Dancer's Body

Chapter 33

Olivia chewed on her cuticle, tucked into Roman's car. Foregoing his secured underground parking spot, he'd eased into a space across the park. From here, the building looked cold and foreboding.

Scrolling through her phone, she hunts for distractions. However, social media is out. She'd disabled all of her accounts last night to try and escape the taunts.

Wyatt's name lit up her screen. "Nice photo! Not such a prude anymore I see." Her heart shifted uncomfortably, but for the most part, any grip he had on her had vanished. I can't believe I wasted almost all of college with him.

She considered replying, but deleted it and blocked his number again. Yet tears began to roll down her cheeks. What's taking them so long? Roman had been in there an hour already.

Hannah's name lit up the screen again, the third time that morning. She seemed to be competing with Nyla's constant texts. Olivia sighed and put her phone on silent. What was the use? She couldn't tell them anything anyway. All she wanted to do was curl up in a dark place where nobody could reach her and lick her wounds.

Olivia went to her Buzzfeed app and began thumbing through the various mindless quizzes. "Answer these questions to find out which Pretty Little Liars character you are." "What kind of pastie are you at Gregg's?" Then she saw it.

Nestled in the underbelly of the site where it belonged, a community post on the scandal was featured. "Nubile Young Dancer Sex Scandal with Playboy Artistic Director." There was a collage of her and Roman—paparazzi shots she hadn't noticed from their trip to New York, and of course the blurred-out photo Brigitte had so eagerly shared. Fuck.

Hannah called again. "Hello?" Olivia said.

"There you are! Why haven't you been answering my calls? Are you all right?"

"I don't know," Olivia said meekly. "I'm—I'm sitting in his car right now across from the company. He got called in for an emergency meeting late last night. I think he's getting fired right now, and I'm pretty sure I'm next."

"Oh, Ollie," Hannah said. "I'm so sorry. That's sick, what that girl did. But ... why were you ... "

"Why was I what?" she snapped.

"You know. Doing it at work," Hannah said.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to take it out on you," Olivia sighed. "And I don't know. I just don't know. It's like an addiction, I can't stop it."

"You're in love," Hannah said.

"What? No."

"Of course you are! It's the honeymoon stage, everyone goes through it."

"I didn't with Wyatt."

"Yeah, well. Like I said, you're in love now. I liked Wyatt well enough for a while. You know, he seemed safe and kind of dull. But I figured you were happy. I didn't know any different."

"I figured I was happy, too," Olivia said.

"No matter what happens, you found love, Ollie. That's great! I mean—do you think he feels the same way?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "These past few weeks, it's like they've happened to someone else and I'm just watching. You should have seen it all, in New York. The private plane, the penthouse, the dress. It was like a fairytale."

"That's how it should be in the beginning," Hannah said softly. "I mean, usually not with private planes and everything, but you know what I mean. You'll just have to wait and see if there's something real beneath all that."