𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀 𝓅𝒾𝓃𝓀 ♡

[ayzrules]

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆 ✩

𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒾𝓃𝒻𝑜 ❀ 𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 ❀ 𝒸𝑜𝓁𝑜𝓇 𝒸𝑜𝒹𝑒
{ 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐖𝐃 }

✩ 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐍𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 ✩

𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒾 ❀ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑖 ❀ 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒾𝒾𝒾
𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑣 ❀ 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝓋 ❀ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑖
{ 𝐓𝐇𝐖𝐃 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐕𝐄 }

✩ 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 ✩

𝓅𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓉 ❀ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝 ❀ 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝓊𝓂 𝒾𝓃𝒻𝑜
𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑏𝑜𝑎𝑟𝑑 ❀ 𝒾𝓃𝓈𝓉𝒶𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓂 ❀ 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑤𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠
𝒸𝑜𝓁𝓁𝑒𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 ❀ 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ❀ 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂𝑒 𝓈𝑜𝓃𝑔

 
━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀᴘᴀʀᴀᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐀 𝐋𝐈 ✩

❝ 𝟧'𝟤 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓂𝓎 𝒶𝓉𝓉𝒾𝓉𝓊𝒹𝑒 𝟨'𝟣; 𝒶𝓈𝓀 𝓂𝑒 𝒾𝒻 𝐼 𝑔𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒶 𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓉! ❞

✩ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒 ✩

𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝. 𝐼 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 ━Chrissy Li. A flippant gossip columnist whose big fat mouth will be the end of her, one day. She's here for Starbucks, cute clothes, and 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑙𝑠. Her ultimate goal? Save up for a new car (ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑟 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑡 𝑗𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑦 𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡, ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐 𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑜𝑡 𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡 𝑡𝑎𝑝𝑒).

𝒩𝒶𝓂𝑒 •• 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎 "𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦" 𝐿𝑖. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 '𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡'.
𝒜𝑔𝑒 •• 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑖𝑠 28 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑙𝑑.
𝒢𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 & 𝒮𝑒𝓍𝓊𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓎 •• 𝐶𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒, ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙.
𝐵𝒾𝓇𝓉𝒽𝒹𝒶𝓎 & 𝒮𝒾𝑔𝓃 •• 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝐽𝑢𝑛𝑒 10𝑡ℎ, 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎 𝐺𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖.
𝐻𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓉𝑜𝓌𝓃 •• 𝐿𝑜𝑠 𝐴𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠, 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑎, 𝑈𝑆𝐴.
𝒪𝒸𝒸𝓊𝓅𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 •• 𝐺𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦, 𝑎 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝐿.𝐴. 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑖𝑑.
𝐿𝑜𝑔𝒾𝓈𝓉𝒾𝒸𝓈 •• 𝐻𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚 𝑖𝑠 𝑋𝑖𝑎𝑜 𝑊𝑒𝑛 𝐽𝑢. 𝐻𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑑𝑒 𝑖𝑠 ##𝐅𝐅𝟗𝟒𝐁𝐅.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 ✩

𝑇𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 "𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠", 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑝 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑗𝑜𝑏, 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔, witnessing celebrity drama first-hand, fruit smoothies, sweet foods, strawberry milkshakes, glitter/sparkles, pop music (especially of the "trashy" variety), her hot-pink car, social media, strawberries, 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑠 (𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑏𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢), high-heels, lip gloss, nail polish, make-up in general, short skirts, organization, sparkly pens, colorful planners and sticky notes, choker necklaces, hoop earrings, yogurt-covered pretzels, froyo, bubble tea, perfectly color-coded anything, her very extensive network of informants (who happen to come from all walks of life, thank you very much), ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 (𝑖𝑡'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑦 𝑗𝑜𝑏, 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑔𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ!), being recognized for her journalist skills, dry humor and satire, cute purses, dresses with pockets

✩ 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 ✩

When college guys hit on her because she literally looks ten years younger than she actually is (𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑠ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑦!), being looked down upon because of her job, when people just won't tell her what they know (no matter how much she begs and pleads and bribes and blackmails), 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑠ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒-𝑢𝑝 (𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚), shitty airplane food, superhero movies (there are so. Many. Plot. Holes. Which is a bit rich, coming from a gossip columnist like her, but still), those annoying bougie vegan hipster restaurants that serve spirulina-infused magical algae (like, seriously-what is she, made of money?!), being seen in public in sweatpants (it's not like this would ever happen though, of course), sneakers (they're kinda...ugly, if you think about it. Heels are way better), 𝐿𝑜𝑠 𝐴𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑢𝑠ℎ ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐 (𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡), when people tell her she needs to swear less, when people feel like they can tell her what to do in general

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 ✩

𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦'𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒, 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 (though her impractically high heels give her at least another four or five) and weighing less than one-hundred and twenty pounds. 𝐻𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑘 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎 𝑗𝑒𝑡 𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟, though she's dyed it everything from red to blonde to pink (back when dyeing your hair with Kool-Aid was a thing, in middle school). When she was younger, Chrissy was pretty indecisive about her hair, and was constantly getting it altered, but she's kept her hairstyle consistent since she was eighteen. 𝑅𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑖𝑡 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠. Chrissy thinks that it's too straight, but unfortunately, her hair doesn't hold curls very well. Oh, well. Sometimes it just be like that.

Chrissy's features are usually arranged in an expression of mild irritation, because honestly, life never goes the way she wants it to. Her lips are on the thinner side, a fact she hides with eye-popping lipsticks and lip gloss. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦-ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑢𝑠𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑛'𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑒. Indeed, with her diminutive stature and petite frame, most people can't help but to find Chrissy...cute. Cute as in, "oh look it's a twelve-year-old." Which pisses her off to no end; 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑔𝑢𝑦𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑠ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑛, 𝑜𝑘𝑎𝑦????

On most days, Chrissy refuses to be seen in public without a full face of makeup on-foundation, concealer, mascara, lipstick and/or lip gloss, eyeliner, nail polish, highlighter, eye shadow; the whole shebang. 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑘, and she takes great pride in her killer winged eyeliner. Clothing-wise, although her favorite color is by far pink, Chrissy's wardrobe is a veritable rainbow of all sorts of colors, from pastel yellow to neon blue. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑛 𝑗𝑒𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑝 𝑎𝑛𝑑/𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑠.

Chrissy's self-described style is "sparkly pink biker chick glam". She will 100% pair a magenta crop top bedazzled with rhinestones with black skinny jeans and hot pink combat boots. She's not afraid to show some skin, either, but Chrissy hates the cold, so she keeps her outfits, ah, reasonable during the winter months. 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑟 (𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒) 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠. Finally, for special occasions, her go-tos are glitzy mini-dresses and sparkly stilettos, and maybe fishnets-and killer eyeliner, of course.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 ✩

𝑆𝑐𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡, Chrissy Li may have found herself the perfect job when she became a gossip columnist. Indeed, Chrissy is rather shallow (and she's perfectly aware of this, thank you very much), as her life basically revolves around whether Generic Female Actress was dating Attractive Male Singer or not - and whether or not she could get a good story out of it. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑑𝑟𝑦, 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑒-𝑖𝑛-𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑜𝑟 that is (more often than not) not kept "in cheek". At all.

𝐴𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑦𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙, 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑢𝑠𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔. Her cheerfully blunt and wry (if slightly sarcastic) disposition is well-liked by her peers, even if they do make fun of her for disturbing habit of sprinting after celebs after they've gotten into cars. 𝐼𝑛 6-𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠. Chrissy is also too curious for her own good-she's been known to follow a lead past the point of sanity. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑎 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑙' 𝑓𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑙? Flippant and impulsive, Chrissy is full of sarcastic quips and has an unfortunate tendency for making smart, snarky remarks at exactly the wrong times.

With her sharp tongue and dry humor, 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑘, 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑧𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠, and she is remarkably good at keeping track of and managing people, for all her sparkly (and gossipy) ways. Chrissy is always prepared for everything, be it a slew of paperwork or a broken nail (and if she herself doesn't know how to fix it, there's a 99% chance that she knows someone who can). Although she's quite flighty, Chrissy is a very talented multi-tasker - she can apply sparkly pink eye shadow while reciting exact date that some famous actress or the other hooked up with their current boyfriend, broke up with their current boyfriend, got back together with their current boyfriend, and broke up again with the same boyfriend while operating a motor vehicle (which is quite an impressive feat in L.A. traffic!). 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑝 𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑦-𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑦 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑠; if you give her even the slightest clue, the tiniest hint, Chrissy will have the truth out of you. She is most certainly not as ditzy as she (sometimes) comes off as, and before you know it, she'll have the name of the mysterious woman GoodLooking MaleSinger was making out with at the club last night, her address, if she likes Pepsi or Coke, her phone number, her Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter usernames (and maybe even the passwords), and (probably) her social security number out of you 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 ✩

𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐁 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒 . . . Well, Chrissy wouldn't call them friends, but she has a pretty widespread network of informants, some of which include former A-Listers. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑢𝑙𝑔𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠; in an industry like hers, secrecy is key. You'll understand, of course?

𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐄𝐒 . . . Chrissy hasn't dated since college. #ForeverAlone

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐔𝐄𝐒 . . . Lowkey wishes she was 𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑, what with all her college friends getting married and having kids right now; lives with her great-aunt and wants to move out because their apartment is cramped and dysfunctional, but also L.A. rent is fucking atrocious; 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑎 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒? One that doesn't involve stalking celebs to night clubs on Friday nights with the Hollywood Daily's photographer (don't get her wrong, Chrissy loves her job. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑗𝑜𝑏??? 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒)

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀᴘᴀʀᴀᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 ✩

Chrissy and Rio first "meet" over Twitter, after Chrissy publishes a particularly scathing article about him. After a 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 in which Rio said he'd give her money to go to one of his concerts, Chrissy accepted (𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦, 𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒?) and went to his Prague show. They met for the first time there, had some bantz (read all about it in 𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑥'𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦), and Chrissy decided - sort of to troll Rio - 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎'𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤, which would subsequently go on to launch Maria's career as a singer. Rio persistently contacts her, and Chrissy finally caves him and gives him her 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡, mostly so that her boss and co-workers wouldn't get pissed at Rio spamming the official THWD social media accounts.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀᴘᴀʀᴀᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐀 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐎𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐒 & 𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒?

𝐵&𝐵’𝑠 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟, 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑦 𝑃𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝐼𝑧𝑧𝑎𝑡, 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡 - 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑜! 𝐼𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠 & 𝐵𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠?

↬ I’m sure you all remember how Penny Picard, the lead singer of B&B (AKA yet another hippie indie folk band from Europe trying to make it big here in the States, with pretty steady success so far), had a psychotic break right after the group dropped their first album; I mean, the girl got drunk and punched a reporter! Ouch.

↬ So is it really a surprise that she threw a bitch fit while grabbing drinks with the rest of the band just last Saturday? At her fellow bandmate Blade Izzat, no less!

↬ From what I hear, Penny was pissed - rightfully so - that Blade slept with Léo Fouché, the group’s manager and Penny’s long-term boyfriend. And look, I’ll say it; Blade had it coming.

↬ But what does this mean for the future of the band? Will Penny and Blade’s apparent feud be why B&B disbands? And who knows what happens behind closed doors; has Blade been hiding black eyes with concealer this entire time without anyone noticing?

↬ Of course, this is all speculation (for now), but none of this can be doing the band any good. Making it big in the States, and then staying big, is no easy task, and if your lead singer is constantly punching the lights out of your guitarist - I wouldn’t be surprised, given her past history - I’m sure that makes it 20 times harder! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 𝐇𝐘𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐈𝐏𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐑

↬ The San Francisco-born kpop idol HYE, known for her fierce girl power songs and her friendship with big names like Zach Efron and Dua Lipa, has kissed a girl...and apparently, she liked it.

↬ Two weeks ago, right after the soloist dropped her new EP - or, as they call it over there, a ‘comeback’ - she and her manager at Polysphere Entertainment were caught having a steamy makeout sesh in the back of a car. The pics exploded over social media, and Korean netizens were not happy. At all.

↬ HYE has since returned to the States, and it seems like she’s given up on promoting her new comeback. The future of the kpop idol remains to be seen, but I’ll go ahead and ask the question that’s on everyone’s minds, right now - was locking lips with a girl a one-time thing, for HYE? Or has she been sleeping with other women this entire time? And what’s she planning to do, now that her career in Korea is basically ruined?

↬ Check out THWD.com for the pics! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐃 𝐏𝐈𝐓𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒, 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙 2019 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒

↬ Ever since #Brangelina hit the fan back in 2016, we’ve all waited with a bated breath to see who the next lucky girl on Brad’s arm would be, and so far, he’s had the attention span of a goldfish, running through flings as if his life depended on it. So is it really a surprise that he was spotted with yet another woman on a night out in New York last weekend?!?!

↬ At first, the identity of said woman was a mystery, but after some digging on social media, we’ve realized that her name is Brigitte Anthony - AKA a “vegan” Insta model whose captions are even more inane than Alexis Ren’s. Brad and Brigitte (#Bragitte?) were, according to an unnamed source, living it up with the rest of the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood cast until they split off on their own, obviously plastered. Is it just me, or does this have ‘drunk hookup’ written all over it?

↬ Well, whatever happened, let’s just hope that it was classier than a quickie behind the bushes in Central Park...though given Brigitte’s reputation, I wouldn’t be so sure.

↬ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is set to premiere this July. Check out THWD.com for pics! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐀 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆! 𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐍-𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐒 𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟐 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐒

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒, 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝑢𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑡 2019 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒

↬ As I’m sure some of you know, Rafael Vazquez, the Spanish heartthrob that rose to fame with his role as the male lead of Netflix’s Élite (think PLL meets Riverdale), also brought his girlfriend with him in his meteoric rise to the top. Rafael and Natasha were the celeb couple of the entire Western hemisphere after Rafael proposed...and now he’s called the quits?!

↬ Nobody has the slightest idea as to how - or why - this series of events came about, but the tea is piping hot! The fan theories are running wild on social media, but I think that there’s only one possible explanation: Rafael’s been hooking up with someone on the side, and can’t give them up to marry Natasha.

↬ #Y-I-K-E-S. If I were Natasha, I’d block his cheating ass and move on. Good fucking riddance!

↬ Check out THWD.com for the full scoop on Élite! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄? 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐋𝐋 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐕𝐈𝐍 𝐊𝐋𝐄𝐈𝐍 𝐀𝐃…

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒, 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐹𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑦 2020 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒

↬ EYE CANDY ALERT! It’s no secret that Enrique Iglesias’ lesser-known (and, let’s be real, less talented) brother, VALÉRIO, is quite possibly the hottest man alive, and the latest Calvin Klein campaign confirms it.

↬ VALÉRIO first came to our attention after Enrique featured him on his hit single “DINERO FOR DINNER”, but their fake legal battle over the song (which was, by the way, completely staged for the attention) is what became his true claim to fame. VALÉRIO has since released more music, including his most recent album, 20/20, but I gotta say...VALÉRIO’s six-pack is proooobably more impressive than any of the songs on said album.

↬ Check out THWD.com for the full spread of pics! Trust me, it’s worth it. { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐀: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎'𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐒, 𝐓𝐁𝐇

↬ So, I’m sure you’re wondering whatever became of the brief Twitter exchange between me and Enrique Iglesias’ lesser-known and less talented brother, VALÉRIO, in which he basically told the world that he was going to slide into my (well, the official THWD account’s) DMs.

↬ Some context is, perhaps, necessary. His original tweet was in response to one of my daily columns about the new Calvin Klein ad campaign, where I said, and I quote, “VALÉRIO’s six-pack is proooobably more impressive than any of the songs on said album.'' The Colombian singer-songwriter tweeted that he’d pay me to come to one of his concerts in response, and what can I say? Free money is free money.

↬ (No, you guys. He did not send me a dick pic. Not even someone as hot as VALÉRIO can send an unsolicited dick pic and make it classy...though, given his general personality, I wouldn’t put a gross fuckboy move like that past him).

↬ The concert itself was nothing to write home about. We all know the songs that hot douchebags like VALÉRIO write; it’s just sex, drugs, money, and objectifying women. Been there, done that, times a million. Nope. No thank you. What really caught my eye was one of the backup dancers.

↬ According to Marcelo Rosario's (a member of the Élite cast) Wikipedia page, Maria is his older sister. She’s danced for big names like Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey before, and has been spotted with A-listers like Zendaya, Bad Bunny, and Serena Judt. But what is there really for me to say? The girl is fire.

↬ From her warm-up vocal runs backstage to her fierce flamenco solo, there is nothing about Maria that isn’t impressive. Fresh out of a world tour with Ari herself, Maria proved to the world that she has what it takes to make it big - well, bigger - at the VALÉRIO concert last weekend.

↬ Of course, that might not be a good thing for Maria; rumor has it that the 25-year-old used to hook up with Ariana Grande behind closed doors. I mean, talk about tea! Were they just fuck buddies, or was it more serious? Are they still sleeping with each other? And, back when she danced for Rihanna, Maria was dating Carlos Lopez, another member of the Élite cast, who has since moved on to Denise Paola (who plays Lucrecia on Élite). As far as anyone knows, their relationship came to a screeching halt after Carlos mysteriously disappeared from the scene in California.

↬ I guess my biggest question is: has Ari truly kissed a girl, and liked it? Ari’s chart-topping break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored (and the accompanying music video), plus “I like women and men” from Monopoly, seem to imply that she has. Hmm.

↬ All of that aside, there’s no denying that Maria was the one who truly stole the show last Saturday. I’ll admit it; I was pretty skeptical about going to the concert, even with the promise of free money. But seeing Maria perform live, even if she was “only” a back-up dancer, was more than worth it.

↬ After her performance on Saturday, Maria's definitely gonna be on our 'faces to watch' list. For more of the hottest scoops, check out THWD.com! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁, 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄

↬ Anonymous sources have confirmed that the playboy singer-songwriter will be collaborating with a newer face in the music industry on his next single. Aforementioned sources say that the mystery singer’s music is heavily inspired by Valério’s own act, weaving in influences of reggaeton, hip-hop, and fuckboy party culture, but with a distinct twist.

↬ Well, let me just say this: when Valério’s current act is mostly about flashing his abs and getting into fake legal scandals for the attention (and featuring on songs by more talented artists), this newcomer should have no problem making it big, with or without Valério’s help!

↬ Follow @THWD on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to stay up-to-date, and check out THWD.com for more! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐔𝐂𝐇-𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄, 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐒

↬ Just yesterday, the Colombian singer, song-writer, and fuckboy extraordinaire took to Twitter and posted a short status: a ti te canto pa’ que tú me cante. Translated to English, the status reads “I sing for you so you sing for me.”

↬ If I’m not wrong about this, this line is probably one of the lyrics to the single he’s been teasing for weeks. Okay–that makes sense. What really has me side-eyeing everything is a Tweet from Marcelo Rosario, AKA Mario Celos: YO X TI TU X MI. FRIDAY

↬ For those who are unaware, Marcelo Rosario is a member of the Élite cast, and also a producer under his pseudonym ‘Mario Celos’. Based on the Tweets from both VALÉRIO and Marcelo/Mario, I’d wager that Marcelo’s had a hand in producing the single.

↬ Which leads me to my final question: who the hell is VALÉRIO collaborating with? Could it have something to do with the @Gloriana account on Instagram, which is the only account that VALÉRIO’s following?

↬ And, furthermore, how many times is VALÉRIO going to do nothing besides flash his abs in the music video while the other artist sings their heart out? Bet you ten bucks that it’s for the entire video! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐈𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄! +𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃𝐖𝐈𝐃𝐄...?!

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙 3, 2020 (𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑)

↬ 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 is finally here, and boy was it worth the wait! Yesterday, the backup-dancer-turned-singer (whose real name is Maria Rosario) released Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi under Worldwide Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group Latin owned by - you guessed it - VALÉRIO.

↬ There’s plenty of tea to spill about the fact that VALÉRIO basically told the Iglesias fam to fuck off and established his own independent label, but first of all - what a song! After weeks of rumors and teasers, the sheer anticipation for Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi was out the roof!

↬ And 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 delivered. Her debut single is a flirty reggaeton bop, and the music video is everything we expect out of the on-stage chemistry between 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 and VALÉRIO. Which begs the question: are the two of them involved with each other in some way behind the scenes???

↬ Now, onto Worldwide Records: what the hell is going on with the Iglesias family?!?! VALÉRIO went off the grid for weeks, after the conclusion of his 20/20 World Tour, and now he suddenly has his own subsidiary under Universal Music Group Latin…??? Where the hell did this come from? Did Iglesias Inc., AKA a subsidiary of Warner Music, drop him because his sales figures weren’t good enough, since all he does is take shirtless fuckboy pics and feature on the songs of more successful artists?

↬ Well, whatever the reason, let’s just hope that VALÉRIO doesn’t ruin this for 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 with his fuckery. She’s too precious of a gem to lose! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐈 𝐁?!?! +𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐃'𝐒 𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐑!

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑔𝑙𝑦. . .

↬ Luna So Min is L.A.’s resident celeb jeweler, and if you know her track record - AKA rumors of a DUI and a subsequent trip to a top-secret rehab facility - then you know that when she parties, she parties hard. This past Friday was no different; although Luna was ostensibly renting the mansion in the hills for the So Min & Co. S/S reveal, I personally think it was more of an excuse to get both herself and the hottest A-listers fucked up. And boy oh boy, did they get fucked up - so fucked up that Penny Picard from Baronesses & Ballistics started a bar brawl with Cardi B!

↬ We’d be here all day if I gave you the play-by-play, so here are the highlights:

↬ 𝐁𝐀𝐃: Our favorite douchebag is back at it again! Although VALÉRIO’s charming fuckboy act is nothing new, what caught our attention this time was who he was trying to work over at the party: namely, Spectrum (didn’t she break up with Remington Devereaux, AKA her supermodel girlfriend of five-ish years, just a month ago?!?!), and - wow, what a shocker - the songstress whose fierce dancing was the only thing that made one of his concerts worth the money: 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶.

↬ And speaking of 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 - sources say that she and her ex (Carlos Lopez of Élite) started arguing, right there at the party! From the looks of it, 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 is officially over Carlos and is proooobably entertaining the thought of a relationship with VALÉRIO (or maybe Travis Scott? She was definitely flirting with him too). In any case, the lovers’ quarrel happened shortly after VALÉRIO had finished cozying up with 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶, and ended with Carlos leaving the party early, obviously disgruntled by how close his ex was getting with VALÉRIO.

↬ Which leads me to the only logical conclusion: Carlos is a two-timing fuckface who wants 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶 back now that she’s famous, without any regard for his current girlfriend. Poor Denise; maybe she should take a page out of 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶’s book and just go ahead and dump his ass right now!

↬ 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃: After years of radio silence on the romantic front for the ever-so-charming hostess (that’s what a DUI and a mysterious disappearance will do for ya, kiddos!), Luna seems to finally be on the rebound. Besides randomly disappearing into various rooms with a hottie who’s too new on the scene to even have a sizeable Instagram following, Luna was also spotted locking lips and taking selfies with Tinashe on the dancefloor last Friday. Let’s just hope that her budding relationship(s) can last through her next stint at a rehab facility!

↬ 𝐔𝐆𝐋𝐘: Yep, you’re reading the headline right: B&B’s lead singer, Penny Picard, didn’t pull any of her punches (both literally and metaphorically!) when she sent a shiner right at Cardi B’s (very much fake) nose!

↬ I’m sure you’re all wondering why Penny would do something like that, when Luna had done everything she could to ensure that all the party-goers would have a good time. Well, I have it on very good authority that Cardi had decided to take the opportunity to insult everything she could about B&B, from their music to their efforts to stay in the spotlight here in the States, and Penny’s track record, combined with all the drinks and the less-than-legal substances that inevitably found their way into the party (it was one of Luna’s parties, after all), meant that it was really only a matter of time before Penny punched someone. I mean, hell, she’s punched her own bandmate before - with this girl, all bets are off!

↬ 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: You can bet your knock-off Jimmy Choos that Spanish hottie Rafael Vazquez was at the party...with a +1! Although we haven’t been able to identify who she is, I think it goes without saying that this mystery girl is who he’s been cheating on Natasha Simoné with, and why he even decided to move to L.A. in the first place!

↬ So, I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the only question we still need answered is: just how long has Rafael been with this girl? And will it even last, or will he start up another ill-timed side fling while he’s here in the States???

↬ Check out THWD.com for a full recap, pics, and more! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐇𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐊'𝐒 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐅𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐃!

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙 23𝑟𝑑, 2020, 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦

↬ After model and rockstar Hemingway Jack was spotted getting into a car and having a not entirely PG-13 makeout sesh with the mystery man in the driver’s seat a while back (you can find pics of that incident on our website!), everyone here at The Hollywood Daily has been working non-stop to identify Hemingway’s latest fling. And after literal weeks of sleuthing, we’ve finally got it: Romance Morningstar, a graphic designer and Photoshop artist - and, according to an anonymous source, one of Hemingway’s classmates all the way back in high school!

↬ Besides the incident in Mr. Morningstar’s car, the two of them were spotted at celeb jeweler Luna So Min’s party last Friday. To be more specific, they were spotted walking out of a closet together at Luna So Min’s party last Friday, making it perfectly obvious that Hemingway had asked Romance to be his +1 at the event.

↬ Now that we know the identity of Hemingway’s latest boytoy, there’s only one question left: is this just another short-lived fling, or is Hemingway actually going to stay with Romance for longer than two weeks? And furthermore, what’s this high school connection about? Were they friends back then? Fuck buddies? Boyfriends?

↬ I guess there’s no way of knowing just yet. I’ll just say this now, though: given Hemingway’s track record, I wouldn’t expect this to last long at all!

↬ Check out THWD.com for pics, and follow @THWD on Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter to stay updated on the hottest Hollywood scoops! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐌 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊-𝐔𝐏? 𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐑: 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐀𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐋...

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙 22𝑛𝑑, 2020, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦

↬ After Spectrum wrapped up her world tour, she went completely off the radar as she and her girlfriend of five-ish years, supermodel Remington Devereaux, suddenly called the quits.

↬ The news came as a shock to everyone, and social media was buzzing with questions - but nobody had any of the answers. The only thing that anyone could say for certain in the weeks that followed was that Remington had relocated to New York City, while Spectrum herself stayed in L.A.

↬ Spectrum disappeared right after the abrupt break-up, and it was obvious during her first public appearance since the split that she wasn’t handling it very well at all. For those of you who don’t know, Spectrum was seen at Luna So Min’s ultra-exclusive party last Friday, cozying up with other faces in the music industry like VALÉRIO and 𝒢𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶𝓃𝒶. In fact, a few party-goers even said that she was flirting with VALÉRIO, implying that she’d moved on...right?

↬ Wrong. Dead wrong. In a quiet moment with an anonymous source, the singer-songwriter revealed that, 1) she and Remy weren’t on speaking terms (implying that the break-up hadn’t been mutually agreed upon, and that their relationship had ended badly), and 2) she was still having a hard time dealing with, well, everything - which probably explained how intoxicated Spectrum was, by the end of the night.

↬ Of course, there are still plenty of questions. Who broke up with who? Why did Remy suddenly leave for NYC? Is Spectrum going to end up like the party’s hostess, who got a DUI and spent two years in a secretive rehab facility?

↬ Check out THWD.com and @THWD on social media to stay updated on the hottest Hollywood scoops! { 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀᴘᴀʀᴀᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐖𝐃 ✩

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 (𝑎𝑛𝑑/𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑦, 𝑑𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑠𝑘) 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑖𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝐿.𝐴. They operate out of a stucco building built in the 50's, with peeling paint and a barely-functional elevator system, and the computers are outdated as all hell. On social media, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 @𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒/𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 (𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷.𝐶𝑂𝑀) 𝑡𝑜𝑜. They publish new content daily (i.e. Chrissy's gossip column is a daily column), with an over-arching 'general' section and special focuses on specific scandals.
 

𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄	𝐀𝐆𝐄	𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 & 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍
𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎	𝟐𝟖	Gossip columnist with a widespread network of informants (Xiao Wen Ju)
𝒻𝑒𝓁𝒾𝓍	𝟐𝟎	One of THWD's most successful photographers (Owen Lindberg)
𝓈𝑒𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓂𝒷𝑒𝓇	𝟐𝟗	Another one of THWD's photographers; very mellow. Chrissy's best friend (Soo Joo Park)
𝒶𝓃𝒹𝓇𝑒𝓌	𝟑𝟕	The editor-in-chief; Chrissy's boss. A bit stingy with THWD's finances.
𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑒𝑒𝓉	𝟒𝟐	Writes celeb obituaries for people who died on each specific date. Occupies the cubicle next to Chrissy's.
𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓁𝒶	𝟑𝟓	General writer. Usually takes on stories involving the film industry.
𝒿𝑜𝒶𝓃𝓃𝒶	𝟑𝟐	General writer, with a specific focus on the fashion industry. Goes by "Jo".
𝓀𝑒𝓋𝒾𝓃	𝟐𝟔	General writer. Focuses on the music industry.
𝑔𝓇𝒶𝒸𝑒	𝟑𝟎	THWD's social media manager. Occasionally writes short lifestyle-esque articles.
𝒷𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓉	𝟐𝟐	Recent hire; Chrissy thinks he looks like the 'you know I had to do it to 'em' guy.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀᴘᴀʀᴀᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 ✩
𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝓁𝓁𝓎𝓌𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒟𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓎 𝒜𝓇𝓉𝒾𝒸𝓁𝑒

           There are two unspoken Laws of the Universe, for the industry that Chrissy’s in: 1) you never, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 antagonize kpop stans, and 2) you never get 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑 with anyone that you might have to write about one day.

           ....considering that @𝑗𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑘𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑏𝑜𝑤 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 had something to say when Chrissy mentioned BTS last summer during Coachella, she’d already broken the first. And breaking one unspoken Law of the Universe was 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 enough, even for Chrissy.

           So why was she sitting at her monitor, staring at the “𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚: 𝐽𝑢𝑎𝑛 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑜 𝐼𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑠” blinking in her inbox?

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

           A week and a half earlier. The entire 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 with Valério had blown up, obviously. Normally, the 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 didn’t respond to anything that celebs @’ed them in, including things that were obviously supposed to be promotional – like the “𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 ‘𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝐿𝑖’ 𝐼’𝑙𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡” Valério (Rio) had tweeted out, after one of Chrissy’s daily columns had been published. She’d basically said that all the singer was good for was his abs (was she wrong?), and some of the other people in the office thought the Tweet was absolutely ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠. So she’d replied "𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑡", thinking that would be the last of it.

           And then he’d DM’ed the official @𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷 account??? Asking for her Venmo????

           Chrissy’s boss, Andrew, didn’t see the harm in indulging the singer. So Chrissy set up a separate Venmo account (perhaps the 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝐿𝑎𝑤 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒 in her industry was that you never, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 gave out any private information, and that included Venmo accounts where others could see who your Venmo friends were), not really thinking much of it, and lo and behold – Rio 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 sent enough money to cover a round-trip from LAX to Prague, plus extra.

           Andrew had laughed out loud, and told her to "𝑔𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦". If she wanted to, that is.

           And that’s what Chrissy had done. One of her college friends was doing post-grad work in Europe anyway, so it’d been nice to catch up with her over the weekend too. The concert itself had been…fun. Chrissy was there with her friend, they got a little tipsy, the music was hype. It was a party.

           𝐴𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑅𝑖𝑜 ℎ𝑖𝑚𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓? 𝑀𝑒ℎ.

           First of all, he’d interrupted Maria’s explanation of her 𝑔𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑢𝑠 nails, which already was – just no. Stop. And 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 he’d just given her the typical playboy celeb thing. Been there, done that, times five-hundred fucking million. They were all the same; they flirted and joked and teased, but it didn’t mean a thing. They all had an image to maintain, after all. It was all for show. And, to be honest, Chrissy ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑜.

           All in all, though, the weekend had been fun. And as Chrissy has always liked to say: 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

           Rio – no, she really shouldn’t use the nickname; it’s not like they were 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 or something – had called, just yesterday. It’d been around 3 PM. Chrissy had just gotten in from tailing Cody King, tween superstar extraordinaire, trying to get the deets on this mysterious new girlfriend of his. 𝑈𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑛𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑒.

           Chrissy had plopped into her spinny chair, and she was in the middle of checking her answering machine for any messages that may have come in while she was gone when the phone rang.

           Chrissy hadn’t realized it was him, at first. No caller ID. So she’d chirped out the usual, “This is Chrissy Li at the 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦, how can I help you?”. She’d been able to hear the sounds of music and laughter in the background, which made her pause. Most nightclubs didn’t open at 3 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛, at least not in L.A.

           Rio said, “Hola señorita, it's Valério calling. You...you have a minute?”

           Chrissy almost spit out her coffee. “Is this a fucking prank call? I swear to god, I’ve gotten at least 𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑦 since that Twitter thing.” But even as she said the words, Chrissy thought, 𝑁𝑜, 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑚. 𝐼𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒, 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡.

           She sighed, and took another swig of her drink. “If this isn’t a prank call, what is it?”

           There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then: “No, not a prank call.” Another pause. “It’s about your article.”

           “Hmm?” Chrissy replied, pulling out a notepad in case Rio decided to spill any juicy secrets (well, what 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑑 to be the real Rio, anyway). “Which one?”

           "The one about, well. The one about me, but also, mostly Maria.”

           Chrissy had to strain her ears to hear him over the thumping bass in the background. “So yesterday’s?”

           “Yes. Look, after all I did for you…I don’t understand why you wrote those things.”

          Chrissy rolled her eyes. So 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 was what Rio was calling her about? She was hardly the first person to have given him a less-than-favorable review. And well, you know what they say – there’s no such thing as bad publicity. 𝐽𝑒𝑒𝑧, 𝑅𝑖𝑜, 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚.

           And just because he flew her out to one of his concerts didn’t mean that Chrissy was going to be singing his praises all day long in her column.

           “Okay,” Chrissy said, settling back in her chair. “I think I should set something straight. You are contacting me through my work phone, and through my job’s official social media accounts. Anything and everything that I do or say with or about you is for my job. Which happens to be at the 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦.”

           She let her words sink in for a moment, then continued, “I have nothing against you personally. I don’t ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑒 you. But you have to understand that anything I publish is going to be something that maintains the image and style that my boss sets for us here. So, like I said – yesterday’s article isn’t anything personal. Anything else that I’ve written, or that I 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 write, won’t be personal. Capeesh?”

           "𝐵𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑜, since you know these people so well, tell me. If you were me, what would you do to be..." Rio trailed off for a moment, and the sounds of the club, or whatever it was, got quieter. “…better?”

           Chrissy rubbed her temples. What in the 𝑔𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑎𝑚𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙 was going on? 𝐻𝑒’𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑘, she mused to herself, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙. 𝑊ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑑𝑖𝑑 ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒?

           “Look,” she said, after a few seconds, “I’m not a…I’m not a music professional or something. So straight-up, am I really the person you want to be going to for this kind of advice?”

           A long silence. So long that Chrissy almost said 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑡 and hung up, before Andrew yelled at her for spending too much time on the line. But eventually, Rio replied, quietly.

           "Please."

           She sighed. They were really gonna do this, huh? “Okay, like I said, I know jackshit about making music. But, uh…hey! Maybe you could try something different. Like, Maria. Or something.”

           Chrissy was, in all honesty, just pulling stuff out of thin air. Rio seemed to take it to heart, though. “What about – what about her?”

           “Uh, I dunno, do a collab or something. Use each other to your advantage, like everyone else in your industry.”

           Rio was quiet, again, and then he sighed. "You know what...I'm sorry, I - 𝑙𝑜 𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜 I don't know why I called."

           Chrissy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t know why you did either,” she said wryly, fiddling with her pen. Could she get a column out of this? Hmm, maybe something about a discouraged playboy with no talent? “But I mean, whatever you do, you don’t want to come off as trying too hard, right? Because, you know. You’re, like, 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐎. Standard showbiz and all. No one likes to see that.”

           Rio’s next words were a bit surprising, even to Chrissy. He’d seemed…𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑒, earlier, and now he’d done a complete 180. “Trying too hard? If anything, I'm trying to help 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 career. You're welcome,” he all but snapped at her.

           Chrissy snorted derisively, suppressing a giggle. Was this guy for real? “Okay, that’s great. Good talk. Toodles,” she said, and hung up.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

           It wasn’t long before Chrissy forgot about the entire conversation. She managed to dig up some dirt re: 𝐾𝑦𝑙𝑒 𝐵𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑗𝑜𝑏, and that was good enough filler for her daily column. She was out of the office and crawling down the freeway in her shitty car by six, home by six-thirty, only to find that her half-blind, half-deaf great-aunt Jess had burnt the lasagna. Again.

           After dealing with their white soccer mom neighbor – Mrs. Johnson – threatening to file a noise complaint for the fourth time that month, thanks to Aunt Jess and her tendency to blast Jeopardy on full volume all day, every day, Chrissy was exhausted.

           The next morning found her arguing with Mrs. Johnson about it yet 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, before she flipped the stupid lady the bird and headed off to work. She was still a bit pissed off when she got into the office, until she saw the sight of Starbucks sitting on her desk.

           Chrissy set her stuff down, and frowned. She leaned over and popped her head into the cubicle right beside her. “Hey Vineet?” she asked, “do you know who put the frap on my desk?”

           Vineet swiveled around, and laughed. “It’s from some guy named Jorge,” he replied, “nobody in the office knows who that is. Do 𝑦𝑜𝑢?” He waggled his eyebrows.

           Chrissy glared at him. “Fuck off,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No, I don’t. But thanks for letting me know.”

           Back at her desk, Chrissy inspected the UberEats receipt taped to the drink. Sure enough, it was some guy named “Jorge”. She frowned again, and took a sip – it was a caramel frap, but fancy. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛? 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑙 𝑅𝑖𝑏𝑏𝑜𝑛 𝐶𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑐ℎ, 𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔?

           Chrissy checked her phone and social media accounts for some indication of how the heck the Starbucks got there, but there was nothing. Shrugging, she booted up her computer, and opened her email, skimming through the subject lines.

           𝑂𝑜𝑜ℎ, 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑒𝑎 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑙, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐵𝑟𝑖𝑎’𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑏 𝑗𝑜𝑏 𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑜𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦? 𝐼𝑖𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐹𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑙𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑛, 𝑎𝑛𝑑-

           Chrissy froze, mid-sip. Because there it was, blinking on her monitor – “𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚: 𝐽𝑢𝑎𝑛 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑜 𝐼𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑠”.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

           Chrissy thought about what to do, for a long time.

           Why was Rio 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 contacting her? Wasn’t he upset about the article? And, again, it wasn’t like they were 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 or something. So…what the hell was going on?

           𝑅𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑝𝑜𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑, Chrissy reminded herself, pondering the email.

           Finally, she gave in to her curiosity, and opened it. The message was short:

           { 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡. 𝑌𝑜𝑢'𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐼 𝑎𝑚, 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎. 𝐸𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑎𝑟. –𝑄𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛 𝑏𝑢𝑒𝑛 𝑑í𝑎, 𝑅. }

           Huh.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

           It was two hours later when Chrissy finally responded to Rio. Andrew came bursting into her cubicle with more news about Disney star Cody King’s mystery girlfriend right after she finished her drink, and Chrissy had been on the move since then.

           { 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑎𝑟. 𝑀𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑, 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑘, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑑. –𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 }

           What the hell was she getting herself into?

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛᴏᴜᴛ ᴛᴏ @ᴀʟᴇxx ꜰᴏʀ ʀɪᴏ'ꜱ ʟɪɴᴇꜱ/ꜱᴛᴏʀʏ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐎 ✩
𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝓁𝓁𝓎𝓌𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒟𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓎 𝒯𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒𝓇

‎‏‏‎   𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛?! Chrissy thought, exasperated, glaring at the innocuous plastic cup filled with sweet, sugary bliss. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑓𝑡ℎ 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑠!

   Needless to say, having one (1) certain hot Colombian singer-songwriter constantly order her Starbucks was strange enough on its own, though 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑑.

‎‏‏‎   But said singer-songwriter was also, like, a total sleaze. A player, through-and-through. What was it that the kids called guys like him these days? Ah, yes: a fuckboy. And it certainly 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 that the aforementioned singer-songwriter kept using the name ‘Jorge’ to place the UberEats order, or that he kept having it delivered to her office at 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦. Where it was being intercepted – every damn time – by her nosy co-workers.

   Even the ones who didn’t care about office gossip were getting into it. Brett, for instance – 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒, 𝐿𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑦 “𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑜 ‘𝑒𝑚” 𝐿𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑖𝑛’ 𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑜𝑦 that Andrew had just hired for whatever fucking reason – was currently shooting her, and the Starbucks, a curious look. Chrissy shot him a 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝐼’𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠 glare, and Brett (thankfully) got the message and hurried away.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy sipped angrily at the frap as she booted up her computer. It took a good ten minutes; if the computers had been just ‘old’ when Paris Hilton was still relevant, then they were positively ancient now. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑛 𝐸𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑧𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑔𝑒-𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠, if the computers themselves were still functional. He was a good boss, but fuck that guy. The computers were just. Not. It!

   The first thing Chrissy did was check her email, once the piece of junk finally finished booting up. And, sure enough, there was the subject line of yet another message from 𝐽𝑢𝑎𝑛 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑜 𝐼𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑠, blinking across her screen.

   The subject line read: { 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜 𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑖, 𝑚𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑎 ♡ }

    “Oh, fuck off,” Chrissy muttered under her breath, hitting the checkbox by the email and selecting ‘delete’ without even bothering to open it.

   She skimmed through her other emails – 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝐶𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑔’𝑠 𝑒𝑥?!?!?! – before checking her answering machine for any potential leads that had come in overnight. She was just when she was about to call one of her informants back, asking about the circumstances surrounding the glitzy, glamorous Greta Sterling and her alleged pot addiction (she could already imagine the headline: 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝑇𝐴 𝑆𝑇𝐸𝑅𝐿𝐼𝑁𝐺??? 𝑀𝑂𝑅𝐸 𝐿𝐼𝐾𝐸 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝑇𝐴 𝑆𝑇𝑂𝑁𝐸𝑅!) when Grace, the Hollywood Daily’s social media manager, knocked lightly on the outside wall of her cubicle.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy swiveled around in her chair, still sipping on the frap. “Hey Grace,” she greeted easily, “what’s up?”

   Grace gave Chrissy a wry smile. “𝑌𝑜𝑢-𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤-𝑤ℎ𝑜 is DM’ing the Twitter account again, asking for you.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy let out a long-suffering sigh. “And there’s no way we can ignore it? Or you could just, you know, pretend to be me. Just tell him to, uh, fuck off? But nicely?”

‎‏‏‎   Grace pursed her lips. “Well, I could,” she admitted, “but you might want to see this. 𝑆𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑓𝑓?”

   Chrissy narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but nodded. “Alright. Let me see,” she answered, holding out her hand. And so Grace passed her the smartphone, where the DMs were already puled up. { 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎 𝐿𝑖, 𝑤𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘. }

   { 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎 𝐿𝑖, 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢. }

   { 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 : P 𝑈𝑛𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑 ; ) }

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy looked up, incredulous. “He’s been sending this stupid shit all the time? God, no offense, but I’m so glad that you’re the social media manager and I’m not, right now.”

‎‏‏‎   Grace rolled her eyes, smiling. “None taken.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy continued reading: { 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎, 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑇𝑂𝑃 𝑆𝐸𝐶𝑅𝐸𝑇 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑓𝑎 . . . 𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎'𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑟. . . }

‎‏‏‎   The last DM made her pause. She glanced up at Grace again and asked, “So this is what you were talking about? When you said 𝑖𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔?”

‎‏‏‎   Grace nodded, and Chrissy sighed again. “What’s the account’s password? I’ll reply from my desktop, so you can have your phone back.”

‎‏‏‎   A few minutes later, Chrissy was all set up. Grace watched over her shoulder as she typed out: { 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑡? 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑡'𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦? –𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 }

‎‏‏‎   When Rio didn’t respond right away, Chrissy shrugged and went back to her lead on Greta Sterling. “I’ll stay signed in,” she said. “But let me know if something else comes up?”

‎‏‏‎   “Will do,” replied Grace, and then she was gone, leaving Chrissy alone to piece together the clues regarding Greta’s supposed marijuana problem.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆? 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐑!

𝐺𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑉𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎’𝑠 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡 𝐴𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘’𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑖 𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑚? 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑡: 𝑠ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘, 𝑎 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐾𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑟.

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑘𝑠. 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑠, 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡. 𝑁𝑜𝑤, 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑎, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟– 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑆𝐷 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑑, 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐼 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒-ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑, 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑒-𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑎 𝑃𝑎𝑙𝑣𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝐿𝑖𝑚𝑎 . . . 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑚 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑑𝑟𝑢𝑔 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐾𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑠𝑠!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy saved the document and loaded it up into an email to Andrew, hitting ‘send’ well before her 6 o’clock deadline. September, who had been watching her write, shot Chrissy a small smile as they got ready to leave. “Is that even newsworthy?” she asked, idly. “I mean, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 does weed nowadays.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy shrugged, popping a piece of cotton candy-flavored bubblegum into her mouth. “𝑆ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑎 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑜𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑠𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑦.”

‎‏‏‎   September laughed. “Fair enough.” The two of them started making their way to the exit.

‎‏‏‎   On their way to the door, Grace flagged Chrissy down, swiveling out of her cubicle on her spinny chair. “𝑌𝑜𝑢-𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤-𝑤ℎ𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑, 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑦,” she reminded Chrissy, who immediately dug through her purse until she found her phone.

‎‏‏‎   “You-know-who?” September echoed, bemused. “Since when did Valério become Voldemort?”

‎‏‏‎   “Since the day he decided to become 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠𝑠, that’s when,” Chrissy grumbled, though her sour mood was immediately lifted when she pulled up Twitter and read Rio’s reply to her DM.

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑙𝑙, 𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑆𝑇𝑅𝐼𝐶𝑇𝐿𝑌 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙, 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦. 𝑁𝑜𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑗𝑜𝑏 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒. }

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy frowned, and tapped out: { 𝐽𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑛, 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡? }

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑉𝑎𝑦𝑎, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠. 𝐼𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢? }

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy’s frown deepened. She wasn’t sure she liked where this was going – on the one hand, he was baaaasically asking for her personal contact info, now, and Chrissy didn’t want to cross that line. But, on the other hand, if this was about Maria’s career. . .Chrissy was already taking credit for 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑎𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟, but if Maria released stuff and became, you know, properly famous? And Chrissy was in on it the entire time?

‎‏‏‎   Okay, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 was too tempting of a prospect to refuse.

‎‏‏‎   But what kind of contact info should she even give him? 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑦 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟; any loser with internet access could pay $10 and plug it into some site and find out all her personal info. Twitter and Instagram were a no-go as well (unless she made a dummy account?), and Facebook was a ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑, ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝐻𝐴𝑅𝐷 𝑛𝑜.

‎‏‏‎   So that left . . . Snapchat. Huh.

‎‏‏‎   Well, it could work. I don’t have my location on, and I keep my stories to only the people in my ‘close friends’ list, she mused to herself. And my real name isn’t on any of my social media, so that’s a non-issue.

‎‏‏‎   Snapchat it was. She replied, { 𝐴𝑑𝑑 𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝐶 - @𝑠𝑏𝑢𝑥_𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡. 𝐼’𝑚 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝐷𝑀𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡; 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟. }

‎‏‏‎   Once the DMs were gone, Chrissy waved goodbye to Grace and September before walking out the door. She flicked through her Spotify playlists for something to listen to on the way home (she ended up going with ‘kpop girl gang’), 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑝𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 (𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒, 𝑘𝑖𝑑𝑠!). A short while later, she was back at her cramped apartment, and as she climbed the steps up to their floor, she winced, hearing the sounds of 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑒 blaring from a good ten feet away.

‎‏‏‎   𝐼𝑓 𝑀𝑟𝑠. 𝐽𝑜ℎ𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑜𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡, 𝐼’𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑢𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒, Chrissy thought to herself, sourly. 𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑓𝑎𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝐴𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑖𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑡 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙!!

‎‏‏‎   Once she’d settled in for the night (she didn’t have to deal with her great-aunt’s burnt lasagna yet again, thankfully), she swiped open the Snapchat notification saying that @𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑦𝑝𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑦 had added her as a friend. That must have been Rio. She added him back, then opened the chat messages: { 𝑂𝑓𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 . . . }

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁, 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄

𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑦𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑦 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟-𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒. 𝐴𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟’𝑠 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜’𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡, 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑔𝑎𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑛, ℎ𝑖𝑝-ℎ𝑜𝑝, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑏𝑜𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑡 𝑡𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑡.

𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠: 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜’𝑠 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑏𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠), 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑖𝑔, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜’𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝!

𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 @𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚, 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦 𝑢𝑝-𝑡𝑜-𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷.𝑐𝑜𝑚 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   Five-thirty PM, the next day. Chrissy was just proofreading her latest column and getting ready to head out for dinner with September when Grace poked her head into her cubicle. “𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑠,” 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑. “𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛?”

‎‏‏‎   Grace laughed. “Yep,” she answered. “Want me to read it out loud for you?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy sighed. “Go for it.”

‎‏‏‎   “So this is from a couple hours ago – he said, 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎 𝐿𝑖, 𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ @𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy rubbed her temples. “Why is he like this?” she groaned, swiveling around to face Grace after she’d emailed Andrew her column for the next morning. “Let me see?”

‎‏‏‎   Grace passed the phone to her, so that Chrissy could read 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 for herself. She sighed, shook her head, and gave Grace her phone back.

‎‏‏‎   From her own phone, she pulled up Snapchat, and sent a message: { 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑦 𝑗𝑜𝑏’𝑠 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 - 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑢𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦 - 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜, 𝑑𝑢𝑑𝑒 }

‎‏‏‎   God, but Rio was a pain in the ass.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛᴏᴜᴛ ᴛᴏ @ᴀʟᴇxx ꜰᴏʀ ʀɪᴏ'ꜱ ʟɪɴᴇꜱ!!!

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 ✩
𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝓁𝓁𝓎𝓌𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒟𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓎 𝒜𝓇𝓉𝒾𝒸𝓁𝑒𝓈

‎‏‏‎‎‏‏‎   𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑦, which meant that Chrissy could sleep in and stay at home. And she was glad for it, too–as much as she liked roasting people, shit was tiring. In her opinion, 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐹𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑥, 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑏𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑔𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑓𝑓, too, so it was nice to finally have the entire weekend to herself.

‎‏‏‎   She got up relatively late, and wandered out into the kitchen. Aunt Jess was on the phone with one of her friends from Bingo, so Chrissy tossed 𝑆𝑙𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝐴𝐾𝐴 𝐴𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠’𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑡, 𝑙𝑎𝑧𝑦 𝑔𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟, some apple peels while she ate breakfast, scrolling through her phone and social media as she did so.

‎‏‏‎   There was nothing of particular interest to her. She bookmarked a few posts for review on Monday (𝑚𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑛’𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑏 𝑗𝑜𝑏?) before closing out of those apps. She played two rounds of Candy Crush, then threw on a jacket and took Slippers out for a few minutes.

‎‏‏‎   She spent the rest of the morning cleaning and doing some laundry, making herself some Bagel Bites for a late lunch around 2. She was scrolling through Instagram when a post by VALÉRIO caught her attention.

‎‏‏‎   She read the caption: { 𝟐𝟎/𝟐𝟎 . . . 𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑖𝑛. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢. }

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑁𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 . . . 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒. @𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑐 }

‎‏‏‎   Huh. What’s this all about? Chrissy thought to herself as she scrolled down to read the comments, which turned out to be mostly fans raving about Rio’s performance just a short while earlier.

‎‏‏‎   Correction: 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎’𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 just a short while earlier. Especially the part when Rio and Maria kissed on-stage.

   Chrissy felt her lips twitch up into a small smile, remembering the series of Snapchat texts Rio had sent her. She’d been wondering how long she would want to keep up with simply writing what Rio said she was allowed to write about–for now, doing so benefitted her and 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 because all the information was being exclusively given to her, and the Instagram comments 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑔.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy sighed, and put away her phone. She’d save the work stuff for Monday. Right now, she just wanted to binge 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑂𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑒 for the rest of the day.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   It was around six at night when her phone began to ring.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy reached for the smartphone, not bothering to pause Netflix, because she knew that it was probably 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑠𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑦 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟, but it turned out to be a–

‎‏‏‎   –𝑎 𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙.

‎‏‏‎   From someone named 𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑦𝑝𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑦, 𝐴𝐾𝐴 𝐽𝑢𝑎𝑛 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑜 𝐼𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑠, AKA the biggest pain in the ass that she knew.

‎‏‏‎   Well, at least he was calling her through Snapchat, so she knew it wasn’t a fucking 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙.

    “What the hell?” she muttered to herself as she swiped open the notification before bringing her phone up to her ear.

‎‏‏‎    “What do you want?” she asked, pressing the spacebar. “I’m pausing 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑂𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑒 for you, so this better be good.”

‎‏‏‎    “Vaya, it looks like you were right,” said Rio. Chrissy had to strain her ears to hear him over whatever the fuck was going on in the background–it sounded like a party or a club, 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑, when she was at work. Chrissy could make out the sounds of faint chatter and thumping music.

    “What was I right about?” Chrissy replied. “I mean, like, 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, but what specifically are you talking about?”

‎‏‏‎   Rio chuckled. “I sang with Maria in my last show today. 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤, 𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑑...𝑄𝑢é 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑚𝑏𝑎. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy grinned, despite herself. “Of course I was,” she said again. “Is that what you called me for?”

    “Well, there’s something else. 𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑢𝑔𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡–𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑠𝑜𝑜𝑛.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Who’s Gloriana?”

‎‏‏‎   She could hear the grin in his voice when he answered. “𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛-𝑑𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦! 𝐸𝑛 𝑎𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑙, 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚. 𝑇𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑔𝑜 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy gleefully pulled open a Word doc, absolutely delighted by where this was going. “Now I do. Spill.”

‎‏‏‎    “Vaya, long story short is that Maria’s signing onto my new label, 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠, as Gloriana. She’s going with Gloriana because her name is already tied to mine, and I’m letting her bring on whoever she wants, including her brother. 𝑌𝑜𝑢’𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜? He’s producing music for us, and he’s done things for Lana Del Rey, Lil Nas X, Tyler the Creator in the past.”

‎‏‏‎   Rio continued to basically info-dump on her, and Chrissy’s mind was whirling as she hurried to note it down. “Wait a sec, slow down, I- “

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy cut off as the doorbell rang (𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠’𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑎) and Slippers started barking wildly. Chrissy dropped her phone onto her bed and yelled, “Slippers!”

‎‏‏‎   Rio was quiet for a second, then he laughed. “𝑊ℎ𝑜’𝑠 𝑆𝑙𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠?”

‎‏‏‎    “My great-aunt’s dog. And so, what’s all this stuff with-“

‎‏‏‎    “What kind of dog is he? Or is it a her? How old?” Rio sounded way too excited to be learning about Aunt Jess’s lazy dog.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy rolled her eyes. “Golden retriever. He’s almost ten. Now, what’s all of this stuff with Worldwide Records? 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦?”

‎‏‏‎   Rio snorted derisively, but something shifted in his voice. “Qué gonorrea. I'm not renewing it."

‎‏‏‎   Did he just compare his family to an STD? Chrissy wondered. He continued ranting, “I'm with Universal Music nowadays. 𝐼'𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑤.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy frowned, hearing the bitterness that laced in his words. “Oh? Clarify.”

‎‏‏‎   There was a pause, at the end of the line. "I want to tell you.” Another pause. "𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑚𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑. 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟."

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy froze. “𝐹𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑?”

‎‏‏‎   There was another pause. Then, Rio laughed. It sounded forced. “Forget about the Iglesias people. They’re assholes. Let me tell you more about Gloriana…”

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   Later that night, September texted her.

   { 𝑌𝑜, ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷 𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟?!?! }

   There was a screenshot attached–yet another 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡 from “he-who-shall-not-be-named”.

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑒 . . . } the Tweet read.

‎‏‏‎   But what caught Chrissy’s attention was one of the top comments, from @𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑠_7𝑡ℎ_𝑎𝑏:

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑖 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑦, 𝑖 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 ℎ𝑜𝑤, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎 𝑙𝑖 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑑𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 }

‎‏‏‎    “Fucking hell,” she grumbled at Dwight Schrute, frozen on her laptop screen. And then, another text from September: { 𝑈 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑑𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠? 𝑙𝑜𝑙 }

‎‏‏‎   { 𝐴𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑡 }, Chrissy texted back. { 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜–𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑓𝑓. 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 }

   { 𝑀ℎ𝑚 . . . 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑔 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑗𝑖 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡? 𝐻𝑎ℎ𝑎ℎ𝑎ℎ𝑎 }

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy rolled her eyes. { 𝐻𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑆𝑙𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠 }

‎‏‏‎   { 𝑂ℎℎℎℎ 𝐼 𝑠𝑒𝑒 ℎ𝑎ℎ𝑎. 𝐻𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑠? }

‎‏‏‎   { 𝐹𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑛𝑜. 𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 } And even as she sent the last message, she remembered Rio’s words: 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑚𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑. 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟.

‎‏‏‎   What’d he said was . . . stupid. Right. He was VALÉRIO, and in terms of friendships, Chrissy was worse than a nobody: 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑖𝑑 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟. 𝐴 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑧𝑧𝑖. Some more “legitimate” journalists could afford to make friends with celebs, maybe, but not Chrissy. Her boss would be pissed if a friendship with Rio got in the way of her producing her usual work, for one, and secondly?

‎‏‏‎   𝐻𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑏𝑜𝑦. Not all the time–not when they’d talked–but she knew the type. She made a living spilling all the dirty secrets of people like Rio, after all; if anyone, it would be Chrissy who knew what he was doing. And that was reason enough for Chrissy to dismiss any of Rio’s attempts at friendship.

‎‏‏‎   𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑘𝑝𝑜𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟, Chrissy reflected ruefully. Even if there were a few heated debates on Twitter concerning her 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 about HYE, AKA Blair Park, she hadn’t ever insulted the (former?) idol in the aforementioned article, so she was all good.

‎‏‏‎   But, in terms of the second unspoken Law of the Universe– 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑦 – she was . . . not entirely succeeding.

‎‏‏‎   (𝑌𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠?)

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   𝐴𝑠 𝑅𝑖𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑑, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑅𝑖𝑜, 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟. By the end of the day, Chrissy had an article proofread, saved, and emailed to her boss, ready to be published the next morning:

𝐕𝐀𝐋É𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐔𝐂𝐇-𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄, 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐒

𝐽𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟, 𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑔-𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑏𝑜𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑡𝑜 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠: { 𝑎 𝑡𝑖 𝑡𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑎’ 𝑞𝑢𝑒 𝑡ú 𝑚𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒 }. 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑠 “𝐼 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑒.”

𝐼𝑓 𝐼’𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑦𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑠. 𝑂𝑘𝑎𝑦–𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒-𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜, 𝐴𝐾𝐴 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐶𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑠: { 𝑌𝑂 𝑋 𝑇𝐼 𝑇𝑈 𝑋 𝑀𝐼. 𝐹𝑅𝐼𝐷𝐴𝑌 }

𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑒, 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 É𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑎 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑦𝑚 ‘𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐶𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑠’. 𝐵𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜/𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜, 𝐼’𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑜’𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒.

𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑠 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛: 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑠 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ? 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 @𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂’𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔?

𝐴𝑛𝑑, 𝑓𝑢𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒, ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡? 𝐵𝑒𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑜!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   𝑌𝑂 𝑋 𝑇𝐼, 𝑇𝑈 𝑋 𝑀𝐼 𝑏𝑦 𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑓𝑡. 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂 dropped on Friday, April 3rd. Rio had given her enough spoilers for her to be able to write a coherent article about the song in the weeks leading up to the release, and when the 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 article went out to the public, ‘Valerians’ (AKA Rio’s fan club. You know, like Blinks for Blackpink?) all over the world were commenting and re-sharing screenshots, 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒. Which was . . . understandable.

   Andrew seemed pleased enough with all the publicity–he even promised to buy her Chipotle next week, which was a win in Chrissy’s book. And when Chrissy saw that Rio had ordered her Starbucks (as “Jorge” again, ugh), 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎 𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑦 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑛.

   As Chrissy scrolled through her email, Grace poked her head into her cubicle. “Andrew just wanted me to let you know that we’re rolling with the story that you made this Gloriana girl famous, by the way,” she told her. “He told us to come up with a suitably dramatic reason as to why you originally wrote about her, too.”

   Chrissy sighed and swiveled around in her spinny chair so that she was facing THWD’s social media manager. “𝐼𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑦, 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑅𝑖𝑜,” she admitted. “But maybe we could spin i-”

   ”Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up,” said Grace, grinning. ”𝑆𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜? 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒?”

   Chrissy glared. “He’s been Rio ever since he told me to call him that, the way I tell people to call me Chrissy instead of Christina. Now, like I was saying, we could just spin it as what I said in my original article. 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎-𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ-𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑉𝑎𝑙é𝑟𝑖𝑜’𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑝𝑎𝑟, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟. That kind of thing.”

   Grace grinned again. “Sounds good to me,” she said, and she was gone.

   Chrissy sighed, rubbing her temples. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔; 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ‘𝐽𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒’ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ.

   She spent the rest of the morning monitoring her email and checking social media, taking note of anything of interest while keeping an eye on how well her gossip column, as well as Maria/Gloriana’s song and music video, were doing online. #𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 and #𝑌𝑜𝑥𝑇𝑖𝑇𝑢𝑥𝑀𝑖 were trending, which was always a good sign.

   Lunchtime rolled around, and Chrissy was about to head out with September for nachos when her phone lit up with a notification: 𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑦𝑝𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑦 on Snapchat.

   She frowned, and swiped open the snap.

   { 𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑜? } read the message. The picture: Rio, in an orange hoodie, holding a dog up to the camera.

   Chrissy rolled her eyes and ignored it.

   That night–very unfortunately for her–Chrissy came home to more burnt food. Not lasagna this time, thankfully, but pasta. 𝐴𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐽𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑦 𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒, apparently, and Chrissy coughed as the smell of acrid tomato sauce filled her nostrils.

   ”Fuck my life,” she groaned out loud, and once she’d cleaned up the mess, she took a pic of the remains of the pasta in the trashcan, for Snapchat: { 𝐴𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 >:| }

   Chrissy was intending on sending the Snap to September, but when her recipient list popped up, she accidentally hit 𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑦𝑝𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑦.

   { 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡 } she messaged him, then exchanged her phone for her laptop to order pizza.

   Two hours later, Chrissy and her great-aunt had polished off a few slices of pizza, and the rest was in the fridge for Saturday brunch. She was flicking through Twitter when Rio texted her via Snapchat, again.

   ”Jesus fucking Christ, what now?!” Chrissy said out loud, and checked the message: { 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑚𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑎, 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝐼 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔? 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑡? :𝑃 }

   Chrissy tossed her phone onto her bed and turned back to her laptop. God fucking damn, why was Rio so fucking annoying!!!!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛᴏᴜᴛ ᴛᴏ @ᴀʟᴇxx ꜰᴏʀ ʀɪᴏ'ꜱ ʟɪɴᴇꜱ!!!

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 ✩
𝒞𝓁𝒾𝒸𝓀 𝐻𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝒱𝒾𝑒𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒮𝑒𝓉

‎‏‏‎   It was times like these - 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑖𝑟𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝐻𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑎 𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑜𝑡 𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡 𝑡𝑎𝑝𝑒 - that Chrissy really, really, really regretted her every single life choice.

‎‏‏‎   First of all: 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝐻𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘’𝑠 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 was proving more work than she’d thought it would be. She, September, and Felix had been tailing the fucker all. Week. Long. In the hopes of catching a glimpse of the rockstar and model’s new boy toy, after September got THWD a few shots of him getting into a car and 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑎𝑡.

‎‏‏‎   So Chrissy thought, you know, a few days tops and they’d be at the bottom of the case. September had gotten them some pics of the car itself, and Chrissy had put out feelers in her network of informants. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑛𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑒. This guy was either 1) a nobody, or 2) a supremely paranoid celeb who paid off the government to erase his name from official records, or something.

‎‏‏‎   And now Chrissy, Felix, and September were crammed into her shitty fucking car, 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑑 so they could sneak around the mansion Luna So Min, celeb jeweler extraordinaire, was holding her party in. Because Hemingway was confirmed to be on the guest list (the list was private, of course, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠), which meant he would probably bring a plus-one, which meant they would finally be able to get to the bottom of this fucking mystery fling.

‎‏‏‎    “Why did Luna have to have her party all the way out here?” Chrissy complained as they went down the same winding road for the twentieth time. ”𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑠𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑦 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑦𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑖𝑛!” She flicked her eyes up to the rearview mirror. “You all are Venmo’ing me if I get a parking ticket, you hear?”

‎‏‏‎   September laughed. “Sure, sure,” she replied, fiddling with her camera (hidden safely in a knock-off Coach bag Chrissy had gotten for 50% off). “𝐻𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑘 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔, 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑤𝑎𝑦. 𝑂𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐻𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒, 𝑤𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑.”

    “I just hope we can identify the fucker before the people over at the Gazette,” Chrissy grumbled under her breath.

‎‏‏‎   Once Chrissy had found a suitably hidden-away spot to park, the three of them got out and circled around to the front entrance, keeping an eye out for security. They managed to find a secluded corner behind some potted plants and decorative statues, and settled down to wait.

‎‏‏‎   While they were waiting for the party guests to show up, Chrissy mentally went through the guest list. 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎/𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, and Gloriana was all anyone was talking about these days (ever since she dropped Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi), so it’d be nice to get a chance to scope out what was going on with her. Also, Spectrum hadn’t shown her face in public since the break-up, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑑𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑒𝑟.

‎‏‏‎   People slowly began filtering in. Young Thug, Cardi B, the Hadids…Chrissy hadn’t seen Luna herself yet, but she figured that she was inside with the rest of the party.

‎‏‏‎   Hemingway had yet to show up. 𝐵𝑢𝑡, 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦, 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒. And thanks to the fact that he must have parked on the other side of the house too, he spotted Chrissy standing there with the two photographers.

‎‏‏‎   Great. Just great, she seethed silently, as Rio began walking over, grinning that idiot grin of his. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑘𝑦 𝑘𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦-𝑔𝑜𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔.

    “Buenas, señoritas,” he said. “𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑟 . . . ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔? 𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy and September exchanged a glance. Meanwhile, Rio kept going. ”𝐷𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒? 𝐶𝑟𝑎𝑧𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡, 𝑛𝑜?”

‎‏‏‎    “Just come in with me. No problema.” And he gave Chrissy a faux-innocent look, all wide eyes and an expectant expression.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy snorted. The last thing she wanted was other paps going on about her in Monday’s papers, once they saw Rio with another random girl. “𝑁𝑜. 𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝐼’𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑓 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛.”

‎‏‏‎   The corners of Rio’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “𝑂𝑘𝑎𝑦, 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑎 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑣𝑎𝑦𝑎.” He threw a wink in September’s direction, and then he was off, joining the rest of the party-goers inside the mansion.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy narrowed her eyes. September and Felix were looking at her curiously. “Don’t,” she snapped, and September laughed.

‎‏‏‎    “Alright, alright,” she responded, holding her hands up in surrender even as her eyes twinkled with knowing amusement. 𝑆𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟, and Chrissy didn’t think she was ever going to live that down. She didn’t need this bullshit to be added on top of that.

‎‏‏‎   She sighed, and rubbed her temples. Could Hemingway just show up already, 𝑠𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝐹𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒?!?!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   Eddie Lindsey, 𝑎 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑇𝐻𝑊𝐷, was the only other person to approach Chrissy, September, and Felix.

‎‏‏‎   She smiled a greeting as she passed them, camped out behind the potted plants and patio furniture. “Girl, c’mon! I promise you’ll get better shit inside. 𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒," she said to Chrissy.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy flicked her gaze towards the entrance, then back towards September and Felix. “Well,” she said, stretching, “𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑒.” She grinned, waiting for September and Felix to get up as well.

‎‏‏‎    “Thanks, Eddie. I owe you one,” she said as they slipped right on inside. Eddie laughed.

‎‏‏‎    “No problem!”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy stuck close to Eddie, Felix, and September for a while, sipping a bit of water as she mentally took notes on what everyone was doing. Rio and Spectrum were talking together on the other side of the room, and when she passed by them, hiding behind Eddie, 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎 𝑓𝑒𝑤 𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 - 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔?!?!

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy immediately took out her phone. { 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 & 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑖 𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝? } she texted Felix. A moment later, her phone lit up with a notification as Felix texted back his agreement.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy doubled back and inched closer to where Rio and the other singer-songwriter were conversing, adjusting her silky dark teal skirt and lacy white top. She’d decided against wearing too much pink for the stakeout, 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑠.

‎‏‏‎   As she discreetly listened in on their conversation, keeping her face strategically angled away from Rio and Spectrum’s line of sight and making sure there was a group of other people in between them at all times, 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑢𝑝 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑚 𝑏𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓. She moved away after a few minutes, so that she wasn’t suspicious, and went off to go find someone else to snoop on.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy’s chance with Spectrum came some time later, when she was getting a water refill. Spectrum just happened to also be getting a drink, so Chrissy thought 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑡 and sidled up to her, doing her best to channel her inner excited fangirl.

    “Hey!” she said in a cheerful voice, smiling. “𝑌𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑚, 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡?”

‎‏‏‎   Spectrum turned to face her. “Most of the time.” She laughed. “Tonight, I’m just Natalya, though,” she continued, and smiled back at Chrissy, offering holding out her hand. “What’s your name?”

‎‏‏‎    “I’m Anna,” Chrissy replied, automatically going for the first generic-sounding girl name that wasn’t her own. 𝑆ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑖𝑑 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟; she got enough harassment through her official THWD email and phone number as is, for fuck’s sake.

‎‏‏‎   In any case, she smiled again and shook Spectrum’s hand. “Natalya? That’s a cool name; it’s so nice to meet you! Though - am I saying it right?”

‎‏‏‎   Spectrum seemed happy to be talking to her, at least. “Nice to meet you too! Oh, and yeah! Don’t worry, you’re great on pronunciation! But, like, you can just call me ‘Nat’ if you want. Most people do. That’s what my parents get for giving me a four-syllable name. And that’s, like, not even the half of it. There’s a reason I had to go with a stage name-”

   She cut herself off, then said, “𝑆𝑜, 𝐴𝑛𝑛𝑎, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒? 𝐴𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎’𝑠?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy figured that the truth wouldn’t hurt. “Oh no, I don’t know her personally. 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐸𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑠𝑒𝑦, 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 ℎ𝑒𝑟 . . . ?”

    “Know her?” Nat all but gasped. “I love her! You’re a friend of Eddie’s too? Pretty sure that makes us, like, friends by association - no takebacks!” She winked. “Are you a photographer too?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy couldn’t help but to smile along with Nat in the face of her excitement. “𝑂ℎ, ℎ𝑒𝑦! 𝑌𝑒𝑎ℎ - 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛,” she replied, grinning.

‎‏‏‎   She stifled a giggle at Nat’s next question. “And no, I’m not, I’m absolutely useless when it comes to anything artistic. I just happen to know a lot of photographers, which was how I met Eddie.” 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑁𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓, 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, Chrissy thought wryly.

‎‏‏‎   And before Nat could ask any other questions about her, Chrissy steered the conversation in a different direction. “What about you? Do you know Luna?”

‎‏‏‎   “𝑂ℎ, 𝑤𝑒 𝑔𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘,” Nat answered, and she sighed. “I haven’t seen her yet tonight, though. What kind of horrible friend . . . ” she trailed off, pouring herself another drink and absentmindedly shaking her head. “Any chance you’ve seen our elusive party host?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy shook her head as well. “No, not yet, I just got here not too long ago,” she answered, taking a sip of her water as Nat got herself another drink. She sent Nat a sidelong glance. “𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ . . . 𝐼 𝑑𝑖𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑎 𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡?” And she waited to see how Nat would react.

‎‏‏‎   The bottle Nat was holding slipped in her grip, spilling a bit of liquid onto the table. “Oh, really?” she replied, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑘𝑦. “Where’d you hear that?”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy put on her best concerned face, and shrugged. “Oh, just...around. I’ve no idea if it’s true or not - you know what people are like with celebs,” she said vaguely, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑑𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑒-𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑗𝑜𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑎𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑁𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑝𝑒 𝑢𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑐𝑜ℎ𝑜𝑙.

‎‏‏‎   She made a sympathetic noise. “Just thought I’d let you know, though. So it wouldn’t be totally out of nowhere if it was actually true.”

   Nat laughed, and shook her head. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely know what that’s like.” She paused, and threw back half of her new drink. “𝐿𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑌𝑜𝑟𝑘, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 . . . 𝐼 𝑑𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑜, 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒, 𝑎 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑔𝑜? 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑏𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑤𝑎𝑦.”

   When Nat seemed to regain her composure, she flashed Chrissy a cheery grin. “Thanks for the heads-up, though! You’re the best. Seriously.”

   Chrissy nodded, giving her a thumbs-up. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟; 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑖𝑐𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑓𝑓 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑦. “Sure thing.”

   Nat wiggled a finger at her. “See, I knew you were cool the moment you mentioned-” she cut off, her gaze moving towards a point behind Chrissy’s shoulder. “Luna, hey!”

   𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔. She took that as her cue to leave, so she said, “Hey, it was really nice meeting you, but I’m going to go find Eddie again. I’ll catch you later?”

    “Nice to meet you too!” Nat called after her as 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑝 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑢𝑝 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝 𝑜𝑛. “Tell Eddie I say hi!”

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

‎‏‏‎   A while later, Chrissy had plopped herself down on a couch in a more secluded area of the mansion, contemplating her next move. Though Hemingway was nowhere in sight, 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑤 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎/𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑥, 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑜𝑠 𝐿ó𝑝𝑒𝑧, 𝑓𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑦.

‎‏‏‎   She’d noticed Carlos going to the bathroom afterwards, while Maria went over to Rio. Marcelo had followed after Carlos, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑝 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑜𝑠’ 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚, 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑘𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎 𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡. And there were no photos with Denise Paola, AKA the girl he was supposedly dating at the moment. Which was all . . . strange.

‎‏‏‎   Carlos had left not long after, and now Chrissy had nothing better to do than try to accomplish her original mission - 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐻𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑤𝑎𝑦’𝑠 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔.

‎‏‏‎   "So you must be the +1 of some very sexy guy, eh? Where is he?" a familiar voice made Chrissy look up, and she snorted, amused, as Rio began looking around with mock-solemnity. "𝐴𝑙𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑒𝑛 𝑚𝑢𝑦, 𝑀𝑈𝑌 𝑚𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑜 . . . ”

   Where had Rio been this entire time? She’d seen him flirting with Spectrum/Nat of course, and probably a bunch of other girls. Typical.

‎‏‏‎   “𝑆ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝐼 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐸𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑠𝑒𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑜?” Chrissy asked as Rio sat down on the couch beside her. In response, he let out an over-dramatic sigh of relief and put his arm around the cushion behind her.

‎‏‏‎   He was quiet for a moment, studying her, and then he looked around the room in the way that she had been doing for a while now. “What do you know about her?” Rio finally asked, 𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 - "Someone I should avoid?"

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy rolled her eyes, hesitant to keep talking with him.

‎‏‏‎   "Porfa," Rio laughed, flashing teeth. "I'm new to L.A. Tell me, teach me,” he said, angling his body towards her. "𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy sighed. “Fine,” she replied, if only to get him to stop bothering her about it. “𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝐵𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛. 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟. 𝐻𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑚𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟.”

‎‏‏‎   Rio burst out laughing, as if she said the funniest thing in the world. "𝑄𝑢é 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑚𝑏𝑎. That's funny. You're dangerous, you know that?"

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy rolled her eyes again, though the corners of her lips twitched upwards into a small smile.“I’m 5’2’,” she said, matter-of-factly. “𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒?”

‎‏‏‎    “Hopefully I find out one day,” replied Rio, that annoying fucking smirk of his on his face. Chrissy huffed and crossed her arms, though there was no real rancor in her expression.

‎‏‏‎   Rio cast his gaze around the room again, thoughtful. “What about her?” he asked, pointing towards a model standing by Spectrum/Nat.

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy arched an eyebrow. “That’s Amani something-or-the-other. Victoria’s Secret model. Why?” she gave him a sidelong glance. “𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑑, 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑡.”

‎‏‏‎   Rio went quiet, his expression turning slightly more serious, though there was still a faint smile playing across his lips. “𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢,” ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑, 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦. Was it just her, or was more of his accent creeping into his voice? “Something I realized.”

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy looked up at him, slightly surprised by how intently he was staring at her. “Really,” she replied, deadpan.

‎‏‏‎   "When I was in Medellín, you know, still in Colombia, 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑚𝑦 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑖𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦. I was thinking . . . no sé, acting. I wanted to come here, to this city. But I was scared."

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy arched an eyebrow, again, waiting for him to go on.

‎‏‏‎   "I didn't know what to expect, you know? This is a different world. Me mata. 𝑆𝑜 𝐼 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒."

   Chrissy tilted her head to the side, consideringly. “Well, it hasn’t changed much since I’ve been there. I started, what, six years ago?”

‎‏‏‎   Rio looked down, laughing softly. "I knew it. Your writing. It was familiar to me, sabes?" He leaned in, just a little bit, shifting on the couch so that he was sitting more comfortably. "Do you want to stay there? Be your own boss?"

‎‏‏‎   𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛𝑒𝑑, ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔. Before she could reply, though, he added: "You could do your own thing. Freelance journalist. You're just that good." 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘

‎‏‏‎   Chrissy shook her head slowly, giving him a wry look. “I don’t think you understand my job. 𝐼 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑤, 𝐼’𝑚 𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒. So.”

‎‏‏‎   Rio’s eyes danced over her face as he smiled, evidently amused by her reaction. "If you can do it so well, and write like you do . . . 𝑝𝑜𝑟 𝑞𝑢é 𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑠?"

   Chrissy shook her head, laughing. “It doesn’t work that way.”

   "Okay, okay," Rio laughed as well. "So everything in your life, you got it figured it out then? 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑗𝑜𝑏 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠?"

‎‏‏‎    “Just the usual bullshit. Rush hour is hell, finding parking is hell, and if I get one more parking ticket from tailing celebs all over town, they’ll probably make me go to court,” she answered dryly. “𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑤.”

    Rio pulled his eyebrows together, concerned. Chrissy was surprised; she’d never expected to be on the receiving end of that kind of expression, with Rio. "It won't leave you in the middle of one of those big highways? How old is it?"

    Chrissy shrugged. “𝑇𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠, 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑓𝑒𝑤. I’ve not had too much trouble with it starting or anything, which is pretty lucky.”

    There was a loud shout from some distance away. Chrissy’s head snapped in the direction of the commotion, as did Rio’s, and her phone buzzed a moment later. She dug it out to read the texts on the screen: { 𝐶𝐻𝑅𝐼𝑆𝑆𝑌 𝑂𝑀𝐺 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑦 𝑃𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐵&𝐵 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑖 𝐵! }

    Chrissy tapped out quick replies to the texts, keeping an ear out for any other shouts, because holy! Fucking! Shit! This was front-page news!

    When she finally looked back up, Rio was quiet, staring at her. "𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑟 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔,” he continued, as if he hadn't heard a thing. Other people passed by them to go see what the hell was going on, but Rio made no move to get up. "𝑂𝑟 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐽𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒.”

    Chrissy rolled her eyes and snorted, though she was fighting to keep the laughter off her face. Before she could respond, however, Rio added in a more serious tone, "Should I ask him to stop sending you things? He can be . . . persistente."

    For the second time that evening, Chrissy found herself being surprised by Rio. What’s his angle here? she thought, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑦 𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟, and his arm went back around the couch, his hand almost touching her shoulder. "Or should I tell him something you really want?"

    Chrissy stiffened slightly. “What are you doing?"

    Rio jumped a little, as if he’d realized where his hand was for the first time, and he moved it back. Chrissy pursed her lips, then said, “𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝐽𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒,” a hint of mirth creeping into her voice.

    "Pobrecito," Valério grinned. "𝐻𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠 ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙, 𝐼'𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑚.”

    “Oh?”

    He nodded. "I’ll tell him, ‘You'll never get her, even at 5'2', always in heels, she's too busy running around the city in her 10-year-old car, sipping Starbucks, ruining my life’."

    Chrissy laughed despite herself. “𝐷𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦; 𝐼 𝑟𝑢𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒’𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒, 𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦’𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ.”

    Rio leaned back, meeting her eyes. "Any attention from you is a compliment. No me preocupe."

    Chrissy grinned back at him. “You know what they say - 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑛𝑜 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑑 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦.” Just then, Maria came up to them, holding an oversized denim jacket; she was clearly on her way out.

    "Sorry, sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to say bye," she turned to Chrissy. "And hi, nice to see you again. From the concert?"

    Chrissy gave her a small wave. “Hey,” she said, smiling a greeting. “𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑒𝑎ℎ! 𝑁𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑜𝑜.”

    Rio immediately got up. "Te vas? Already? Have a drink with us."

    Chrissy shook her head, holding up a hand. “Oh - no, I’m not drinking tonight.” 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒, 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑙𝑙. No drunk driving!

    Rio glanced between the two of them, and smiled sheepishly at Chrissy before turning to Maria. "Let me walk you out. Olvidarse de ese bobo y..." 𝑎𝑠 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑡, ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑘, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑-𝑏𝑦𝑒.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   Later that night, Chrissy was typing up some last-minute notes before hitting the hay when September texted her: { 𝑆𝑜, ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑎𝑢𝑛𝑡’𝑠 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑎???? }

   Chrissy groaned. There was no question about it, now - she’d broken Law of the Universe #2, and she! Needed! To! Stop!!!

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛᴏᴜᴛ @ᴇᴜʀᴇᴋᴀ ᴀɴᴅ @ᴀʟᴇxx ꜰᴏʀ ᴄᴏʟʟᴀʙɪɴɢ!

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

✩ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 ✩
𝒞𝓁𝒾𝒸𝓀 𝐻𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝒱𝒾𝑒𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒮𝑒𝓉

   𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟, Chrissy’s shitty Honda Accord decided that it wanted to just break down while she was finally on her way home for the weekend.

   ”Oh, what the fuck!” Chrissy yelled into the sunny silence of mid-afternoon in the Hills, glaring at the steering wheel. She twisted the key in the ignition and tried to start her car again, but no luck.

   𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙. 𝐴𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐼’𝑚 𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑖-𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟, Chrissy thought glumly, flicking on her hazards.

Spoiler

   She spent the next ten minutes trying to get service on her phone, cursing the day that Katie Nelson, the current celeb that she was investigating (𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑: 𝑠𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛), decided that she wanted to be the stereotypical Hollywood director with too much fucking money and buy a house in the Hills (𝐴𝐾𝐴 𝑎 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑧𝑜𝑛𝑒) like a fucking cliché.

   “Why do all of these assholes have to live in the shittiest place ever for T-Mobile cell service???” Chrissy grumbled, 𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑎𝑙.

   A few minutes later, Chrissy heard a voice that was (unfortunately) starting to become very familiar drifting through the open window. “Christina,” said pain-in-the-ass, and she could hear the smile in his words. “Are you stalking me?”

   And sure enough, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑅𝑖𝑜, standing there in a tank top and swim trunks and looking . . . way too happy to see her, 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑖𝑚 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑛.

   Chrissy sighed and put her phone down. “I mean, I probably have in the past, but not this time. My car just decided to break down in the middle of the road,” she told him truthfully, 𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑠ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒.

   Concern crept into Rio’s expression as he took in the hot pink duct tape holding the vehicle together, his eyes flickering between Chrissy’s face and the bumper. “You’re kidding me, right?” he said, putting a hand on the hood and applying pressure, as if testing how strong it was. “I thought you said this car wasn’t too much trouble.”

   Chrissy let out a helpless breath. “It wasn’t. At least, not until just now,” she answered. Then, she gave Rio a suspicious look. “𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢? 𝑊ℎ𝑦'𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒?”

   Rio bent down out of her sight, then came back up into Chrissy’s line of vision with the most adorable dog cradled in his arms. "Don't you see I'm on a date?" He planted a kiss on the dog’s head.

   Chrissy couldn’t help herself – she laughed. And when she glanced back at him, Rio seemed to be studying her closely. "You know, I live two streets over. Two blocks,” he started, carefully, putting the dog down. Then – “𝐸ℎ, 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢? 𝐻𝑜𝑤'𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑒?”

   Chrissy rolled her eyes, playfully. “It’s a secret.”

   Rio smirked. "𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 – 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑦 𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟,” he replied, grinning and rubbing at the back of his head. "I don't want you to get in any trouble. Let me call my mechanic. He does pick-ups."

   Chrissy arched an eyebrow, skeptical. “I mean, I was just about to call my aunt.”

   "Please, I won't hear it. No problema. You can wait for it at my house. Besides," he laughed affectionately, gesturing at his dog dancing around and jumping up towards the open window, as if she was trying to peek inside. "I think she likes you."

   Chrissy sighed.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   And so that was how she found herself 𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟 𝑉𝐴𝐿É𝑅𝐼𝑂. And she hadn’t broken in, lied her way in, or otherwise deceived the singer into having her at his house.

   𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑤𝑎𝑠, 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑛.

   "I've got some free time this week with Maria on vacation. So Malu gets all my attention. Without her, I only swim a bit before dinner. She doesn't like the water,” Rio explained, shooting her a nervous (???) look that she couldn’t quite decipher.

   Chrissy nodded. “Just do whatever you normally do,” she said, perched on one of the deck chairs and watching Rio’s dog run around. “𝐿𝑖𝑘𝑒, 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼’𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦, 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑖𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑤𝑖𝑚, 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒.”

   Rio picked up one of the many dog toys littering his backyard. "It's fine. We can just . . . talk." He tossed the ball at her, and Chrissy instinctively reached up and caught it.

   𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑢, 𝑅𝑖𝑜’𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑔, 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑝𝑎𝑤𝑠 𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑘. Chrissy let out a surprised laugh, holding the ball up in the air, and when she next met Rio’s gaze, he was grinning.

   "Good catch. Don't you play with Slippers? Maybe we can have a dog date one day." He paused, then looked down, chuckling slightly . . . bashfully? "𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑔𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝑛 𝑎 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒. 𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑢'𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒."

   Chrissy tossed the ball back at Rio. “So you’re trying to set our dogs up, now?” she asked, a hint of teasing in her voice. “I think Slippers is way too old for Malu, though. He’s like twelve and a half.”

   Malu barked excitedly and jumped at Rio, following the ball as Rio caught the toy. "𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑢'𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑒𝑒 –” and he threw the ball in Chrissy’s direction, cutting off mid-sentence. It landed a few feet away from Chrissy, and Malu started freaking out, sprinting back towards Chrissy.

   “Rio!” Chrissy shrieked laughingly, jumping out of the chair and scooping the ball up a split second before Malu would have gotten to it.

   𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒ℎ𝑜𝑤, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑝 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑢, and Chrissy was all too happy to get swept up in the game, giggling with delight as Malu zoomed around the yard and pool deck.

   . . . That is, until the ball bounced off Rio’s fingertips, landing by the edge of the pool, and Rio freaking body-slammed her into the crystalline water as he dove towards the toy, 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑓 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑦𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑠𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑜 𝐾𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐵𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑒𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝐵𝑎𝑏𝑦 𝑃𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑘.

   A startled shout made it past her lips before she went under, and Chrissy immediately pushed her head back up above the surface of the water, spitting and sputtering.

   “Mierda, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –” Rio reached for her, then seemed to think better of it and drew his hand back. “Lo siento, I’m an idiot.”

   Chrissy sputtered a few more times, shaking her soaked hair out of her face. Then, she shot him the best ‘𝐼’𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝐵-𝐹’ glare she could – a la White Chicks – which was, in all honesty, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙, given how fucking short she was.

   “Did you do that on purpose???” she demanded, moving out of the water to sit on the edge of the deck.

   “Do you have your phone on you?” Rio asked in lieu of answering her question. His eyes looked ready to burst out of his sockets with worry, and Chrissy the tension ease out of her when she noticed the concern on his face; 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑏𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙.

   Rio glanced at her wet clothes and averted his eyes before continuing. "You can just call me a pendejo. I deserve it. And don't worry about your nice clothes. I'll dry them."

   “𝑂𝑘𝑎𝑦. 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑗𝑜,” Chrissy answered easily, wringing out her hair.

   Rio grinned and pulled his tank top up over his head, discarding it on one of the nearby chairs. “You really think I pushed you, en serio?”

   Chrissy rolled her eyes, the side of her lip twitching upwards in a small, crooked smile. “I wouldn’t put it past you,” she answered as Rio slipped into the water and began swimming laps. 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ, 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑡; the sun felt surprisingly nice again her damp skin, and Rio clearly seemed like he was enjoying himself.

   When Rio finished his first set, popping up for air beside her, Chrissy asked, “Is there a towel here that I can borrow?”

   "I'll grab you all the towels you want. How many? Or . . ." Rio stopped swimming and doggy-paddled over to the edge of the water. “Maybe a robe?”

   “Just a towel is fine,” said Chrissy, and Rio pushed himself out of the pool, chlorinated water trailing off of him to drip down onto the deck. Once he returned, Chrissy thanked him and wrapped the towels around herself.

   Rio started swimming another lap while Chrissy continued wringing her hair out. She wasn’t expecting him to pause in the middle and glance back at her, asking "𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐷𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠? 𝑂𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑢?”

   Chrissy arched an eyebrow. “Rio. I am trying to dry off, here.”

   "Oh, I see. It's because you don't reach." Rio’s shit-eating grin was on his face again as he swam towards the other end of the pool, and that trademark smirk of his was plastered all over his stupidly attractive face when he popped up again. "Here in the deep end.”

   𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑦 𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠. 𝑂𝑘𝑎𝑦, ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟!

   “Don't worry, I won't let you drown,” Rio finished, his voice warm with amusement.

   Chrissy rolled her eyes again, letting out a huff of laughter. “No, it’s because I just started drying off after you tackled me into the pool. In case you forgot,” she called over to him.

   Rio pouted – ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡? – and said, "I'll make it up to you. With dinner."

   He then swam back over to Chrissy and rested his arms on the pool tiles beside her. "So . . . no game?"

   Chrissy shrugged, not really seeing the harm in indulging Rio with a silly game. “Uh, I dunno. Have you heard of 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑-𝑦𝑜𝑢-𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟?” And when Rio shook his head, smiling, Chrissy quickly explained the premise to him.

   “You’d say something hypothetical like, oh, 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑖𝑧𝑧𝑎 𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒, and then we both answer the question,” she told him.

   “Vaya, I think I get it.” He paused, a smile playing across his face, then said “Would you rather . . . 𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒?”

   Chrissy wrinkled her nose. “Neither? But I guess, since I have to pick – apples. That way I could give the peels to Slippers; he loves that stuff.”

   Chrissy asked the next question: 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑟 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒? And then it was Rio’s turn again.

   “So, would you rather . . . ” his eyes flicked briefly towards Chrissy’s face, as if he’d just thought of something he would never say out loud. He chuckled into his hands, turning away.

   Chrissy laughed. “What is it? Tell me.”

   “𝑊𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 – 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐽𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒 – 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑟 𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠 𝑚𝑒?” And that fucking grin was back.

   Chrissy snorted derisively. “That’s a stupid question. They’re supposed to be, you know – what-ifs.”

   “Stupid? How is that not a what-if?” Rio rested the side of his head against his arms, eyes twinkling up at her. “What if we did kiss? Haha just kidding . . . unless?”

   𝐷𝑖𝑑 ℎ𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑞𝑢𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑒? Chrissy thought, resisting the urge to laugh. Still, Chrissy was not about to keep playing the game if Rio was just trying to use it as an excuse to fuck with her. “I mean, it’d be something more along the lines of – I don’t know, never have Starbucks again or marry you. A what-if that wouldn’t actually happen.”

   Rio shrugged, pushing himself up and wading back into the water so that he was directly in front of Chrissy. “𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦, 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑. 𝐴𝑙𝑙 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝑑 𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠 𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛'𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒.”

   Chrissy resisted the urge to roll her eyes for the third time. “I never said that. Besides, you’ve seen how fucking overpriced Starbucks is; a one-time kiss would be no big deal, compared to getting that stuff for free,” she said dryly.

   𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑟𝑎𝑛 𝑎 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑜-𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑠𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑒. “Vale,” he replied, swimming closer. Before Chrissy could process what the hell was going on, he’d moved right in front of her, propping himself halfway out of the water with his hands on either side of her, resting against the pool deck.

   He was so close to her. Too close; if Chrissy moved even an inch forward, their noses would bump together.

   "𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠 𝑚𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙, 𝑛𝑜 𝑏𝑖𝑔 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙?” he said, teasingly.

   Chrissy froze for a split second, and before she could stop herself, she smiled and said “𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑐𝑘𝑠,” leaned forward, and pecked Rio on the lips.

   Chrissy felt Rio immediately tense up, and then – before she could pull away – Rio reached up and pulled her close, his fingers tangling into her wet locks. Chrissy let herself slip back into the water as the kiss deepened, her head emptied of all thoughts besides Rio.

   The two of them both came up for air at the same time. Chrissy felt . . . strangely breathless, staring up at him. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦’𝑑 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟.

   Fuck. Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

   “Rio . . .” she started, hesitantly.

   Rio sighed heavily. “I know, I know. Sorry.” He took a step back, letting his hands fall back down into the water. “Jueputa . . . I don’t like this game.”

   Chrissy laughed, a bit breathlessly. No kidding. She took a moment to steal a glance at Rio, who looked visibly upset. Chrissy, for her part, was also not the happiest about what had happened.

   (𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑢𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑒. 𝑁𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒.)

   An awkward silence fell over the two of them, standing in the crystal-clear water of the pool as the afternoon sun shone down on them. Then, Rio laughed and said, “Eh, you want to watch Netflix?”, and Chrissy couldn’t help the giggles that slipped out of her mouth.

   Chrissy boosted herself out of the pool and dried herself off as best as she could with some of the towels that Rio had grabbed earlier. 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑜𝑙.

   Turning, Chrissy raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Well? Are you coming or what?”

   “I will, uh, soon,” replied Rio. “You go ahead. The remote’s on the coffee table.” Chrissy shrugged and went on her way.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   When the TV screen flickered to life, the first thing that popped up in Rio’s Netflix was The Office. Chrissy stared for a moment, then burst out into quiet giggles. 𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛, 𝑅𝑖𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 9-5 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑜 . . . 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙. Especially when Rio’s life was so different from the situation portrayed in the show.

   With nothing better to do, Chrissy settled down in one of the couches, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑚𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑠ℎ 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑒’𝑑 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒. The way that Rio’s hands had felt in her hair, his lips against hers-

   Okay. That’s enough, she chided herself, and instead directed her thoughts to her shitty car. God – ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑔𝑒𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑛𝑘 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑙𝑦, 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✩. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

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