Page 60 of Meant to Be

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause it’s like running from a bear. It just amps everything up and makes it worse. You have to stay calm. Pretend they’re not there…. Plus, you don’t want them to think you’re flustered. They get off on that. Pictures sell for a higher price if you look pissed or upset…which is why they talk shit. You just have to ignore them.”

“Okay,” I said, taking mental notes, but thinking that was probably easier said than done. “Well, I just wanted to let you know….”

He must have heard the reluctance in my voice, because he said my name as a worried question. “Cate?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be scared,” he said.

“I’m not scared,” I said, lying through my teeth.

—

That night, Ireturned home from work to the strong aroma of pot and the sound of Elna and Curtis laughing in the living room. As I put my bag and keys down in the kitchen, I rounded the corner and saw them both sprawled out on the sofa in a cloud of smoke, watching a Mary J. Blige video on BET. Elna’s bong sat on the coffee table between them, along with a box of Wheat Thins and an empty container of hummus. Clearly, they’d been at it for a while.

“Ahhhh. There she is,” Curtis said, glancing up at me.

“Yep. There she is,” Elna echoed.

“Hey, guys,” I said with a substantial sigh as I kicked off my heels and plopped down on a floor pillow on the other side of our coffee table.

Curtis ignored me, staring at Elna. “Does our girl here know how much trouble she’s in?”

Elna smirked, then shrugged. “I don’t think she does…but maybe…. Always hard to tell with her.”

It was one of their favorite schticks, talking about me as if I weren’t in the room, though to be fair, we all did it to one another.

I rolled my eyes and shot Elna an accusatory look. “So you told him?”

“Lady,” Curtis said, waving his finger in my face. “She didn’t tell meshit. You’re on freaking PageSix!”

My stomach dropped just as I noticed the newspaper on thecoffee table. Sure enough, Curtis held it up and waved it in my face. “Extra, extra! Read all about it!’

I pushed his hand away and groaned. “Do I even want to see it?”

Elna gave me a glazed look, then slid the bong across the coffee table toward me. “Well, you might want to hit this first.”

“Shit. Is it that bad?” I said, refusing the bong and reaching for the paper instead.

“I mean—” Elna said as Curtis held it out of my reach. “It’s not that bad—”

I groaned, then said, “Okay, gimme that thing.”

Curtis shook his head and patted the spot on the sofa next to him. “No. You come here. I can’t stop looking at him.”

“Him?”I said, getting up and moving over to the sofa. “There’s a picture of Joe?”

“Yep,” Curtis said. “Looking fine as hell.”

As I sat down, squeezing between my friends, I saw the headline—Joe Kingsley’s New Fling—along with three photographs laid out sequentially. The first was a medium-range shot, taken last night, of Joe and me walking into his building. He was holding the door open for me, one hand on the small of my back—which wasn’t terribly incriminating. But thesecondshot—a close-up of me in broad daylight,leavingJoe’s building, wearing the same jeans and top, with messy hair and a bewildered, busted look on my face—told a different story. In the third photo, I was standing on the corner, holding my purse up to my face. The caption spelled everything out for less discerning readers:Former model Cate Cooper takes “walk of shame” after steamy night with Joe Kingsley.

“Ugh,” I said, putting my head in my hands. “Unreal.”

“I’ll tell you what’sunreal,” Curtis said, pausing dramatically.“What’s unreal is that I had to read about this in the paper! Why didn’t you tell me? What is going on here?”

“Okay. Calm down,” I said, then summarized the order of events as succinctly as I could. I told him that I’d been seeing Joe since Fashion Week and hadn’t told him sooner because I didn’t quite believe it was going to last, and I didn’t want to get his hopes up.

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