Beautifully Unbroken (20 page)

I nodded towards the young girls, who weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they were talking about me and Blake.

“Ah sweet, you have fans,” she teased.

“No. Blake has fans; I have haters,” I said in frustration.

The girls decided to approach slowly, one pushing the other forward and then retreating, and vice versa.

“I hope they have cameras in here for when forensics arrive,” I said in a hushed tone.

Casey laughed, but inside me was the fear that I had done well today to forget about.

“Are you Joanne Summers?” one of the girls asked.

“Josephine,” I corrected her with a nod.

Both girls giggled a little before girl number two spoke. “You are so pretty.”

“Thank you,” I answered in surprise.

“You and Blake will have such beautiful babies,” girl number one said excitedly.

“Can we have a picture with you? No one is going to believe this without a picture,” girl number two asked.

I was completely taken by surprise. “Oh, of course. Sure, um …” I pushed my chair away and stood. Before I knew it, the girls had taken up both of my sides and had handed both of their phones to Casey.

“Charming,” I heard Casey say behind a laugh.

“Say cheese, everyone!” Casey chimed as she snapped the pictures on both phones.

The overexcited girls took their phones back and decided they would Facebook and tweet the pictures right away. “Thank you so much!” they both said hysterically before stumbling away and out of the bistro.

I was completely dumbfounded by it all. “What the hell just happened?” I said, shaking my head.

“They loved you,” Casey laughed. “Get used to it, because that was just the beginning.”

That was the kind of attention I could get used to. It was lovely that for the first time since being in New York, not only had I been recognized, but they were the sweetest girls and they actually liked me. Granted, I wasn’t going to be favoured by everyone, but it really did mean a lot when all I had ever known was fear. It was nice to feel liked, if only for just one day.

The next few days were crazy. Blake and I were like ships that passed in the night because of his busy schedule. I hated not being with him. It drove me crazy when we would go an evening without seeing each other, which only made Blake beg me more and more to move in with him. However, for me, it was still too soon. Even though it was tempting, everything still felt too fresh for me to consider it. Blake had also told me that his filming in Miami was to clash with my two recordings of
Perfect Alibi
, which couldn’t be helped, but the more I let my mind wander, the more and more I convinced myself that we were going to end up slowly slipping apart. I felt my throat constrict tighter the more I thought about it, until eventually I calmed myself down by remembering how much Blake had fought for us until I had given in. That reassured me that we were tough enough to survive our time apart.

I had become Casey’s personal wedding planner at some point over the past few days; the normally bubbly, outgoing, carefree Casey had turned into Bridezilla; she was struggling to find anywhere that she deemed suitable for the wedding and had even earned the name Goldilocks from Christina and me. Everywhere was either too big too small, too new too tacky, or any other excuse she could muster up. Planning the wedding was, however, helping me to forget about the time I wasn’t spending with Blake and also the growing attention I was beginning to receive every time I was noticed, which was increasing every day.

I had managed to meet up with Marcus for lunch too. I think Blake was secretly making it his mission to keep me busy by asking the people he knew well to watch over me.

Marcus was so excited that Blake and I had seemed to raise the profile of his already highly popular sitcom that he even spoke about seeing whether they could write me in permanently. I told him he would regret that when things died down and I returned to being just Jo.

We ran through everything in preparation for the two weeks we would be working together. Rehearsals were due to start the day that Blake would fly out to Miami. They would take place Monday to Thursday, with the live recording being shot on the Friday evening both weeks. At least with Blake away I was going to be busy. I had my job coming up and Casey’s wedding plans; I would hardly have any time to miss Blake. I hoped.

With Alex due back from Vegas the following day and Blake doing a night shoot, Casey and I had decided on a girly night in with food, wine, and as many Channing Tatum movies as we could squeeze in. I had talked Casey into inviting Christina along, and she was going to do her best to try to get along with her, forget about the perfect wedding venue for now, and have a fun night.

We made margaritas and enjoyed takeaway pizza but never got round to watching the movies. Once Christina and Casey started grilling me on my sex life with Blake, I decided it was only fair that they join in too; truth or dare it was.

No one wanted to do a dare for fear of what we would all come up with, so it was truths all round. Casey admitted that the most public place she had had sex was on a football pitch, while Christina’s was on a secluded beach.

Until Blake, my sex life had been too boring for any of that. My most public place would probably have been in my first boyfriend’s house while his parents were downstairs watching TV. Christina asked Casey her favourite sexual position, to which Casey scrunched her nose before replying, “You want me to tell you the best way that your brother can get me to orgasm, like multiple orgasm?”

I threw my head back, howling at Christina, who visibly shuddered from the thought.

The laughter didn’t stop all night. Every question was related to sex, and it turned out that until Blake, I had been well and truly missing out.

Casey asked me how old I was when I lost my virginity. “Seventeen,” I replied, which got a “whoop” from Casey.

Christina asked Casey if she had ever taken a guy’s virginity. “Eeewwww, no way! That’s just wrong on so many levels,” was her reply.

Christina was smirking; her eyes were glazed over from the amount of alcohol she had consumed.

“Oh my God,” Casey gasped. “Have you?”

Christina nodded slowly as she held her lip between her teeth. “It was sweet,” she replied. “He was hot – well, still is actually.” She held her hands up. “He was three years my junior, and it seemed everyone wanted a piece of him, but he gave it all to me, over and over again; he couldn’t get enough,” she said seductively.

Casey threw a pillow at her and told her she was a filthy cougar. We all laughed in hysterics except Christina, who was eying me suspiciously.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked as I slumped into the sofa, sipping my margarita.

“Has he ever told you, Jo? Told you how wild we were and the things I taught him?”

My laughter suddenly stopped, and I heard Casey gasp as the room fell silent.

“You slept with Blake?” I asked, shocked.

“Oh yeah, popped his cherry, then taught him everything he knows,” she said, wide-eyed. “And let me tell you, for a beginner, he was good. I mean, wow.”

I could feel Casey’s eyes burning into me; she was obviously as shocked as I was at this revelation.

“Oh, come on,” Christina chimed. “It was years ago! Like fifteen years ago.”

“You slept with him when he was fifteen?” I asked, shocked.

“Oh my God, that’s illegal!” Casey said.

“We were both consenting. I never did anything that he didn’t want to do, and believe me, he liked to do the lot. By the time I cooled things off with him, he was old enough anyway.” She shrugged.

“You called it off?”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “We had been … you know … at it for three years, and being twenty one with an eighteen-year-old boyfriend didn’t seem so appealing once my friends and I were heading out to bars and all that; it was time I got me a real man. Mind you, I’m still actually working on that.”

Casey snorted. “But being eighteen with a fifteen-year-old boyfriend was okay, though, yeah?”

The room fell silent; all eyes were on me.

“Come on, Jo,” Christina said, breaking the silence, “we’re talking about fifteen years ago; he’s like a brother to me now.

“I think that’s probably the sickest thing I’ve ever heard,” Casey said, pretending to heave.

“Well I think we’ve all drunk way too much tonight; it’s bringing out too much stuff that I’m not up to hearing about. I’m going to bed.” I stood and headed for my room without any further words.

“Jo, I’m sorry!” Christina shouted, “I thought you knew!”

I slammed the door behind me and fell onto my bed crying. It had been fifteen years, and even though I felt I was being ridiculous, Christina telling me that she had finished it, and not Blake, made me wonder how he had felt at the time. How long would he have carried on if she hadn’t finished it? Was he in love with her back then? Did he still have feelings for her now? Did she break his heart when she finally stopped sleeping with him? I needed to know the answers to all of these questions. As ridiculous and jealous as I knew I was being, I really needed to know.

It was one thing seeing pictures of Blake with other women he had been linked with in the past, but another when one of them was his best friend’s sister who not only took his virginity but carried on with him for three years and then sat in my apartment telling me all about it.

I put on some shoes, grabbed my handbag, and walked out of the apartment. Blake wouldn’t be home yet, but he had given me a key and told me that the apartment was mine as much as his, although I still wouldn’t move in with him officially. So I would go there and wait as long as I needed to until he returned.

I stepped out of the building and got into the first cab that stopped for me. I needed to see him; I needed to know the answers to everything that was swimming around in my head. I would sit and wait all night if I had to, but I needed to know everything as soon as he came home.

I lay on Blake’s sofa watching the clock tick by. It was four a.m. and he still wasn’t home.

I started having ridiculous thoughts that he wasn’t actually working but instead was with someone else. The more I tried to stop myself from thinking those ridiculous thoughts, the more I imagined him having sex with Christina; the more I thought of him having sex with Christina, the angrier with him I became.

Christina was a lot like Casey – tall, slim, and tanned, with bouncy blonde hair that she seemed to enjoy flicking over her shoulder a hell of a lot.

I should have trusted Casey’s instinct about her, but I hadn’t. I gave her a chance, and now she had made me an emotional wreck. It wasn’t even as if I could avoid her; she would be tagging along to venues with us and would obviously be part of the wedding somehow, even though Casey had said one hundred per cent that she wouldn’t be a bridesmaid. It was inevitable I would see her a lot, yet every time I would see her, I would imagine her and Blake and sex.

Soft fingers brushed against my face, causing me to moan lightly.

“Jo,” I heard Blake say softly. “Jo, wake up, beautiful.”

I forced my eyes open, and immediately they connected with Blake’s. He was smiling at me, but his smile disappeared when he noticed my obvious state.

“Have you been crying?” he asked as his brow creased with worry.

I sat up and wiped my eyes. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost five,” he said softly. “How long have you been here?” I stood from the chair and stepped around him.

“Jo? What’s going on?” He stood and moved to approach me. I held my hands up to stop him. I couldn’t even look him in the eye, as I felt the anger bubbling up inside me.

“Where have you been until five a.m.?” I asked shakily.

“You know where I’ve been – at work.”

“And you’ve come straight home?”

“Of course I have; where do you think I’ve been?”

“Tell me about when you lost your virginity,” I said shakily.

“What?” he asked with obvious confusion. “Why would you ask me about something that happened fifteen years ago? That’s ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Is it?” I replied with anger. “Is it ridiculous that I had to sit in my apartment tonight listening to Christina, your best friend’s sister, telling me all of the gory details about her taking your virginity, about what she taught you, how much you loved it and kept on going back for more, not forgetting how good you were, and that it went on for three whole years before she finished it with you!” I spat out. “You fucked Christina for three years, and you didn’t think to tell me! Do you have even the slightest idea of how that felt, Blake? Do you!”

“Jo, calm down,” Blake said softly. “I can see that you’re upset.”

“Upset! I’m fucking fuming! She made me feel like I should have been thanking her for teaching you what you know!” I shouted. “Everything that we have done, everything that you have done to me,” I sobbed. “Did she teach you all of that? Did you do all of those things with her?”

Blake sighed heavily as he looked down to the floor.