and that would be that.
Then another photo showed up online.
Someone else had been on the beach in Maui. They’d caught me and Stone in the background. In that picture, he held me in his arms, wrapped in a towel. I remembered the moment. We’d been sitting outside, waiting for the sunset. I couldn’t recall seeing anyone near us. The cabins were a quarter mile apart. But that was definitely my towel, and that was definitely the outside of our cabana.
In the photo, we gazed into one another's eyes. Like lovers. Harder to explain away than the couch selfie.
Shoshanna, Lauren, and I got on another call.
“We could say it was manipulated,” Lauren suggested.
Shoshanna shook her head. “That would work for a while, but since we know the picture is authentic, it’s too risky a strategy.”
“Why isn’t it enough for Naomi to say she doesn’t think Stone cheated on her? Like, if she knows me and all, shouldn’t that be adequate?” I asked.
Lauren tsked sadly. “When Naomi was a kid, her handlers did her dirty. They leaned into this bubbly, perpetually innocent version of her, so even as she aged, everyone assumed she could be taken advantage of. Being with Stone was working in terms of rehabbing that persona. She was finally being perceived as more of a grown-up. But if she goes on record as trusting Stone despite the photo evidence, they’ll assume she’s being manipulated. The public tends to be cynical. It’s easy to buy the narrative that an upstart social media star used sweet little Naomi for his own gain.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. I’ve met Naomi. She’s no dummy.”
“Welcome to being a young woman in the public eye.”
I grimaced.
Lauren pinched the bridge of her nose, adjusting the camera to display less of her nostrils. “We need the public to believe you and Stone are just friends. The pictures are just so damning.”
A thought occurred to me. I almost didn’t want to voice it out loud, but it refused to go away.
“Would it help if the public discovered that I’ve been involved with someone else for the past few years? If pictures are what it takes to persuade people, what if there were a bunch of me being cuddled up to a guy who isn’t Stone? Going places and hanging out with him?”
“You want us to stage photos with another man?” Shoshanna hummed. “I feel like it might backfire. Nowadays, folks are pretty good at sussing that out.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. I’m asking what would happen if those pictures actually existed.”
Shoshanna glared menacingly at her camera. “Have you been cheating on Stone?”
I pffted. “No. Keeping things quiet with him has been a big enough pain in my ass. Trust me when I say I don’t have the capacity to maintain more than one secret relationship at a time.”
“Fair enough,” Lauren said, lips twitching. “Then what do you mean?”
“Stone may be my boyfriend. But he’s not the only man in my life. And I have plenty of photos to prove it.”
Chapter two
Leo
NOW
Istretched my arms above my head, rolling out the shoulder kinks from tiling for the past hour. My crew had agreed to work on Thanksgiving morning since the homeowners said they’d pay us double to keep the project moving. I still planned to make it to my parents’ house tonight for turkey and pie, but otherwise, I’d be spending most of the long holiday weekend at the jobsite.
Gathering up my tools at the end of the shift, my world tilted on its axis when I overheard a conversation between two of my crew members.
“Who do you think @theadventurousmiranda is?” Amala asked.
