ATONEMENT || 𝟏𝟖+ [hiatus]

𝑖. 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔

──・・𖥸・・──

"You know, Jasper...she was sick. Really sick. Me and Cassidy, we did what we thought was best for her, and for her company. It's what she would have asked us to do, had she been more rational."

How can someone lie so easily? The words roll off his tongue as if he's rehearsed them a million times over, because he has. Every interview in the past two years has been some variation of those same words. It's disgusting. I stare at the dark oak floor, blue light from the television reflecting off of it and giving it a hazy appearance. It's all I can do as I hear the bullshit falling out of their mouths. I glance up at the screen once and notice Cassidy showing Jasper the giant diamond on her ring finger.

Oh, yeah. They got married last week. No wonder they're doing interview after interview. Press is going to be all over them for the next few days...and me by proxy. Great. I toss the empty popcorn bowl resting beside me at the television. It bounces lifelessly off of the screen and back onto the ground, where it spins momentarily before falling lamely on its rim.

I am bitter.

No, scratch that, I am more than bitter. I'm absolutely livid. I feel like I have every right to be, though. It isn't fair that Sam and Cassidy get showered with praise for being dickheads and somehow managing to do less than the bare minimum. Who knew that was possible? Apparently, they did.

They took MUSE right under my nose at my most vulnerable. It's not his creation, and it sure as hell isn't Cassidy's. It's mine. I created it from top to bottom, I built it up, I gave it the platform it has which Cassidy has somehow managed to fuck that up. I set everything up for her to be successful, then she steals it and somehow makes it worse than it was when it was nothing more than a Tumblr blog I made at 15. Now, MUSE is just like every other generic gossip magazine, so far removed from its original concept that it might as well be something else entirely. It's soulless. A facade. So fake and manufactured that anything genuine about it has been thrown to the wayside in favor of sales. Sam and Cassidy Wayne have turned my magnum opus into a damn joke.

Ophelia always scolds me for being so stuck in the past, for holding onto something that isn't mine anymore and hasn't been for years. She thinks I should start over, that I could turn lemons into lemonade and come back stronger. I wish it were that simple. Nothing is that simple. It seems like a naive daydream instead of a realistic aspiration. There's no turning lemons into lemonade, not with this situation. Plus, even if I tried to start over, Sam has sufficiently dragged my name over the coals to the point that all I'd be labeled is an unstable diva trying to reclaim my spotlight. The first thing he did after taking MUSE from me was exploiting my mental breakdown. It was on the front cover of every gossip magazine and website from here to Kingdom Come. Even TMZ got in on it. It was beyond embarrassing and those headlines haunt me to this day, sticking to my brain the way glue sticks to paper.

I wonder how they can sleep at night.

Even now, as he parades Cassidy around as his brand new trophy wife, he still manages to bring me into it and drag me further down. Do any of these television shows and publications think to reach out to me? No. You'd think they'd be bored by now and realize that it's such old news that nobody truly cares anymore. Oh well. Maybe their wedding will inject some relevance back into my dead career.