ALPHA || TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET

050

I am fixed on the ticking wall clock. The usually faint sound fills my head with an eerie metronome click. My legs are hiked up onto the dining room chair, and I hug my arms around my knees, fingernails digging into my palms.

"The firm is going ahead with the lawsuit." Across me, Iris sits with her hands folded on the glass tabletop. She walks us through logistics concerning the tabloid website that bought and distributed the photos, as well as routines which would follow, most of which can hardly focus on. The press could be right on our tails. The two of us will need to be exceedingly vigilant. If I'm alone, I can have a security guard arranged to accompany me. Of course, that measure could be taken only here, not back at home.

Timothée leans against the wall behind me, and I hear his leg shake with a nervous tick. Saoirse, who came up after she heard the news, sits a few feet away on the loveseat.

"I'm sure the two of you will talk about it." She looks from Timmy to me, offering a nod. She fiddles her hands. "I understand this is new terrain for you. Maybe expected. I wouldn't know. But everything should ease up within the next month. It's discombobulating at first, of course. But you seem like a smart girl."

"We did talk about it," Timmy interjects. "It was my–I mean, it was out of our control. Wasn't it?" His shaky tone goes from exclamation to a mumble. I sense him holding back, and I understand, as I myself only want to scream.

When his phone rang early that morning, it woke the both of us, and he went out to the balcony to answer it. The door shut behind him, his voice becoming muffled. I rolled over and quickly fell back asleep. Later I woke to see him sitting criss-crossed on the floor at my bedside, chin in the palm of his hand. The corners of his mouth twitched. I lifted my head and rubbed my eyes.

"I didn't want to wake you." He blinked, and his knuckles moved to his cheek. His face was still puffy from deep sleep. The smile he wore was placid and regretful.

"Come back to bed," I mumbled, holding out my arm. He stood and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over me to give my head a kiss. Like a worn habit, my hand went to his cheek, my fingers grazing his rosy skin. His lips pressed together, eyes fluttering down as he fashioned a half-hearted grin. Heaviness hung in his eyes.

I sat up. "What?"

Suddenly a buzz rang from the nightstand next to me, and my phone lit up with a notification. Several notifications. Then it was in my hand, finger swiping and scrolling, skimming headlines, pulling up photos, recognizing my own face. My breath caught in my throat, and there were bricks in my stomach.

The nail of my ring finger was lodged between my teeth, and I may not have blinked for quite some time. Both my Twitter and Instagram had been hunted down, their following increased by staggering amounts. I had a new tagged photo each second, me on the beach with my arms thrown around Timothée, the two of us eating on the restaurant balcony. Several of them entirely unflattering, like two teenagers with their tongues in each other's mouths. My face sprayed across Twitter, people I've never met piecing together their fictitious assumptions about me. Missed calls and texts from my mom and brother, from Lara, from friends I haven't spoken to in months. My hand had gone numb.

"You don't need to see everything," he'd said once he climbed on the bed, sat across me with his hands reposed over my legs. We said nothing for a long time, only his curls tickling my forehead as he tried to envelop me. Finally he tilted my chin up, and his hands slid to cupping my face. He pressed his lips to my forehead. "I love you. I love you. I love you," his raspy voice muttered, over and over.

His thumbs glided in circles on my cheekbones, and I followed his eyes as they darted across my face, searching for my reaction. Through the stiffness of my upper body, I managed to pull my arms around his neck. He pulled me into him with his hands under my knees. We clung to each other. We said nothing.