"Are you sure this is a good idea to look at this?" Becca asked as we huddled together over my computer on my bed. I was finally going to go online and see what was being said about me. I knew it was a bad idea, but curiosity was eating away at me and I had to know.
“No, this is a terrible idea, but since we’ve already closed the drapes and locked the doors, we have no choice.”
“Yeah… that’s not how that works, Kinsley,” Becca laughed.
“There’s no choice, Becca!” I added dramatically.
“Whatever, weirdo.”
My life had completely flipped upside down in the past few weeks. I used to take my old life for granted. Going to the grocery store, to practice, out to eat—I couldn't do any of it anymore without a group of photographers hounding my every move. And I wasn't even doing anything interesting! Had I been leaving clubs at 2:00 A.M. with white powder dusting my nose, sure, maybe Instagram me, but carrying Whole Foods bags to my car did not seem interesting to me.
Which is why I had to see what they were posting about—why was I still so newsworthy?
Becca typed in one of the top celebrity gossip sites and we waited for it to load. The first few stories were about actual celebrities doing things that were actually semi-interested: cheating, partying, and spending their money frivolously.
Then my name popped up and beneath it there was a photo of Liam and me walking hand in hand out of Starbucks. I was prepared for the worst, so when I saw "America's Sweetheart Soccer Couple" beneath the photo, I gasped. They clearly had the wrong person; that photo didn't even show the real details of the situation. Beneath my stylish sunglasses I had zero makeup on, they thought my hair looked trendy because I hadn't washed it yet that day, and there had been a coffee stain on the front of my shirt, which the website had clearly photoshopped out. I was smiling up at Liam because he was making fun of me for being a klutz with my coffee. I mean, we were happy and we were a couple, but as far as being anything close to "America's Sweethearts"... they had it all wrong.
Becca scrolled down to the comments section and that's where all the real controversy was housed. There were thousands upon thousands of comments concerning whether I was good enough/hot enough/nice enough/stylish enough to be dating Liam Wilder. Becca didn't let me read them for too long, but the comments I had time to read tore me apart piece by piece. Some of the claims were just too ridiculous not to ignore. "He should be with a blonde."— "He should be with a republican." — "He should date someone who is Jewish."
"Wow. People are really opinionated about Liam's dating habits. Like hyper-opinionated. Why do they care if I use a certain kind of shampoo?" I commented as Becca flipped to another website.
“Probably to make sure you don’t use a shampoo that tests their products on animals. They said they don’t want Liam dating an animal abuser.”
Oh good God. I wasn’t killing monkeys over here.
The next site she pulled up had a photo of Liam and me out on the beach near his house. I remembered seeing paparazzi that day and Liam had wanted to go back inside, but I wasn't going to let them ruin our afternoon. Now, I wish I'd listened. Seeing my body in a bikini splashed across the Internet felt oddly personal. The photographs weren’t even close to being pornographic, but it felt like I should get a say in whether they get to use photos of me in a bikini or not.
It didn’t help that Liam was rubbing lotion onto my back, and the attraction between us was clear even through the computer screen. Had there been an audio clip alongside the photo I would have surely been moaning.
"Do you want to keep going?" Becca asked, eying me wearily.
"Just a few more," I said, knowing the sinking feeling in my stomach was there to stay, even if I stopped looking now.
I should have stopped.
Why the fuck didn’t I stop.
The next few websites were clearly going for a different angle. All of them talked about the controversy that Tara had brought to the limelight: Liam dating me when he was my coach, our age difference, his womanizing past, and my seduction of him. All of it was complete bullshit. After all, the media had mostly crafted his past anyway, but it still stung to know that some people were judging me based on this information. And not just some people, thousands of people that didn't know me at all.
I was surprised to find quite a few new comments from Tara. It seemed that the threats from my father's lawyers hadn't shut her up and it enraged me to know that she was still out their spewing her lies.
"I'm going to talk to her," I stated, hopping up off the bed.
Becca sat up, her eyebrows pressed into her forehead in shock. "Who? Tara?"