Everyone has baggage, but it's certainly not Selina's job to carry it for them.
*****
Radio talk show host Selina Locke was just looking for a peaceful summer in sunny Barcelona, but...
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SELINA DOESN'T TEXT REMUS.
It's not like she doesn't want to, but she fears she'd pass off as too clingy slash desperate. Besides, she has no idea of what to say because, after all, what in the world should she say, anyway?
Hey, Remus, this is Selina from last night. This is just so you can save my number—if you want to, of course, but it feels like I'm invading your privacy by having your number while you know next to nothing about me.
Or something along those lines. Preferably, it should be something that doesn't give off the wrong idea, hinting towards something deeper than things actually are.
She doesn't have a problem with getting too involved with someone; she has a problem with getting too involved with celebrities. Granted, she has never done it, but she just knows it's something similar to stepping on a buried landmine; you know it's going to blow up if you move, but there's no way you'll manage to stay forever frozen where you are.
Her roommate, Ethan, often reminds her she's terrified of commitment, to which she enjoys replying it's not commitment per se she's bothered by. The only thing that scares her, besides snakes, is being exploited and being taken advantage of because that's just how her world works. There's always someone trying to step over you to succeed and she'd be lying if she said she hadn't screwed other people over during the early phases of her career.
There's also the happy coincidence that getting too involved with a celebrity was exactly what pulled her parents apart, destroying their marriage and forcing her to live without a father for several years. It forced her to make herself promise she would never let something like that ever happen to her or to her children.
"I think you think too highly of yourself sometimes,"Ethan said, slumped over his notebook and heavy-looking astrophysics books, before she left last month.
Selina, knitting her brows together, huffed, blowing back her hair. "What? It's true. There are things you have to do to survive, and I'm not proud of what I did."
"Is that why you think you'll inevitably get romantically involved with a celebrity? Because it will help you survive?"
"No." Her voice turned a few octaves higher and he threw her a deadpan look, as if she had just proven his point. "I'm just saying—people in this business take advantage of each other, even if it's just a PR stunt. I mean, you saw what happened to Beverly. Plus, I've dated people before and we always ended things on good terms . . . not that I don't love my grudges."
