I don’t think anyone prepares for the death of a loved one. I certainly didn’t. Sure, I’d considered the idea that one day, perhaps, Marcus would get sick and because of his mental disabilities, he’d have a harder time recovering. But only in my deepest, darkest moments of fear had I ever considered he’d be taken from me in that way. I’d always imagined growing old with him, taking care of him until I couldn’t anymore, but even then, we’d still be together. I’d never imagined a life without him, so being without him was almost like living in a dream. A terrible nightmare.
“I can work on being happy, but that doesn’t mean I need to contact Riot. He was just a blip on my screen. Inconsequential.” The words stung as I spoke them because they were so far from the truth. “Being happy today means going shopping with the girls,” I declared, plastering a fake smile on my face. I was glad to go out and spend the day with Ella, Mattie, and Megan, but I could tell that pretending to be okay for an entire day would be exhausting.
“All right,” Ella agreed, although she didn’t sound convinced. “I was thinking of leaving in about an hour. Will that work for you?”
“Yup. I’ll be ready,” I answered as I stood up, walking toward the stairs to get ready to spend the day pretending.
We were halfway to Portland and I was really proud of myself for resisting for the whole thirty minutes we’d been on the road, but I couldn’t help myself any longer. I pulled out my phone and opened up a browser and googled “Riot Bentley.”
I had never googled him before. At first, when we were together, it had been for authenticity reasons. Anything I knew about him, I wanted to know because he’d shared it with me. It wasn’t normal for me to date semi-famous people and I didn’t want our relationship to be different just because he was on the rise in the Hollywood scene.
In recent months, not googling him had been more for self-preservation purposes. I didn’t really want to see him, whether it be on a phone screen or a TV screen—I didn’t want to see him, period. I wasn’t sure my heart could take any more pain than it had already been through. So I just never did it. But sitting in Ella’s car as she drove down the freeway, with the seal already broken, thanks to the red carpet coverage, I decided there probably wasn’t anything worse on the Internet than what I’d seen on the television that morning.
I’d been wrong.
So.
Very.
Wrong.
I was flooded with images of him. All kinds of images. Pictures of him walking down the street in LA, of him on set laughing with his co-stars, stills from his show, him holding up a gun, looking like a real cop.
My breath caught for a moment and then I flipped my phone over and put the screen against my thigh. I must have moved too quickly because Ella’s head turned toward me.
“What is it?” she asked, concerned.
“I just googled Riot.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying—unsuccessfully—to wipe the images from my mind.
“Oh,” she replied, her voice worried. “That was brave.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is dumb. That was dumb.”
“Maybe a little. What’d you find?”
“Oh, not much, just a bunch of pictures of him looking incredible.”
“He’s not hard on the eyes.”
“No, he’s not,” I agreed as I picked up my phone and flipped it over, looking at the screen again. Like I said, I was into pain. “He makes a really hot cop,” I muttered absently, my finger swiping across my screen quickly. I wasn’t even really taking the pictures in, I was just gorging myself on him. Like a kid let into a candy store and told they could eat as much as they wanted. I just kept shoveling it down. “Oh, God,” I groaned, and instantly made my screen go black and shoved the phone between my thighs.
“What?”
“I saw a picture of him surfing. Shirtless. Wet. God.” I groaned again. “I didn’t even know he could surf.”
After a moment’s pause, Ella asked, “What do you think he was doing with Lexi?”
“You mean besides Lexi? I think they were on a date. Obviously.” I picked up my phone again, but tried to clear out of the images and look for just an article about them.
“Maybe they just went to the movie as friends.” Ella sounded hopeful. Even Mattie gave a wail from the backseat that sounded frustrated.
I turned to Ella and gave her my best “you’ve got to be kidding me” face. “Come on now, Ella. You saw that music video. She’s adorable. And sexy. And hot. And he’s… well… he’s Riot. They aren’t just friends. You can’t just be friends with either one of them. Especially considering they hadn’t ever met each other before that video.”
“But what about her director boyfriend?”
“I’m reading about it now.” I thumbed through the article until I found what I was looking for. “Lebowitz was contacted to comment on his relationship with Black and he declined to make a statement, which isn’t unusual for him. Both Black and Bentley’s camps are keeping quiet, not offering to confirm or deny a relationship between the two. We at E! News aren’t calling this one yet. Our guts are telling us this was a publicity stunt, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more sightings.” I scrunched up my face. “A publicity stunt? They were kissing.”
“Things aren’t always as they appear,” Ella said with her new motherly, all-knowing voice.