About ten minutes later, we stopped at a nearby park and took a seat at one of the picnic tables.
It was quiet and peaceful here. A few couples took a stroll by the lake while a few pet parents walked their dogs down the winding paths. The sun peeked through the tall trees as the sky began to darken into a beautiful pink-and-purple hue.
The view was breathtaking. It almost made me forget what we came here for.
As Jake took the paper bag out of his backpack, I cocked my head forward and drummed my fingers against the table.
"Here you go." He put a green-and-white burger box in front of me.
And then it clicked. Could it be?
Excitement rushed through me as I opened the box to see if I was right—and I was.
The box held a bubblegum-blue-and-pink burger with gooey marshmallow crème and caramel sauce oozing from between the thick fruit patties.
"Greedy's Sweety Fruity Burger! Thanks!" I picked the burger up and sank my teeth into it, expecting a delicious symphony of flavor that would send me straight to heaven.
But it did the exact opposite.
There was nothing sweet about the so-called Sweety Fruity Burger. The colorful buns were dense, the fruit patties were bitter, the marshmallow was bland, and the caramel sauce was burned.
"Something wrong?" Jake asked, munching his French fries.
"No, no." I shook my head and flashed a tight-lipped smile. "All's good."
The expensive burger tasted awful. But Jake had been kind enough to buy it for me, so I forced myself to eat it. I can't believe people actually pay fifteen bucks for this. Lovejoy's burgers taste a million times better than this weird—
"Come on," he insisted as I nibbled the burger. "Spill it out. What's wrong?"
I wanted to voice my thoughts, but I didn't want him to think I was being ungrateful. "Nothing."
More like everything. How the heck did this become viral on TweetyGram? Sure, it looks so good in pictures, but this has got to be the worst burger I've ever eaten! Greedy's owner must've made a deal with the devil because no person in their right mind would want to buy this—
"Oh, come on, Linds. You look like you're being forced to eat shit."
I almost choked on the burger, coughing and spluttering. Oops. I guess I need to hone my acting skills, huh?
Letting out a chuckle, he offered me a paper napkin and a can of orange soda.
I chugged down the soda and wiped my mouth with the napkin. "Alright, fine. I know you went through all that trouble to get this burger for me, and I really, really appreciate it. It's just. . . this isn't as delicious as it looks."
"I know."
I frowned. "You knew?"
"Most TweetyGrammable food doesn't taste good. Some even give you a stomach ache. Of course, there are always exceptions. Like Dessertholic's products." As I tried to process the new information, he added, "The first rule of TweetyGram? All that glitters is not gold. The second rule of TweetyGram? TweetyGram isn't reality."
Jake's words prompted me to wonder if the rules didn't just apply to food. What if the perfect TweetyGrammable life that Charity and Harriet portrayed on TweetyGram was nothing like it seemed? What if it was just smoke and mirrors, like Greedy's Sweety Fruity Burger?
As I pondered the questions, another popped into my mind.
"Then why did you buy me this crap?" I pointed at the half-eaten burger in the box.
He shrugged. "You said you wanted it."
I opened my mouth to retort but clamped it shut with a pop almost immediately. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I brought this upon myself.
"Now, if you don't want that," he said, reaching for the burger box, "let's just throw—"
"Who says I don't want it?" I snatched the burger and took a large bite. "I said it doesn't taste as good as I imagined, but there's no way I'm letting food go to waste."
He chuckled, shoving a handful of fries into his mouth. "Fine. Don't blame me if you get a stomach ache tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." As we continued eating, my mind reminded me of the thing I'd been meaning to say to him over the past few days. "Hey, I'm sorry for lashing out at you the other day."
"Hmm? You gotta be a little more specific than that. You lash out at me pretty often."
"Fair point. I meant about the dress."
"Ah."
"It was really kind of you to buy me that dress, and I—"
"No, no. It's fine. You don't have anything to apologize for. I overstepped my boundaries. I shouldn't have used my second request for that. If anyone should apologize, it's me."
"Well . . . I still think I owe you an explanation though. If you'd like to hear it." As the words left my lips, I began to suspect the Sweety Fruity Burger was secretly dosed with a truth serum.
Jake stopped eating and put on a serious face. "I'm all ears."
I put the burger back in the box, inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled. "Look, it's not that I don't want to wear the dress you gave me, but it's more like I can't. You probably notice I always wear long sleeves, right?"
"Mm-hmm."
Anxiety tingled along my nerves as I began to wonder how he'd react if he knew about my scars. Would he be disgusted? Would he see me as a freak? Would he laugh at me?
Or worse, would he pity me?
Chewing my lower lip, I raised my gaze to meet his. There was something in his eyes that comforted me. I didn't know what it was, but it gave me enough strength to roll up the sleeve of my jacket and show him the burn scars on my forearm.
"The fire, of course." He pulled his mouth into a tight line and shook his head, guilt etched across his handsome features. "I'm so stupid. I'm sorry. I should've—"
"No, no. It's fine. Really, it is," I reassured, pushing my sleeve back down. "You couldn't have known."
A tinge of guilt remained in his eyes, but it was all there was. He didn't look at me with pity like the doctors and nurses had always done after they'd seen my scars. He didn't look at me like I was a freak like my classmates had done back in high school.
He still looked at me like I was . . . me.
A wave of relief flowed through me, and for the first time in a long time, it felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
"Hey, can I ask you something?" he asked.
"Shoot."
He licked his lips, hesitating. "You don't have to answer, but what happened that night? I mean, your mom seemed to be a lovely person. It's hard to believe she did what the media said about her."
I gritted my teeth when I remembered the headlines the media cooked up to sell their stupid tabloids. "It was total BS. Mom didn't set that fire on purpose. And she certainly didn't try to commit a murder-suicide. I mean, yeah, she was an alcoholic. But no matter how drunk she was, she sure as hell wouldn't kill herself and her daughters. Those lowlives who dared to call themselves journalists should've gotten their facts straight. Bree and I weren't even in the house when the fire broke, for crying out loud. If we had, then there wouldn't have been a fire in the first place."
My chest heaved as anger seethed through me. I grabbed the burger and ripped a chunk of it with my bare teeth, imagining it was those stupid gossip columnists' heads I was shredding into pieces.
A glint of curiosity danced in Jake's eyes, but he waited patiently until I was ready to talk.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. "Mom always had a bowl of soup and a few bottles of wine before she slept. She had a lot on her mind. I mean, she was an actress in her mid-forties. Hollywood wasn't—still isn't exactly kind to aging actresses. Plus, a few weeks before, she'd found out that her good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend had cheated on her with her twenty-year-old assistant and scammed her out of her life savings, so . . ."
Although Mom had always put on a happy face in front of Bree and me, we both knew she was struggling. Her life was falling apart, but she wasn't going to give up. She already had a plan to get back up. She was going to start her own production company and write her autobiography, which I was sure would be a hit.
Mom was a fighter. And the fact that the world chose to believe otherwise because of those gossip articles made my blood boil.
I chugged my orange soda, letting the chilled drink cool me down. "That night, she must've forgotten to turn off the stove after cooking the soup. She did that a lot. Usually, Bree and I would smell the smoke and turn the stove off. But that night Bree was out celebrating her boyfriend's birthday while I was supposed to have a sleepover at Nat's."
"So how did you end up home?" Jake asked.
"Nat and I had a stupid fight. I don't even remember what it was about, but I got angry enough that I took a cab home. When I got there, the house was already on fire. I called 911, but the fire department took a long time to show up. I knew Mom was still inside the house. Her car was outside. So . . . I went in."
He blinked at me, surprised and amused. "You went into a burning house to save your mom?"
"Incredibly stupid, I know." My chest tightened as memories of that fateful night flowed back. Even after seven years had passed, I could still picture that night vividly in my mind. Tears stung my eyes, but I fought them back. "I found Mom unconscious in her bedroom. I tried to get her out, but by then the fire had engulfed the place. The ceiling collapsed and knocked me unconscious. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital, suffering second and third-degree burns all over my body, and as if that's not bad enough, Bree told me that . . . Mom didn't make it."
"God. That's awful." Sympathy shone in Jake's eyes. "I'm so sorry."
I gave him a weak smile. "Well, at least my face wasn't burned to a crisp, right?"
He chuckled. "See? There's always something to be grateful for even in the worst moments."
"Yeah. I have no idea how I only suffered first-degree burns on my face. It was a miracle. I guess I must've covered my face with my arms that night because my arms suffered the worst. Those stupid tabloids reported I'd become a female version of Freddy Krueger though."
As I continued eating my burger, Jake asked, "Is that why you want to be a crime journalist? To expose fake news?"
"Mm-hmm." I smiled. "What about you? Since when do you want to be an underwear model?"
"I don't."
I furrowed my brow. "I thought that's why you went to LA."
"Yeah, but I don't exactly want to be an underwear model. It just seemed like a good chance to earn some quick money to start my business."
"Hmm? What business?"
When we'd been kids, Jake had never told me what he wanted to be when he grew up. I'd never dared to ask either because there had been a good chance he wouldn't have reached adulthood. Nevertheless, considering his altruism, I always thought he'd end up being the CEO of a charitable foundation or working some other non-profit jobs. After all, his trust fund already set him up for life.
Never in my entire life had I ever imagined him choosing to take his clothes off for a living.
"Promise not to laugh?"
I sucked the caramel off my thumb. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it in a whoosh. "I want to open a cat café where people can play with senior cats, disabled cats, and just . . . cats that nobody wants."
"So, basically, you just want to adopt as many cats as possible?"
"You read my mind." He grinned, earning a chuckle from me. "It's not just about giving them a life that they deserve though. It's also about showing the world that adopting senior cats or disabled cats can be as fun as adopting kittens."
An amused smile spread across my face. "Aww. That's adorable."
He dropped his gaze to his French fries and shoved a handful into his mouth, blushing. "Well, my dad doesn't think so. He thinks it's pointless and he insists I should take over the family business instead, but I don't want to. I mean, running a mass media company is boring, you know?"
"I hate you so much right now." I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. "So why don't you just use your trust fund to start your business?"
"Sadly, I'm a man of my word. When I left home, I told the old man I wouldn't touch my trust fund; that I would make it on my own. I thought it'd be a piece of cake. But as it turns out, living in LA with only an underwear model's salary is far from enough. So here I am, working a ridiculous number of odd jobs and still nowhere near where I want to be." He drew his mouth into a grim line.
"Hey, I'd say you're doing pretty well for yourself right now," I said, trying to cheer him up. "You have a Ducati, don't you? You should consider selling that to start your business."
He scratched the back of his head and let out an awkward laugh. "I can't do that. The Ducati's actually a birthday present from my grandma."
I snortled. "Why am I not surprised?"
"I pay the rent and all my bills entirely by myself though," he quickly added, pointing a warning finger at me.
His adorable reaction earned a hearty laugh from me. "That's a good start. Keep that up and you'll be opening that cat café soon!"
"I don't know, Linds. I've been trying to save up some money over the past two years, but for some reason, the money just keeps. . . disappearing!" The frustration in his voice was palpable, and it made me sympathize with him.
"A piece of friendly advice? Stop buying new toys for Princess Tortie." As he opened his mouth to protest, I added, "And maybe hire a financial advisor."
He closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes in thought. I swore I could see a light bulb flashing above his head as his lips slid into a smirk. "Hey, I have an idea. You're good with money, right?"
"I wouldn't say I'm good with money, but I'm certainly better with it than you are."
"I know, so maybe you can help me handle my finances. Become my personal financial advisor. For free, of course."
"Hmm." I arched an eyebrow. "Request number two, I presume?"
"Yeah. What do you say? Do we have a deal?" He offered his hand, and without giving it a second thought, I gave it a firm shake.
"Deal."
After I finished my burger, he offered, "Hey, still got some room for dessert?"
"Are you kidding me?" Excitement surged through me, and I grinned. "I always have room for dessert."
Author's Note:
So, thoughts about this chapter?
The night is still young, so expect more surprises in the next chapter!
Thanks for reading! :)