Page 105 of How to Kiss a Movie Star
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Perry:Oh wow. That’s a lot of heart emojis.
Chapter Thirty
Audrey
Lucywakesmeupthe following morning by climbing into my bed.
“What is happening?” I mumble sleepily, squinting against the Saturday morning sunshine pouring through my window.
“Look at this,” she says, snuggling in beside me and holding up her phone. “Someone stopped Flint on his way out of a restaurant the other night, and he actually answered a question about the whole fake dating thing.”
“Wait, he talked about it?”
“I mean, he didn’t say much, but yeah. Here. Watch.” She cues up the video and holds her phone in the air above us so we can both watch. It begins with a commentator providing a summary of the allegations in the original story, then cuts to a clip of Flint’s response during the panel at UCLA, and then, finally, a clip of Flint on the sidewalk outside a restaurant.
“I have nothing but positive feelings for all my co-stars fromTurning Tides.Claire and I ended our relationship amicably, and we’ve remained friends. As for my current relationship, I can assure you, everything I’m feeling is very real.”
Lucy drops the phone and turns her head to look at me. “So smart, right? He didn’t lie by refuting the story, but he also made it seem like it was all just total baloney. And he totally did it on the spot!”
I take a deep breath, still trying to wake up, and stretch my arms over my head. “Smart, yes. But it probablywasn’ton the spot. My guess is his publicist planted that reporter on purpose and coached Flint on how to respond.”
“Really? They do that?”
“Of course they do. When we flew into LAX, why do you think there were so many people there to see us arrive? Flint’s publicist leaked our travel plans on purpose. We needed to be seen together, so he made sure we were seen.”
“Look at you with all your insider Hollywood knowledge,” Lucy says.
“Hey, pull that video back up again,” I say, motioning toward her phone. “Is there an article with it? Does it say anything about who he was with that night?”
She pulls it back up. “There was an article. Hold on.” She scrolls through it, angling the phone so I can also see. “He was with Claire McKinsey, it looks like,” she says. “But other people too. Wait. Here’s a photo of all of them leaving.” She hands me the phone. “Do you know these people? That’s Joni, right?”
I study the picture closely. It’s blurry, but I’m sure I see Joni just behind Flint. And Claire is there too, along with Kenji, her manager, who I remember from the UCLA panel, and one other woman I don’t recognize. “ThatisJoni. And this guy is his agent, Kenji. That’s Rita, Claire’s manager. I’m guessing this other woman is the new publicist Flint just hired.”
Either way, I feel a tiny pulse of satisfaction knowing Flint wasn’t out with Claire alone, no matter what stupid Ed Cooper said.
“Is that weird?” Lucy asks. She wraps an arm around me. “To get information about his whereabouts from the internet?”
“The photographer who showed up at my lab actually said something to me about it—about Flint being out with Claire. He was just taunting me, trying to get me to react, so I didn’t really believe him. But yeah. It’s still weird.”
Lucy is quiet for a long moment. “I never thought about how much trust you have to have. There will probably always be people saying crap about him. I guess you have to get good at filtering it out.”
“Flint says it gets easier over time.”
“Yeah, probably. But still. It’s so easy to focus on the fairy tale part. I guess there’s a lot more to it.”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”
She turns her face to look at me. “You still haven’t talked to him?”
I shake my head no. It’s only been four days since we last talked, but it feels more like an eternity.
“How are you feeling?”
