Brandon puts his hand under my shirt like he thinks I don’t know what he’s doing. I let it slide, because I’m focused on reading my aunt’s e-mail. But it’s a silk pajama. All I can think of, all of a sudden, is that if he’s not careful, I’ll murder him. 

I paid a lot of money for it, and I like it the way it is.

It’s soft, and comfortable —just like his touch, as he moves and latches himself to me from behind. I smile, because he’s just like a child sometimes. I let him hold me tight. As tight as he always says he dreams of. We both know what’s coming now, right?

“Do you really have to go?” His lips caress my ears, taunting.

“Well, it’s a free trip to London.” I stare at the ceiling, leaning on him. His smell is everywhere on me again. “I am actually pretty excited for it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You’re too spoiled for your own good, mama”. 

Brandon pulls me closer and laughs it off. I can tell he is feeling some kind of way.  Unlike me. 

It’s been about six months and I still feel nothing at all.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters, you get to go to London while I have to go to work”. The way his voice reaches me lets me know he is smiling. But I’m not. “What if you find a better London boy, huh?”

“Well, I’m going to London for work. Not leisure.”

He tries to catch my eyes but kisses my cheeks instead. “You say that like you don’t like your job...”

“Well, sometimes, duh. Don’t you like yours?”

He shrugs and says it’s just a job. But it feels to me like being a full-time athlete is hard work. I imagine him sweating it all off, jumping on his toes. His skin is glowing and he’s just as handsome as ever. Because he is specially handsome, after all. He looks like a model, or something: dark eyes, long eyelashes, dark hair, black skin.

I know for a fact that his job is not just a job for him, and I like him for that. Even when that means we only get to see each other a few days a month. 

And even though I wouldn’t admit it, especially for that.

Brandon asked me to be his girlfriend on a Monday morning. We had been friends for a while. Before we met, he was just a friend of Nessa’s that happened to like my Instagram posts once a week. We met at one of her parties and he seemed to like me a lot. Skip a few more drunk nights and you can see us again: he’s just driving me home, suddenly taking my clothes off, and I’m telling him it’s not the moment and he tells me we can sleep or watch a movie instead. He brushes my hair and I fall asleep and I take it all as if it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever been through.

Brandon told me that, more than anything else, he just wanted to be with me. For him, it was that simple. So I let him. Because, why not?

“Enjoy London, beautiful.” He kisses me at the door and makes sure that I’m carrying an umbrella in my bag before the elevator doors shut down. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too”, I answer, just as sweet.

But I think we both know we’re just pretending.

It’s been almost two months since Billie Grace was seen with Matthew Berry for the first time. Because I was with her that day, I missed all the action. Somewhere in the city, the media team was working hard on getting the best stats for the blog posts and the magazine prints. I followed their work from Billie’s house, phone on my hand.

Apparently, we ended up doing a brilliant job: even today, everyone is talking about them, trying to find them in the supposedly hidden lovers cocoon they’re hiding in.

It’s also been a month since Billie Grace cried on my shoulders and told me everything about her story with Anna Archivald.

Archivald’s career is way different than hers. While Billie’s career is the result of her father’s investments in the music industry and her mother’s willingness to showcase her daughter’s musical talents, Anna was raised in a privileged family. Born to a painter and a musician, she decided to pursue her acting career once she turned sixteen. It’s not like her parents had much to do with her career choices or cared enough to have an opinion on it. She’s been pretty much on her own since she started.

Where Billie still looked like a child, prisoner to her family and her label, Anna’s carefreeness was astounding. At a very young age, she walked carpets with total confidence. Even to this day, she seems mature and grounded. And while Billie was telling me the story, I couldn’t help but understand why she was so desperate to keep her around.

It broke my heart to learn that, after more than three years of playing hide and seek, rebounds and a long list of beards, Anna had finally (her words, not mine) turned her back on her like that. Even after the proposal, the rings, the yes-I-wills. Right before they could actually escape, Anna had bailed on her. I knew there was more to the story, but I didn’t want to push her to give me all the details.

I cared to listen, that’s all.

I know exactly how it feels when someone breaks your heart, and how difficult it is to pick up the pieces to make some sense out of them.  Besides, I needed her to get up and get to that meeting or my aunt would’ve killed me. We couldn’t simply spend the evening talking about her feelings.

“When did she tell you?” I had asked Billie. 

Her hair was soft, but it was messy. I couldn’t help but try to get it out of her face.

I knew how to comfort a friend. Even when Nessa had never been like this, Tori is the crying type. She loves it when you play with her hair and talk to her in a soothing voice. It’s like she wants to be a child again, and I thought that was exactly what Billie wanted: a friend to listen to her, someone to treat her like a hurting kid.

“She called me at four a. m. today,” Billie hid her face in her hands. “She wanted me to know that it was over. That she was letting me go… And...”

I tried to stop her from scratching herself. Even when it might have been invasive, I felt sorry for her. She didn’t stop me. In fact, the young woman saw the chance to grab my hand. 

Before I knew how to, I saw her locking her own fingers between mine. I let her take me as a substitute for a second.

“I shouldn’t have lied to her.”

“Billie, you can’t change that now...”

“I am tired of ending up alone, Amber,” she scoffed. “I’m tired of everyone leaving. They just… They just leave, and then they come back, and I let them, and they go away again and...”

“Hey, I’m here.”

Even when I knew she wanted to laugh at me and be cynical about the reason why I was there, she didn’t. She looked at me as if she wanted to believe it.

“Thank you.”

I still don’t know why I said that.

We aren’t friends. We have nothing in common. I have a normal boring life. I am no one. I am terribly mediocre: a child that was meant to fix a sinking marriage, a seven year-old going through her parents’ divorce, a numb teenager turned into a plain unremarkable blonde young woman that holds someone’s latte and pays rent. And for what’s worse, I’m not even blonde. I dyed my hair when I was thirteen and I liked it so I’ve never changed it.

I could’ve been anyone. But maybe that was exactly what Billie needed, right? Anyone who would stay and listen.

We stood there in silence for a while, that day.

“You need to get in the shower before Pablo gets here, Billie”.

She was looking at me. And then, as if she saw someone else in my face, she moved away. She didn’t do it in an abrupt manner. She moved away slowly. Gently, even, as if her body was apologizing for confusing me for someone I wasn’t.

But there was a hesitant pause before she moved again.

“Please, don’t tell anyone about this,” she pleaded.

“I won’t,” I promised, as fast as a bullet. “But you need this, Billie. And you are going to do it for you. Not for Anna. Not for anyone else. For you, and for your songs. Because that is what you want, isn’t it?”

Never in my life have I ever felt that dirty. I knew my aunt would’ve been proud, though. I wondered if she knew about Anna. Had Billie told her, too? It felt somehow as likely as it seemed unlikely to think of Lilah simply pushing her like that. I just couldn’t imagine her crying on her shoulder. I didn’t want to, either.

“Okay… Pablo will be here soon, right?” She stood up, and I nodded. “Then I’ll shower now. I’ll be right back.”

The girl was moving just as she had set her body to work in automatic mode. 

“Anything you need, Billie...”

It scared me, all of a sudden, how easy it was for her to switch from one to the other. She opened a drawer, grabbed some towels and then offered me one of her red carpet smiles.

“Actually… could you pour some wine for us three?”

I felt confused yet mesmerized by how determined she looked. Even when it didn’t sound like the best idea, to be day drinking, I let her have it her way.

A few hours after that, she was laughing with Pablo and her cheeks were blooming pink. She looked like spring would have looked like if it had had a body. Her new haircut made her look taller, and even when she wasn’t wearing heels, her whole figure looked stunning. Her clothes were simple: short jeans, a beautiful top and a bag. She looked as if she was trying to hide, but couldn’t manage to.

Oh, and my sunglasses on her head!

“Hey, thank you for these.” She winked, when she caught me staring.

I nodded and I let her have them, too.

After that, I sat back on her porch, and browsed through my phone while waiting for the team to get back to me. I bit my lips until they dried, too strange to my own self to understand why those hours felt suddenly that heavy.

For what’s worth, Aunt Lilah was pleased with me. After dealing with the first traumatic event of my short PR life with class, she let me go back to my usual job. Once her holiday was over, she moved me back to serving coffee and helping Courtney with Instagram and Twitter. 

While I felt safer, I wished to have some closure on my conversation with Billie. Needless to say, I was concerned about the secret and her broken heart.

Surprisingly enough, she must have been feeling the same way. Barely a week after the event, I received a small letter asking me to check my locker at work. I recognized the signature and laughed. 

The next morning, I found my glasses and a small bag of home-made cookies in it. I dipped them in coffee, laughing to myself, as Courtney talked about how the berries weren't as appreciative of Billie’s charm as they had first considered.

“It’s because they can’t understand why he’d hide it from them,” I said. Aunt Lilah stared at me from the other side of the room, surprised by hearing my voice. “What?”

“Nothing.” She looked puzzled to hear me speak. “What is your take on this?”

I shrugged and looked at Courtney. “Well, why would they keep it a secret? They’re pretty, talented and rich. How could it harm their careers, to be seen as a couple? They could be the greatest couple of the year, if they wanted...”

“But the secrecy is part of the game”, Lilah frowned.

“All I’m saying is, if you love someone, you should be able to tell the whole world, right?” I sipped from my coffee. “They’re artists. That’s what they do: they love people and they shout it from the rooftops.”

“She’s right about that,” a newcomer pointed out.

Her voice was as deep and enchanting as always. Of course, it caught me off guard. I had to cough a few times, and I swear I heard her smile through her next words. She was wearing a tracksuit, but she wasn’t sweaty at all. Billie looked as if nothing had happened, as if she had swiped that sad version of her under the rug. 

As if the scene in her room had never happened.

“I’ve talked to Matt a lot about this trip I had that I can’t cancel, and we both agree it’s a good opportunity to come clean,” she said. I stared at her from my desk, speechless again. I couldn’t stop hearing her voice in the back of my head, talking about her honeymoon. Was that the trip she was talking about? “I want Amber to come with me this time.”

“Amber?” Lilah blinked.

“Me?” I had to double check that I hadn’t stained my shirt. “Billie, I’m just an intern. I can’t simply...”

“Oh, we will just need someone who can control our drinks and take Instagram pictures, really,” she shrugged it off again. “And your aunt told me you are a photographer, right?”

Lilah’s gaze was on her, then on me. Even when I deemed it impossible, I could see that she was starting to consider the possibility. We had talked about this part of the plan before: coming out with a confirmation on social media seemed to be our best way to control the narrative. It would also raise the price of any pictures we could sell of them together, as well as offer them invitations for all sorts of events.

“I’m not a professional photographer,” I blushed.

“We would need you to take the pictures as if they were the ones taking them,” Lilah added, with a small smile. “We don’t need a professional for that.”

Courtney smiled, curious: “I mean, it could work. It would pave the road for your album release, too.”

“We’d have to consider it first with your record label. And also contact Matt’s team.” My aunt was fuming with new ideas. “Because this changes the way we were planning on breaking you guys up...”

I could hear her machine of a brain moving faster than ever, typing on her phone, checking her calendars. But I wasn’t. Moving, that is. I stood quiet, still sitting on my chair, holding my own latte this time.

“What do you say, Amber?” Billie smiled at me from the door. “Will you come with me?”

It made me remember that I was in the room. I looked at everyone and I shrugged, a bit dizzy.

“If you want me to be there, I’ll be there.”

“I do,” she smiled. “I’d love you to say yes.”

I do understand now why everyone is so in love with her. It’s hard to look away when she smiles at you. It’s mesmerizing how easy she could get away with anything.

I laughed it off and listened as she showed Courtney some new pictures of her lovely cat Dickinson.

That is exactly how Billie Grace managed to get us both into her private jet.

I’m carrying more bags than I probably am going to need, fascinated by the idea of spending a week in London with her and her privileges. I would be lying if I hid the fact that I am excited about travelling to Europe, even if I’m meant to spend most of my time as a ward. While Lilah has made her promise not to get in trouble, I think we all know Billie Grace is incapable of going unnoticed.

She is glowing today, too, and I can tell there is more to this trip than she lets on.

As of now, we are supposed to get to the capital and busy ourselves to get to the hotel before Matthew Berry and his team gets there. We will have a week for them to showcase their love around the city: walks through Hyde Park, museums, restaurants. She said something about seeing a musical, too. I disconnected after that, imagining how being in the West End would feel.

In any case, Lilah has made sure security will be more than ready for any situation they have planned. Billie and Matt’s love story is as obvious as it looks for the rest of the universe: a girl and a boy willing to run away for love.

Except no one knows love is precisely the trap they keep running into.