Page 28 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

“I think that’s a great idea, Jess,” Kai said as revenge, the traitor.

“I don’t have self-esteem issues,” Amy said firmly. All three of them stared at her again, but this time it was in frank disagreement.

“You absolutely, one hundred percent do,” said Kai, but even he wasn’t in full teasing and taunting mode. In fact, he sounded quite serious. He sounded worried. Which was weird because why should Kai be worried about her? She was doing just fine.

“Leave the poor girl alone,” said Jason, coming to her rescue. “Right now we’re enjoying a lovely meal. We can save her intervention until we’re back out to sea and she can’t escape.”

“I’m going back to enjoying oysters,” Amy said with a dismissive wave of her hand. Half of her thought they were being ridiculous, and the other half felt… well it felt like a weird sort of gratitude that they all actually seemed to care about her. Not just Kai, whom she had known forever, but Jason and Jess, who didn’t owe her one thing.

Despite the conversation that had been verging onto an impromptu therapy session, it was one of the best meals Amy had ever eaten, and towards the end of it she was working up the courage to ask if she could peek inside the kitchens and maybe ask some questions. That wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, right?

That was when all hell broke loose. There was a knock on the window, and a second later Jess squeaked, and they were all looking to see what had happened.

Some random guy with a scruffy beard and a receding hairline was at the window checking for damage on the lens of his ridiculously large camera, having presumably just knocked it against the glass and scared Jess half to death. It was hard to see with the reflections bouncing off the glass, but after a second Amy was able to see that it wasn’t just the one guy with a camera, it was a whole group of photographers standing just outside the restaurant. As soon as Amy and the others looked up from the table, the men had given up any pretense of being sneaky and started snapping away, the camera flashes only mildly filtered by the tint on the windows.

“Great.” Jess sighed, sinking like a deflated balloon. “At least they didn’t show up till the end of the meal, I guess.”

The atmosphere had completely changed, and Amy didn’t like it one bit. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up and she felt like her body was trying to actively decide between fight and flight. Kai had gone very still, and it was fairly obvious that he had chosen fight. He only ever went that still and quiet like that when he was properly furious, and even with his back towards the window because he refused to give the paparazzi any attention, Amy knew that the glare on his face was for them. Jason, who had disappeared before any of them could notice, was now back and pulling Jess’s chair out for her so she could rise gracefully from the table, his expression the same as Kai’s, a cold sort of rage.

“We can leave now,” he said, voice calm and collected. “Straight back to the boat?”

“Sounds good,” Kai said, doing the same for Amy and helping her stand.

“Can I wear your jacket?” Jess asked Jason, voice quiet.

“Of course, baby,” he said and slung it over her shoulders without hesitation. “Don’t worry. Just a short walk and we’re back on the yacht.”

As they started walking towards the entrance of the restaurant, the cameras moved with them and the shouting started, trying to get their attention, to get them to look at the cameras, to give these men the perfect photo.

Amy felt like she was wading through a dream, a weird, anxious nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. Her whole body was tense, and as they moved as a tight little group back towards the marina, the paparazzi followed like a school of piranha.

Amy had never thought about how loud a group of paparazzi must be. But between the camera shutters, the men shouting, and their footsteps following them, it was a cacophony that set her teeth on edge like biting into aluminum foil. Kai and Jason were guarding them, keeping both Amy and Jess in between them like bodyguards, with hands on their shoulders and their heads on a swivel, making sure they knew where the photographers were at all times. Amy followed Jess’s lead and walked forward with a flat expression on her face, ignoring the shouting paparazzi as if they were nothing more than a few flies buzzing around. But Kai… she didn’t think she’d ever seen the look on his face before, barely suppressed rage that had solidified into a steel mask. Jason looked the same, and Amy was sure that was half the reason that the men with cameras were keeping at least some distance between them.

After what seemed like an eternity, they were back in the marina, the men with their cameras following them right up to the docks before a security guard showed up and was enough to scare them off from coming any further. Amy resisted running up the gangplank to get back onto the safety of the yacht, Jess looking as if she was going through the same struggle. But even as they made it back onto the boat, Amy could still hear the men shouting, their cameras clicking, lying in wait for one more photo opportunity. The only thing Amy wanted to do was take a shower. She felt like she needed to scrub herself clean.

The mood had been tense when they’d gotten back on the boat. Mostly because the paparazzi hadn’t disappeared once they were aboard. They kept hanging around on the docks, drawing a crowd of curious onlookers and trying for one last attempt at getting a good shot. It was only when the yacht had sailed off, finally refueled and even the captain on edge, that they’d all been able to start to breathe properly again. Amy had half expected the photographers to jump into dinghies or on jet skis and follow them around and was supremely relieved when nothing of the sort happened.

The whole thing had left her shaken more than she wanted to admit. If Kai hadn’t been there, she didn’t know what she would have done. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Part of the reason those men bombarded them in the first place was because getting a photo of Kai out to breakfast with some new woman would be a great way to fill out an article or two. Amy had known about him being photographed in public. She’d seen the tabloids and the pictures. But she had always just rolled her eyes in disgust at the whole concept of it and then moved on with her day. This was what Kai had to deal with every time he just wanted to go out to a restaurant with somebody? It made her skin crawl just thinking about it. Actually, it made her feel sick with guilt that she’d never even considered how much of an impact it would have on his life. She wasn’t going to be getting the award for “best friend” any time soon… Why hadn’t he told her this was the sort of thing that happened? That it happened regularly enough for him to know exactly what to do in that situation as if it were old news?

Well, she knew why he hadn’t told her, and if she confronted him about it, she would bet all the money she had that he would say “to protect her.” As if he wasn’t the one getting stalked on a regular basis.

The whole thing had left her feeling… grimy, even after her shower. And considering nobody was in much of a talking mood, Amy spent the rest of the afternoon floating around in the pool reading her book, waiting for time to tick by and put distance between her and the events of that morning.

Once the sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the sky and sea an inky, matching black dotted with stars and waves, a casual dinner was served on the deck of the yacht, arranged on platters in front of the sofa that looked out over it all.

It was the first time since arriving back on the yacht that morning that all four of them had been gathered together. Jess was still quiet, more quiet than Amy had seen her yet, as she sat and picked at the food that had been laid out for them.

“Are you all right?” Amy asked, sitting down beside her on the deck lounge, the sea stretching out around them in all its glory.

Jess nodded, but she did it with a sad sort of smile. “Might surprise you,” she said. “But I don’t really like suddenly being surrounded by a group of men I don’t know, shouting at me.”

“That’s not surprising at all,” Amy said, wanting to scoop poor Jess up and give her a hug.

“Really?” she said, as sarcastically as she could, which wasn’t very much. “Because most of the time if I complain about that sort of stuff, I get told ‘Well, you signed up for it.’”

Amy kept her mouth shut. How many times in the past had she said the same thing about actresses and models, that it was all just part of the job, that they were lucky to have so much, what did a photo matter? Experiencing it was different, though…

“You signed up to show people on your socials the parts of your life that you’re comfortable showing,” Amy said, trying to string her thoughts together as she went. “You signed up for a specific sort of public. You didn’t sign up for whatever the heck that was.”

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