Page 59 of A Little Bit Extra

“She lives! I feel like I’ve been trying to call you all day.”

“Ah, sorry.” I step into the apartment and find Lucy sitting at the island. I give her a tight smile and mouth “Annie,” to which she nods and goes back to eating whatever’s in her bowl. “I’ve been a little occupied with—” What do I even tell her? I can’t tell her about Emmett. She would flip out. She’s obsessed.

“Work?” Annie asks, clearly annoyed at my loss for words.

“Yep, work.”

“Well, I was wondering something…” Annie trails off, which normally means she wants to ask me something.

“What, Annie?” I put her on speaker and place the phone on my desk in my room. I need to change before Emmett’s anyway, so I might as well do it now while talking with Annie before I go chat with Lucy. I don’t want to be late.

“You know how I’m on some of those movie chat boards?” Oh boy. I hum in response. I know she spends hours obsessing over celebrities, trying to learn the ins and outs of their lives. When she comes to college in the fall, she’s planning to study public relations. Her dream is to work with celebrities, so whenever I give her shit about her near-obsession, she tells me it’s for research. “Well, I was chatting with my friend June and she was talking about Emmett and how there has been no news of what his next movie is. And I may have told her you know him.”

“Get to the point, Annie.”

“Well, do you know what he’s doing next? It’d help me earn the respect of some of the top posters if you knew something. Of course I wouldn’t say how I knew, but—”

“No, I don’t,” I cut her off. It’s the truth, anyway. “I don’t know what Emmett is doing next. We haven’t talked about that.” Again, not a lie.

Lucy appears at my doorway, still wearing her overalls, which are covered in green and blue paint. She leans against the doorframe, crosses her arms, slings one foot over the other, shifts her weight to her left side, and listens to my conversation.

“Damn. Okay, well, if you do find out, would you be the best big sister ever and tell me?” I can practically picture Annie on her knees, begging for insider information. She’s done this only a few times when I happen to be around people that are famous enough to have an article written about them. It’s part of the reason she freaked out when she saw that article about Emmett and me and when she found out I’d be working at the same studio as him.

“I’ll think about it. Gotta go, Anns. Love you.” I click the end call button on the phone after Annie tells me bye. She’s coming to visit in two weeks, so I’m sure she will ask me this same question then. She’s visiting the UCLA campus while she’s here, although our mom thinks she’s just coming to see me. Annie still hasn’t told her about moving here in the fall, but I’m letting her handle that. I don’t need our mom thinking I’m influencing her decisions.

I glance over at the doorway. “You hear all of that?”

Lucy strolls into my room and takes a seat on the edge of the bed. I’m still trying to figure out what to wear tonight. A dress? No, too formal. Athletic wear? Not formal enough. Do I bring an overnight bag? Should I assume he wants me to stay the night?

“I did. And I can practically hear your internal struggles. What’s going on? Things not going well with Emmett?”

Right, she wasn’t here this morning when I made a quick stop to change before work. She was already at her art studio.

My cheeks flush red as I glance up at her quickly before returning to flipping through the clothes in my closet.

“Oh my god, Cassie Marie.”

“That’s not my middle name.”

“What aren’t you telling me? What could have possibly happened over the last 24 hours?”

With a sigh, I look up and accept that my face has embarrassment written all over it. I’m as red as a tomato. I walk over to sit next to her on the bed, rest my elbows on my knees, then drop my head in my hands.

“We slept together.”

Lucy playfully shoves my shoulder, and I topple to the left onto the bed.

“Hey! What was that for?” I ask, pushing myself back up to a sitting position.

“I knew you liked him, and you tried to deny it. You’ve been denying it for weeks.”

She says it like I didn’t know that already. I’ve been denying myself absolute pleasure for weeks, and I know it. In my defense, it was for an excellent reason. I could lose my job. Why would I risk that? Well, Emmett sure as hell didn’t back down and challenged that question. So, I’m risking it. I think.

“We may have agreed to be exclusive.” I glance over at her before getting up from the bed and walking back over to the closet. I flip through my clothes again, one hanger at a time, like I haven’t already done this exact action three times. “But I don’t exactly know what exclusive means. Do you? Like, does this mean he’s my boyfriend?” I furrow my eyebrows. I would think yes, but it’s honestly been so long since I’ve dated anyone that I’ve never had to “define the relationship.” It was always casual, never serious.

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

I sigh, returning my gaze to the closet. I decide on a skirt with a high slit on one leg, with a cropped shirt to go with it. It’s casual, but looks like I put in effort. The perfect combination for a last-minute date.

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