Eight

After a week of talking to Jason, Jordan decided to make the move and ask Aubrey out. Although he waited for a week after his talk with Jason, he found out that waiting was no use; it only increased his worries and fears of rejection. Jason spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to ask her out. He kept taking notes of what she liked and what she hated, so he'd give her the perfect date. He really wanted to impress her.

          Jordan picked up his phone to call Aubrey, he planned on surprising her, hoping that it would all go well. There was no turning back. He made up his mind and prepared everything to impress the girl that he liked.

"Hey Bree, do you have anything to do today?" Jordan said over the phone once she picked up.

"Yeah, I actually have a live interview. It will end around seven. Why though?" she replied, she was getting ready in front of her mirror. Maria styled her hair perfectly and was doing her make-up while she was on the phone with Jordan.

"Can you come over to my place after the interview?" he wondered, he prepared the perfect date in his backyard.

"Your place?" she was a bit surprised. "Okay, just send me your address. I will message you once I'm done," she agreed, smiling as she talked to him.

"B- I mean, see you later Bree." He chuckled as he caught himself before saying 'bye', knowing that she hated that word.

"Exactly, it's a see you later," she said, giggling and hanging up.

*************

"Ria... I have a problem." Aubrey sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. Maria left the make-up brush from her hand and looked at her best friend who looked stressed.

"What's wrong?" Maria asked, care obvious in her voice.

"Whenever I check any of my social media accounts I see people calling me 'a gold digger' for hanging out with Jordan a lot. I hate that. I don't want people to think of me in this way. I'm thinking about pulling myself away slowly from his life, but I just... I cannot do that. I... I like him a lot, Ria... You know, I sometimes feel like he likes me too." Aubrey poured her heart out to her best friend.

"First of all, I noticed that you barely made the first move in contacting Jordan which proves that you are not a gold digger. He is the one who wants to talk to you. Can't you see that? He wants you in his life, he likes you, Aubrey, and I can't figure out why you are so blind to notice that. It's like you are in skinny love; each of you knows that the other loves them, yet you are too scared to admit it," Maria said, looking at her best friend. Maria could easily notice any change about Aubrey and it was obvious that Aubrey hasn't been okay lately. Despite Aubrey's perfect acting skills, Maria knew that she was nowhere near fine. She could see through her best friend's lies.

"But... I truly don't know what to do." Aubrey had never looked as helpless as she looked right then.

"Forget about everyone. People will talk whether you like it or not and you have to live with that from now on. You are going to be a big star, Aubrey. You'll have your fans, your enemies and you'll also have the worst: frenemies. You have to learn how to deal with all of that. That's the price that comes with fame. You'll find yourself surrounded by snakes, finding good people will not be easy; however, it won't be impossible. Live your life the way you want it, don't let anyone decide for you.

"If you want to stay close to Jordan, go for it. If you want to leave him, go for it. Nobody will stop you, but if you want to leave him because you don't want to be called a gold digger then no! Don't leave him, Ree. You know yourself better than anyone and I know you quite well, you can never be a gold digger," Maria talked to Aubrey. Aubrey looked at her best friend in astonishment before hugging her.

"Thank you, I don't know what I'd do without you," Aubrey murmured as Maria held her in her embrace and rubbed her back.

"Let's continue applying your make-up," Maria told her, giggling a bit.

          After an hour, Aubrey was at the building where the interview would be held. She was not as nervous as she used to be because she was starting to get used to it. This was her sixth interview, so she kind of knew how to act in the right way.

"Miss Devlin, are you ready?" somebody asked her. Aubrey nodded and followed the man. She sat down on the comfortable chair and the interviewer was already in front of her.

"It's so nice to meet you, Aubrey, I hope you'd enjoy this interview," the woman before her said with a sly smile on her face, causing Aubrey to shift a little in her position. She could sense that something was not right, yet she tried to ignore it, thinking that she was just overreacting.

"Three... Two... One. On-air!" a voice called, making the interviewer look directly at the camera.

"Hello everyone, this is Melania Sanders and today our special guest is Aubrey Devlin!" She said in her best cheery voice. Aubrey looked at the camera and waved, smiling brightly.

"How have you been, Aubrey?" Melania asked her, with a smile on her face.

"I'm good. I'm so happy to be here," Aubrey lied, she was not happy to be on that show. She did not like the interviewer at all. She hated the way she smiled; she looked malicious to Aubrey.

"When will your album be out?" the interviewer questioned Aubrey.

"Really soon, probably by May or June," Aubrey answered her.

"So Aubrey, tell us about your very close friendship with Jordan Hill." Melania smirked.

"There's nothing much to say. We're just really good friends. Ever since he surprised me on Cheryl Garden's show, we grew close," Aubrey answered, her heartbeats fastened a bit when Jordan's name was mentioned.

"Paparazzi snapped quite a lot of pictures of you two together. If I'm not wrong, you have even met his family." The interviewer was being quite nosy and annoying.

"Yes, I have visited his family. As I said we are really good friends; best friends if I might say," Aubrey said, shrugging.

"But I don't think best friends bad mouth each other." The smirk did not leave Melania's lips, making Aubrey more anxious.

"I've never bad-mouthed him," Aubrey said in confusion.

"Oh honey, you are not the bad one here. Let's watch this video that was posted online twenty minutes ago," Melania said and looked at the big screen on her right and Aubrey did the same to see where this was going.

"Look man, she is not really that good." She heard Jordan's voice before she could see his face on the screen. The quality of the video was not the best, but she could see that the person in it was Jordan.

"Really?" another male voice said in the video. The voice was quite familiar, but she did not know it belonged to whom.

"Yes, she's annoying, I wish I could get rid of her." Jordan chuckled and took a sip of the drink in his hand. It was pretty obvious that Jordan was being filmed without him noticing. "Aubrey is such a gold digger and she thinks that she is the smartest and I'm the stupid one who cannot see through her fake act, but she is so wrong," Jordan talked with pure disgust in his voice. Aubrey looked away from the screen for a second and swallowed the lump in her throat then looked back at the screen, doing her best effort to conceal the tears.

"I mean, she is trying to get close to me and my family because she knows I'm famous! She knows what she's doing. She will do anything to promote her album. This bitch is so hungry for fame." He laughed as he uttered those words. Each word killed Aubrey. She was no longer sure who the real Jordan was. This was not the man who called her before the interview and asked her to come to his house.

"Sooner or later, I will get rid of her." That was the last thing she heard before the video ended. Aubrey was numb, she did not know who to believe anymore. The words that Maria told her before she came to this interview were erased from her memory in a matter of minutes.

"What do you have to say about this, Aubrey? I think the friendship you were talking about only lives in the back of your mind," Melania mocked the poor girl in front of her. Aubrey was smart and witty; she knew how to turn tables and that was the strategy she decided to use. Although she was hurt, she could never let her feelings destroy her career. She knew that what she was about to do was risky, especially that she did not tell Jordan about her plan, but she felt like she had nothing to lose, so she might as well take the risk.

"I say that we succeeded in exposing fools like you," Aubrey said with a challenging look in her eyes and a confident smile on her lips.

"Excuse me?" Melania said, feeling offended.

"This was all a social experiment; we did that together to prove that media can never be trusted. Especially people like you, Melania. You are ready to do anything for the sake of good gossip and I feel so sorry for you." Aubrey smirked, but she was dying from the inside. Melania could not reply to Aubrey, who owned the show at that moment.

"Jordan and I did that together to show everyone that the media likes to gossip, likes to twist stories and is in love with making the most out of any opportunity. I pretended to be hurt as you played the video to feed you the lie and guess what? You believed every single word. Bye Melania, it was so not nice meeting you," Aubrey said in an intimidating way and got up. She disconnected the microphone and walked away like a queen even though her world was crumbling.

          She was not sure what she did to him to bad-mouth her like that. She had been nothing but kind and caring. She had never used him, she even used to argue with him when he would pay for her. How was she a gold digger? She wanted someone to hold her and comfort her, she wanted someone to wake her up from that nightmare. She wanted to cry till she ran out of tears, but she could not do anything. She was numb, almost like a robot. She could not even cry, she did not want anyone to see her crashing down. She just wanted to be alone, she wanted to erase that day from her memory.

__________________________________________________________________

Did you expect that to happen? Why would Jordan do something like that?