Lavish | on hold

21 | Take Three

Stage fright had never been an illness that Portia had to deal with, attention and all eyes on her being her only aspiration in her life but these past few weeks taught her something that went against almost everything that she believed in.

Not all publicity was good publicity.

The past couple of days had Portia attempting to disguise herself in oversized glasses and trench coats in order to blend in with the public and avoid the angry mob of Milan's fandom from attacking her just as hard as they had been attacking over the internet. This time she genuinely believed that it was all over, she had lost and tarnished her reputation once in for all. Sometimes she wondered why she was still waiting for him to love her, why she was hoping that he would somehow mend her even though she didn't know if she was able to be mended.

The only thing that her mother focused on mending was the image and status of their last name that had lost all value the day that those 30 second videos were plastered all over social media. Sadly, the only way she knew how was through the classic "Hollywood Damage Control" where they would do all kinds of things to get positive buzz in order to outweigh the negative.

I'm way too sober for this.

Ever since that night, she decided that she wanted to be completely sober in order to take the backlash with as much sense as possible – and besides, blurred vision would've made it just as hard for her to identify his name if he ever decided to call her.

A member of staff knocked on her dressing room door, a clipboard in her clutch and a headpiece that she continued to communicate with as she entered the room.

"Are you ready?" She chirped with a friendly smile with her body already slightly twisted away from her, not giving her room to object or beg for the nearest exit.

"I guess," Portia muttered lowly to herself, lifting herself up from her black satin makeup chair to follow the woman out of the room. "Now or never."

She then gave a soldier smile to her glam squad that gave her brief words of encouragement and sympathetic smiles even though it was evident that their words and thoughts weren't on the same wavelength. That's how everyone felt the need to talk to her, with sugarcoated words and empty promises that things will get better. It was what Portia wanted to put a stop to the most. No one likes a charity case.

She wanted to be loathed not pitied almost as much as she wanted to be accepted not ignored.

As the doors of the backstage part of the studio were opened to her, she saw a face that she didn't think she'd see in a long time.

You have got to be kidding me.

"You've got a lot of nerve walking into here right now." The room fell silent with eyes kept completely on them both, bystanders unsure whether to immediately separate the two or walk away leaving them to sort out their issues.

Tate wore a black velvet suit and matching loafers with a silver watch on his right wrist and a subtle silver chain kept on his neck. His hair was slightly curled and slicked back that definitely appeared to be the outcome of being pressured by his demon fiancé. Portia slowly bit her lip as she tried to downplay how sexy he looked when he was mad, responding with a seemingly collected facial expression that contradicted the backflips her heart was making as they communicated solely through eye contact.