Leila
The FaceTime call comes just as I’m settling in to watch a movie, needing a break from studying. I pick up the call, smiling when I see him grin. “Hey.” Lucas smiles, holding the phone up to his face. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” I tell him. “Just studying.” I give him an eye roll which he snickers at.
“Can’t be that bad.”
I shrug. “It’s alright. Just boring as hell.”
“Really?” he asks. “Damn, aren’t you glad I called then?”
I laugh. “So glad. Have you heard from James yet?”
His face drops a little and I instantly want to retract my question. “Yeah, he’s good I think.” I watch as he rubs a hand down his face. “Just waiting for the results now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “James is such a good guy. I hate that he’s going through all this again.”
“Yeah.” He lets out a breath. “I thought he was doing better.” He shrugs.
“And Adriana?” I ask him, knowing the topic of his friend is hard. “How is she doing?”
His face lights up, a smile painted on his lips. “She’s so much better,” he says. “She won’t stop talking my ear off about you. Honestly, Leila, I can’t thank you enough.”
“It was nothing. I love that girl.”
“And she is so completely in love with you. I swear she sees you as some sort of celebrity. She tells me all the time how she wishes you were her sister instead of me.” He lets out a laugh. “I try not to take it personally but…”
“She loves you,” I’m quick to say. “She wouldn’t confide in you if she didn’t. You’re a good big brother, Lucas.”
He smiles. “I try. I just don’t have much experience in these kinds of things. And speaking of,” he says, grinning at me. “I heard about the photo shoot. I’m so proud of you, Leila.”
I roll my eyes, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. “It’s nothing.”
He lifts his brows. “It’s everything. Are you kidding me? Sixteen-year-old Leila wouldn’t be caught dead doing a swimwear shoot. You’re going to be an inspiration to girls like Adriana everywhere.”
Those words lift a huge weight off my shoulders. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, isn’t it? I wanted what I never had when I was younger. I wanted to see girls in the magazines and think, ‘that’s what I look like.’ And now I get to be that to someone.
“Thank you.” I close my eyes, tipping my head back. “It’s a little nerve-wracking.”
He shakes his head. “You’ll be great. I know it.”
My head snaps to the side when I see Madi enter my apartment, waving the key in the air. I gave each of the girls a key to my place mostly for safety purposes but also because… I love their company.
“Hey,” I smile at her.
“You have someone over?” Lucas asks.
“It’s just my friend,” I tell him.
He hums. “Is she hot?”
I snicker, watching as Madi’s eyebrows raise as she takes off her shoes, leaving them by the door. “Very. She’d eat you alive though,” I tell him. Madi smiles beside me.
“I doubt that,” Lucas says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You don’t need help getting women.”
A heavy sigh escapes him. “You believe everything, huh? You’re like my mom when she reads something she saw on the internet.”
I lift my brow at him. “I’ve seen it,” I remind him.
“Of course,” he says, rolling his eyes. “How can I forget? The media are always right.”
“I still love you.” I blow him a kiss, watching as he scowls at me. “Even if you have playboy tendencies.” Madi in the corner of the room catches my eye, and I quickly turn to Lucas. “I’ve got to go. Talk to you soon.”
“Tchau.”
“Who was that?” Madi asks, sitting beside me on the couch when I hang up. “Aiden?”
I freeze, glancing at her. “Why would it be Aiden?”
She shrugs, smirking. “After that kiss…”
I shake my head. “That was ages ago. Nothing happened.” Fine, I’m lying, but this thing with Aiden is too confusing to even make sense of myself, never mind telling my nosey friends. “And nothing is ever going to happen, not with someone like him.”
“You’ve slept with athletes before.” She tucks her feet under her legs. “What makes him so different?”
I blink at her. “The fact that he’s way out of my league?”
She scoffs. “That’s an excuse if I’ve ever heard one. There’s no league, Leila. There is attraction, and that boy wanted to ravish you at that party, no doubt about it.”
“That’s not true.” But as I’m saying the words, I think back to the other night, every gasp and moan and groan and his hands. His huge hands all over my body, feeling, squeezing.
“And last week? Where did you go? You told us you were going to the bathroom and then next thing we know, we get a text saying ‘had to go, don’t wait for me’?”
I shrug. “I had a test I had to study for.”
She presses her lips together. “We just finished midterms. Try again.”
“I…I…” Think of something. Anything.
“I?”
I blow out a breath. “Damn, woman, get off my case.”
She laughs, shaking her head. “I rest my case.”
“You’d be a damn good lawyer, almost crapped my pants.”
She sighs. “Don’t start. I already have my parents on my case.”
I hold my hands up. “No pressure from me. So what are you doing here?”
She flashes a stack of papers in my face. “I need to rehearse. I have an audition next week and I can’t concentrate. Gabi is playing video games with some guy, and if I didn’t love her so much I would have told her to shush, but… she seemed so happy.”
“When is Gabi ever not happy?”
Madi shakes her head. “This was different. She was blushing, Leila. It was weird. I didn’t have the heart to stop her.”
Gabi blushing? That’s new. “I’m intrigued.”
“Me too.” She holds up the papers again, giving me a sweet smile. “Will you help me?”
“I’m not an actress.”
“You don’t need to be,” she says. “You’re just a stand-in.”
“My dream job,” I muse.
“Please?”
I smirk at her. “Flutter your eyelashes at me again and I might reconsider.” She scowls instead, eliciting a laugh from me. “Fine. Get up.”
She hands me my piece of paper and tells me what to read. Madi really goes all out, putting all her energy into reading the lines.
“Again,” she says when she’s done. This time she does it differently, a more emotional take on it. She has me staring at her in disbelief. My best friend is so talented.
She blinks once she’s done. “Which do you prefer?” she asks.
“The second.”
“Really?” She glances at me, eyes widening.
“Why are you so worked up over this?” I ask her. “You’re an amazing actress. It will happen, you don’t need to stress so much.”
“I love you for saying that.” She looks up at me. “But it’s not that simple. The more time I don’t land a gig, the more my parents hassle me about it. I just want to shut them up, you know? Show them that I’m serious about this and it isn’t just a hobby.”
“I get that. But just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t.”
She looks down at the piece of paper she’s holding and shakes her head. “From the top.” I let out a sigh and her eyes soften. “We’ll get ice cream later,” she says. “My treat.”
My nose scrunches. “Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have a photo shoot soon.”
Her face drops. “Leila, It’s just some ice cream. It won’t kill you. We’re getting ice cream and that’s it,” she says. “I won’t hear a no for an answer.
I want to say no, but my stomach rumbles at the mere thought of having an ice cream. I sigh, giving in and say, “Deal.”
She smiles, clearing her throat. “From the top.”
