She returned to the streets with her itinerary pulled up on her iPhone. She had to check in at an endless list of places to make sure she was approved and ready to go. She needed to see the venue. She needed to check the dressing rooms. She needed to consult security and shipping to figure out the best method to get her designs here in one piece. She needed to consult the makeup artists and hairstylists, so she could portray her vision. She needed to have a meeting with the board for the fashion show and with her own personal assistant, which was just insane, and another meeting with the camera crew. And the list went on and on.
By the time she had done only half of those things, Trihn felt exhausted. No wonder Teena had scheduled her to be here for three days to get through this stuff and why she hadn’t come along to deal with the tedious details.
Trihn walked up to a vendor to get a bottle of water. She paid for it with cash, which she always liked to have on hand in the city, and then started skimming the magazines. This had been a habit while she was modeling. She’d liked to see if any of her friends had made it onto the covers, and when she’d had free time before dance, she would pick one up and flip through to see if she could find a familiar face.
Trihn jolted. “Whoa!” Speaking of a familiar face.
She snatched the tabloid magazine out of the stand and stared at the cover. In big letters, it read, Chloe’s Secret Love, and it had a giant picture of Chloe and Damon on the cover. Trihn opened the tabloid and flipped to the page listed. There, in detail, was a series of pictures of Damon and Chloe together. In one, they both had their heads down as they moved through a crowd. A similar picture had Damon with his arm slung over Chloe as they walked into an arena. A few other pictures had them standing side by side at various venues.
Trihn started reading the article with shaking hands.
CHLOE AVANA’S ROMANCE WITH DJ DAMON STONE WAS STRICTLY OFF-LIMITS.
Add another guy to the increasingly long list of people Chloe Avana has been photographed with during the last couple of months. Even before their single “We Never Met” rocked the charts, the two had been spicing it up behind the scenes.
Relatively unknown Damon Stone supposedly rose to fame after playing a remixed version of Avana’s hit single “Heartbreaker” at a Las Vegas nightclub. But an anonymous source close to the couple says that they’d known each other long before that moment, and no doubt, things had been hot offstage long before the couple came out as the sizzling new duo.
Trihn stopped reading after that. Her heart rate leveled out, and she very carefully replaced the magazine in the stand.
What rubbish!
These tabloids always made something out of nothing. Whoever this anonymous source close to the couple was clearly didn’t actually know Chloe or Damon.
Trihn had been the one to introduce them in the first place. He’d never come close to meeting Chloe, and in fact, he’d been a total unknown, not relatively unknown, before that moment.
The one incriminating picture with his arm around Chloe was probably because she had been freaking the fuck out about the crowds. The press didn’t know about her fear of crowds and the panic attacks she suffered from. But Trihn and Damon both knew that happened, and he had likely just been protecting Chloe and trying to calm her down. All the other photographs looked as if they had been taken on tour or during promotions. It was probably a fact of life that if he was going to be around Chloe, then Damon was going to be photographed.
Trihn reached for her phone and sent a text to Damon.
I love you.
He responded almost instantly.
I love you too.
How is Orlando?
Don’t know. I haven’t seen anything other than the airport, hotel, and arena.
No Disney World then? Harry Potter world? Platform 9 ?? Butterbeer?
Nope. Chloe said we’d have to get a backstage pass to the park to even go. No standing in lines. No wandering around and taking in the scenery.
That sounds awesome. Well, the lines part.
I’d rather go with you.
Maybe once you’re off the tour we could go.
I’d like that. How’s NYC?
The same.
Have you seen your family?
Lydia picked me up at the airport unannounced.
Sounds like her.
Yeah. She was fine I guess. Didn’t wave her ring in my face or mention the wedding at all actually.
Well, I hope it stays like that. I have to get in for a sound check. I’ll try to call you after the show. I love you.
I love you too.
Trihn pocketed her phone, feeling better about the stupid tabloid that she’d read. She hadn’t doubted Damon. She’d always figured that 99.9% of everything in those things was fake, but it was surreal to see her boyfriend in there and the ridiculous things it’d said about him and Chloe. What’s next? Chloe was going to be pregnant, but she wouldn’t know who the father was? They’d both end up on cocaine and in rehab and have a secret wedding? Because…everyone had secret weddings.
Trihn felt like she’d made so much progress since she and Damon had started dating. In the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t been that much time, but she’d been feeling stronger and stronger in their relationship. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to take the sight of that tabloid, even knowing it was false. Now, she just shrugged it off, texted her boyfriend, and daydreamed about going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios with him.