I walk into my house on cloud nine from our weekend away, only to find Max sitting on my couch.
“Hey man, what’s up?”
He looks at me with a mix of pity and guilt. “Jack, we need to talk. I think we read the situation wrong with Paige.”
“What are you talking about?”
He fiddles with his tablet and then turns the screen to me. My heart plummets when I see a picture of myself on the screen with the title, NFL Star Quarterback, Jack Fuller, Opens Up. My eyes follow the title to the bolded byline, and my entire body stiffens in shock and betrayal.
“What the fuck?”
Max hangs his head, shaking it, before looking back up at me, remorse all over his features. “I’m so sorry, dude. I’m supposed to have your back, but I did not see this one coming. I really thought she was in this for real. If I had any idea this was what she was planning, I would’ve warned you, but everything seemed on the up and up with her.”
I sink down on the couch next to him, reading the article filled with details about Paige and me. I notice there is a lot of personal shit we’ve talked about that she left out, and I’m grateful for that, but this is a complete betrayal that she wrote anything personal to begin with.
I’m surprised by how many details she included about our relationship, especially our past together. But most of all, I’m gutted that she would do this to me. She knows what my privacy means to me, and she didn’t even talk to me about it. She promised she wouldn’t do this. Did she know while we were in Malibu together that this article was coming out?
I feel like I just took a major hit and got the wind knocked out of me. How could Paige tell me she loved me when she knew she was going to do this? Was it really all a lie?
Dread fills my stomach at the thought.
My phone rings on the table, but I ignore it as I finish reading the article. It beeps with an alert and I glance down to see I have a missed call from Paige and a voicemail. When her smiling face lights up my screen as she calls me again, I can’t help the bitter anger that flows through my veins. I click ignore and see that she leaves me another voicemail. Like I’m going to bother listening to any more of her lies. If she wanted to get back at me for breaking her heart in high school, mission fucking accomplished.
After a few more calls, she starts texting me. I open it.
Paige: Jack! Please answer your phone! I really need to talk to you.
Yeah, I’ll bet, but I’m way too angry and betrayed to talk to her right now.
Paige: Jack. If you saw the article, that wasn’t me. I didn’t write that. I don’t know what’s going on, but, please, you have to believe me! Please, call me.
I scoff at her message. Wasn’t her? Who the fuck else would know those details? I don’t talk to any other journalists.
“Is that her?” Max asks.
“Yeah, she’s trying to claim she didn’t write it.” I shake my head, my anger morphing to disappointment. I can’t believe I let myself get played like this.
I can’t believe Paige, of all people, did this to me.
“She’s claiming she didn’t write it? Who else would’ve written it?”
“No one but her. These details are too personal, although I suppose it was generous of her not to share everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I shared a lot more with her than this. More personal stuff that she could’ve easily written about. I’m a little surprised she included so many details about our relationship.”
“Why do you say that?” Max asks, his tone hard to read.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve read a lot of her past articles when I was keeping tabs on her career. She never included personal stuff about herself or personal opinions in her pieces. I guess she was saving it for this. Fuck,”—I scrub my hands over my face—“I can’t believe she played me like this.”
I turn to Max, who’s looking off into the distance with a confused, but thoughtful expression on his face.
“What?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Just thinking.”
“Well, I need a fucking drink.” I get up and head to the kitchen. “You want one?” I shout.
“Yeah, I’ll take a beer.”
I grab two beers and move to the counter to grab the bottle opener. I set them down and
brace my hands on the counter, my chin dropping to my chest.
God, this fucking hurts.
I try to take a deep breath, but I can’t. I’ve only felt close to this one other time in my life and it was when I broke up with Paige. But her betrayal is adding a layer of pain that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I attempt one more deep breath, only mildly successful. I push off from the counter, open our beers, and then rejoin Max in the living room, passing him his drink as I sit heavily on the couch. He looks at me closely.
“What if she’s telling the truth?” he asks cautiously.
I lie back against the couch and run my hand over my face, then roughly through my hair. “I don’t know, man. I hate believing this was her, but the evidence kind of speaks for itself.”
“But you said there were plenty of other personal details she didn’t write about?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, is it possible all of these details could’ve come from other sources?” he asks, pointing to the article still displayed on his tablet.
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Max, and right now, I can’t even think about it. I just want to get drunk and pass out.” I’m overwhelmed by how shitty I feel, and I just want to drown my feelings. Not the healthiest reaction, but who fucking cares right now.
Not me. The only person I cared about just stabbed me in the goddamn back.
My phone beeps several more times.
“She keeps texting you.”
I glance at the screen. Part of me is desperate to talk to her and hear her tell me she didn’t
do this. But the other, bigger, part of me can’t bear to find out everything we shared was all a
bunch of bullshit so she could get an exclusive article and further her career. I pick up my phone and turn it off. I can’t deal with this right now. I recognize that I’m shutting down, but it’s the only thing I know how to do at this moment.
I pat Max on the back, offer him one of my guest rooms for the night, and then head up to my room. I fall back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and wishing with every bone in my body that I could rewind to the past few days in Malibu and stay there forever. Instead, I’m here in my giant, empty fucking mansion in LA, heartbroken that the love of my life betrayed me and feeling like the life I thought I was going to have just got ripped away from me once again.