Fake Dating The Billionaire Mayor

Natalia.

"What the fuck is this?"

Tristan and Cecily spring apart. His jacket is on the floor. Her fingers are still curled in his shirt. A foundation bottle rolls off the vanity and nobody moves to pick it up.

Nobody speaks either.

"I'll try again." I step inside and let the door fall shut behind me. "What. Is. This."

"Lia..." Tristan starts.

"Don't call me that right now."

"Okay. Natalia." He steps forward, hands raised. "Just ... listen. Before you say anything, just listen to me..."

"I'm listening."

"It's not ... this isn't what it..."

"Tristan." I look at him. "You're a lot of things. Don't add stupid to the list."

He closes his mouth.

I look at Cecily. She's straightening her blouse, not quite meeting my eyes, and then ... then she does meet them, and something in her face settles into something I don't like at all.

"You know," she says, almost conversationally, "he came to me. Just so that's clear."

"Cecily..." Tristan hisses.

"What? She's going to find out anyway." She shrugs one shoulder. "He came to me. More than once. And honestly? I don't blame him." Her eyes drag over me, slow and deliberate. "You're not exactly easy to be with, Natalia."

The room gets very quiet.

"Keep going," I say.

She takes that as an invitation. "You make everyone around you feel invisible. You walk in a room and it's like nobody else exists ... not your team, not your friends, not him." She nods toward Tristan. "He told me you two haven't been real in over a year. That you're warmer with the cameras than you are with him." A small smile. "He said the only version of you that actually shows up is the one on the red carpet."

"That's..." Tristan shifts. "I didn't say it exactly like..."

"You said enough," I say.

He goes quiet.

I look at Cecily. At this woman who has held a brush to my face for three years and told me every morning that I looked radiant. I take one step toward her. Then another.

"Is there more?" I ask. "Or are you done?"

Her chin lifts. "I think people like you need to hear the truth sometimes. You walk around like everyone should be grateful just to be in the same room as you. Like the Oscars on your shelf make you better than..."

The sound it makes is very loud in a very small room.

My palm. Her cheek.

Her head snaps sideways. She grabs her face. Her mouth falls open and she spins to Tristan like he's going to do something about it.

He doesn't.

"She hit me..."

"I heard." He doesn't move.

"Tristan..."

"I said I heard you, Cecily."

I smooth the front of my dress. "Both of you are going to listen very carefully." I look between them. "You will leave this room separately. You will not speak to each other for the rest of the night. You will behave like adults in public." I pick up my clutch. "And Tristan ... jacket on. Four minutes."

"That's it?" He stares at me. "You slap her and we just ... move on?"

"Yes."

"Lia..."

"Natalia."

He flinches. Then, because he cannot help himself, because he has never once in six years been able to leave something alone: "You know this is exactly what she's talking about, right? You can't just shut down every time something gets hard..."

I turn to look at him slowly.

"I'm not shutting down," I say. "I'm getting ready to collect my award."

"That's all you care about right now? Your award?"

"Four minutes, Tristan."

"I'm trying to talk to you." His voice rises. "I'm standing here trying to have an actual conversation and you're ... you're already in performance mode, you're already gone, this is what I'm talking about..."

"You want to have a conversation." I face him fully. "Right now."

"Yes..."

"About what I did wrong."

He opens his mouth. Closes it. "That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant."

"I just..." He drags a hand through his hair. "If you were present, Lia. If you were actually there, in our relationship, actually present for more than five minutes between projects..."

"So it's my fault."

"I didn't say that..."

"Tristan." I look at him for a long moment. At this man I gave six years to. Six years of building my schedule around his, laughing at his jokes in interviews, flying to his premieres and standing three steps behind so he'd look taller in the photos. I gave him six years and he spent them building a case against me. "We're done."

He blinks. "What?"

"You and I. Done. As of forty minutes ago."

"You don't mean that..."

"I do."

"Six years, Lia. You're going to throw away six years because you won't even let me..."

"I'm not throwing anything away." I check my phone. Three minutes. "You did that."

"So you get to just decide that? No conversation, no ... you don't even want to try?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to." I meet his eyes. "And because begging is useless." A beat. "Just like you."

His face does something I don't have a name for.

"Ladies and gentlemen..." The presenter's voice floods through the walls, warm and enormous. "Our next nominee..."

I straighten up.

"We are not finished..." Tristan starts.

"...Natalia Monroe."

The applause hits like a wave. I turn toward the door.

"Lia..."

I walk out.

________________________________________

I have survived fourteen award shows.

I tell myself that on the walk to the stage. Fourteen of these ... uncomfortable chair, uncomfortable dress, hot lights and long speeches and cameras catching your face at the worst possible moment. Fourteen times I have sat in that audience and smiled through things I wasn't allowed to react to.

One more.

I walk to the stage and the room rises and I hold the award and I feel, just for a second, completely untouchable.

"Wow." The laugh is real. "I had index cards." I press the award to my chest. "I want to thank my director, my cast, my team. Every person who believed in this before it was worth believing in." I pause. "And everyone who said I'd peaked. That I was difficult. That I should be grateful for whatever I got." A beat. "You were very motivating."

Laughter. Applause.

Then a phone chimes.

One. Then four. Then eight more, that specific rapid-fire sound that means something is spreading faster than it should be. People looking down at screens and then up at me with expressions I can't quite read from here.

I keep smiling.

I look at Tristan.

He has his hand pressed over the lower half of his face, head angled down, shoulders curved inward ... a man trying to disappear into his chair.

He already knows.

He knew before we sat down, probably. He sat beside me and blamed me and not once ... not once ... did he think to warn me.

Six years.

The ache moves through me fast and I let it, just for a second, just long enough to feel it ... and then I fold it up very small and put it somewhere I can't see it, and I smile at the audience one last time.

"Thank you," I say. "This means everything."

I walk off the stage.

I pull out my phone.

NATALIA MONROE SNAPS: Makeup Artist Cecily Park Speaks Out ... "She Attacked Me. I'm Terrified."