Page 48 of Make The Cut

“Like, what?” I frown at his vague criticism.

“Wait here.” He disappears back into his closet and re-emerges with…

My scarf. The one that I knitted for him, in a shade of blue to match his hair. He gestures for me to knot it around his neck, in a ridiculous gesture because it’s way too hot in L.A. to wear a scarf anyway. I take a deep breath as I tie it in a loose loop, smoothing out his shirt front. “Looks good.”

Why is my voice so shaky? Why does it matter that he’s wearing my gift, something I made for him?

It doesn’t matter at all. It shouldn’t.

“Thanks for this.” He touches the tasselled end just as his phone rings. “Shoot. Oh, hey, Rose. Yeah, Poppy and I are heading there now, calm down.”

He hangs up without so much as a goodbye and looks over at me with a wink. Pulling his car keys out of his pocket, he twirls the keyring around his finger. “Ready to go for a ride, Red?”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Naoya Sugawa

Lights flash, cameras click, and paparazzi shout too-invasive questions at me as I pose on the red carpet, wearing the scarf that Poppy gave me. After a long day of filming, I long to crawl home and watch my secret guilty pleasure,Outlander, a historical time travel drama that Poppy hooked me on. Rose has been somehow, for some reason, an even more annoying shrew than usual. While she usually argues with me on every decision I make, today she also decided to antagonize her poor contestants. I felt sorry for them since that’s what she considered “mentoring.”

“Naoya! What do you have to say to the rumours that you and Rose are an item?” one reporter shouts at me.

“Naoya! Naoya! Rose McCartney was spotted without her engagement ring, are you responsible for that?” another journalist yells.

“What do you have to say to the accusation that you deliberately went out with Rose to make her boyfriend jealous so he would propose?”

Wow, the press gets things right sometimes. Shocking.

As I stop and pose, trying to keep a composed smile on my lips, one of the reporters calls, “Naoya, I love your scarf! Who designed it?”

“Poppy Black,” I say, but it’s so quiet that none of them can hear me above the din of yelling, fans screaming, and paparazzi mobbing the red velvet rope. The same reporter pushes a microphone in my face for me to answer. “A very talented up-and-coming designer!”

“Well, I hope to see more of their work,” the reporter replies, seeming earnest enough. “Thank you for answering my question, Naoya!”

With that, she goes on, lying in wait for the next celebrity to pounce on. I make my way to my seat for the usual MTV hubbub about the best music video of the year or whatever other award they’re giving out this year. As I take my seat, I notice that the one next to mine is empty, but a card on it readsRyder Black. I’m surprised he’s not here before I remember that he left earlier this year, taking an abrupt vacation to a destination that no one’s ever heard of, a tiny island off the coast of Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines.

The thought of Ryder Black no longer makes my blood boil—not that absence makes the heart grow fonder—but I don’t want to attribute it to Poppy. When we first met, I had no idea she was related to Ryder. Despite them sharing similar features like hair and eye colour, they have vastly different personalities. Ryder is far less gregarious, outgoing, and fashionable compared to his younger sister, and now that the two of them are no longer on speaking terms, all I see is their differences, the vast gulf between them only deepening by the day.

Why exactly do Ryder and I hate each other so much? It’s not as if I stole his song—okay, fine, I did. Kind of. I may have sung and released a song that he wrote first, but when Alina Rostova produced a random pop song and handed it to me as a demo, she gave me no inkling that it wasRyder Black’s, who was then the winner ofAmerica’s Got Talentand had just signed to Volume Records. After my own falling out with Volume Records since they took my life savings and threw me out, I wasn’t exactly inclined to be friendly toward any artist coming from that record label. Combine that with the fact that almost everyone on the internet likedmyversion of the song better than his, and you have a perfect storm of feuding pop stars.

We’ve been constantly in the tabloids ever since—I think Poppy even had a column keeping track of every time we snubbed each other, whether it was the time Ryder was presenting at the Grammys and read my name wrong or the time I pretended I had no idea who he was in an interview—and both of our publicity teams prefer it that way. Now, though, staring at his empty seat, I wonder what’s motivated him to take off to the middle of nowhere. Just the typical pressures of fame? The scandal of his family’s drama? Maybe there was some truth to the pictures of him walking out of rehab.

I shake my head. Why does it matter? Poppy is my friend. Ryder and I are arch-nemeses. That’s all the connection I’ll ever have with the Black family.

The tassels of the scarf around my neck brush my bare chest beneath my open suit jacket, a combination Poppy insisted would get everyone talking. All it’s doing is making me daydream about havingherhands on me instead. But that’s an incredibly stupid fantasy that will never go anywhere.

I don’t want to get married. She doesn’t want anything to distract her from her career.

We’re friends. We’re friends—and I get jealous when she goes out with someone else. We’re friends, and I can’t keep telling myself that our YouTube series is anything but an excuse to go on a series of dates.

“Naoya!” Rose greets me, wrapping her arms around my neck in a closer embrace than she usually gives me. I blink, surprised by the cloying scent of her Chanel No. 5 as she pulls away but keeps her head on my shoulder. “It’s so good to see you.”

I assume she’s hamming it up for the cameras. “You, too.”

No ring sparkles on her ring finger. That’s weird. She’s been shoving that thing in everyone’s faces since her boyfriend proposed to her.

“So, how have you been?”

“Didn’t we just see each other three hours ago on set?” I raise an eyebrow.

She giggles and I realize she’s drunk, so close to me that I can smell the wine on her breath and see down the bodice of her low-cut strapless gown. “You’re so funny, Naoya. Has anyone ever told you that?”

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