song for this chapter - faking it by calvin harris ft. kehlani + lil yachty
monday, november 12
in the following weeks after our first sleepover at james' in october, brandi and i had seen the twins, james and emma almost daily.
i never expected for this to turn into such an intense friendship, and i definitely regret all of the doubts i had.
they were all genuine, good people, and brandi and i definitely needed more people like that in our lives.
on weekdays after brandi and i had class, we'd either all go to james' house, or brandi's apartment, or the twins' house, or my apartment.
sometimes we would have sleepovers and end up spending the entire weekend with each other.
and even sometimes ethan would meet me in between my classes for lunch.
but, something was off. very off. i could just feel it.
not necessarily something was of with ethan or grayson, or james or emma, just the vibes i was getting felt very strange.
i just felt like something was gonna happen, that some news was gonna break and all hell would break loose.
and that feeling was right.
it was the middle of november, and brandi and i had been preparing for our midterms.
it had been a couple days since i had seen any of them because i was busy studying, but since i lived in downtown la, that meant that random ass sirens would just go off. multiple times a day. so focusing on midterms was always a struggle.
since it was a sunday, the library was closed and i was stuck at my place.
after trying to study for an hour, i called ethan and asked if i could go study at his place instead.
i drove the 20 minutes that it took to get to their house, pulled up next to grayson's bronco and put my car in park.
i walked to the front door, immediately being greeted by bryant.
"hi bryant," i smiled at him as he opened the door, stepping back to let me in.
"hey liv, the guys are in ethan's room," he nodded his head, signaling me to follow him.
"so do you like, live here? i swear you're always here," i said as i looked around the twins home, admiring the personal touches i could spot here and there.
"i mean, i have my own place but i do spend a lot of my time here." bryant explained.
i nodded, understanding completely since that is how mine and brandi's friendship works too.
we continued walking to ethan's room when we stopped a few feet away from the door. it was slightly open, and i could here the two talking, when bryant's phone started ringing.
"you can head on in, it's alexis calling about our next shoot." he gave me a smile as he answered his phone, walking out into the living room.
i was about to knock, when i heard ethan and grayson arguing on the other side of the door.
"dude, she's gonna be here any minute. you need to just tell her." this sounded like it came from grayson.
"shut up, grayson. it's not my place to." ethan argued back.
"then who's place is it?"
"not mine! can't you tell her? you have just as much to do with this as i do."
"cut the crap ethan, this all originally stemmed from you and emma. i just got roped into it." grayson said.
ethan didn't respond, he just sighed and passed back and forth a few steps.
"you've gotta just tell her, e." grayson said calmly, clearly not wanting to fight with his brother.
"no way am i telling her. can't mike do it? this is his mess to begin with," ethan continued to argue.
"tell who what?" i asked as i walked into ethan's room so that they could see me, already knowing who they were talking about.
they both sighed as grayson stared ethan down. i could tell that he was genuinely annoyed with him.
"ethan. just tell her. please." what the hell do they need to tell me?
he sighed as he moved closer to me, finally giving in to his brothers urges to tell me.
"emma and i...aren't actually dating. we never were."
"what? what-what do you mean you never were?" i stuttered only because i was shocked.
"it was all mike's idea. i didn't want to go through with it, but i had to, because of our contract. yeah emma's great, she's one of the funniest people i know and she's a super sweet girl but, we're too similar. if i had a girl as a twin instead of grayson, it would literally be her."
"but what do you mean it was all mike's idea? what was it, like a business deal?"
"kind of."
"did james know about this?"
"no. he had no idea." that made me feel a little better.
"what do you mean it was "kind of" a business deal?"
"do you promise you're not gonna hate me after i tell you this?"
"ethan, why would i hate you?"
"i don't know okay, but, please just promise me."
i sighed. "i promise."
"mike thought it would be a good idea to never actually confirm or deny if we were dating or not, that way we'd stay relevant in the media. the more relevant you are, the more people are interested in you. the more people are interested, the more views you get. and the more views you get-" i cut him off, knowing how he was going to finish his sentence.
"the more money you make," i finished.
"yeah. but that's where you come in." ethan said.
"me? what do i have to do with any of this?" i questioned.
"well, you see, emma's been talking to this guy for a while now, and they're kind of, you know a thing-" i cut him off again, mentally kicking myself for being so rude.
"just a thing?"
"okay, fine, they're dating. and since they're dating, emma obviously doesn't want to keep putting on this act that her and i are together."
"okay, that makes sense, but what do i have to do with this..." my voice trailed off, slowly beginning to put the pieces together.
"mike wanted me to start dating you. and actually make it public."
"what?" my mind was racing, not expecting that to be what would come from his mouth. soon though, those last moments at lunch with victoria and mike were replaying through my head.
"and she knows about the other plans as well, right?" i heard him whisper to victoria.
"i'll tell her about that later, once she's warmed up to this." she replied, thinking i couldn't hear what they were saying.
it all was starting to make sense. doing the collabs, hanging out in the middle of the night, the instagram photos. it was all just to get me to fall for ethan to make this plan seem even more real.
"it's hard to explain-" ethan brought me out of my thoughts, but i didn't let him finish.
"so what you're telling me is, your manager made you pretend to date emma chamberlain to get up her views, as well as yours, without actually confirming or denying that you guys were dating, and now he wanted you to get me to fall for you, start dating, but actually make it public?"
"okay i guess it's not that hard to explain," grayson said.
"and what do you have to do with this?" i asked a very obviously hesitant grayson.
"grayson, just tell her," ethan said, mimicking what grayson had said to him only a few minutes before.
this time it was grayson's turn to explain.
"it's not even that bad, i promise." he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "another reason mike wanted us to do this is because he figured it would cause people to completely focus on ethan's love life instead of mine."
"what do you mean?" i asked, still confused.
"there's this girl. we've been on and off for almost a year, but she's a very private person, more than ethan and i are. she wanted to keep us low key, which i was totally fine with, i wanted to too." grayson started explaining.
grayson had a girlfriend?
"but that was starting to get harder and harder and people kept making assumptions that i had a "secret girlfriend", which i did. since we both didn't want that to come out, mike figured using ethan and emma's "relationship" would be the perfect distraction."
my head was spinning as i tried to process everything i had just been told.
"i know that this whole thing sounds really bad, liv," ethan began, walking closer to me.
"yeah, it does. but not only that, you've been lying to everyone about whether or not you're in a relationship for six months?" i asked, crossing my arms slightly out of anger.
"no," ethan started, looking me in the eyes. "we never actually said we were dating."
he got me there.
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✫*
that was low key predictable BUT it's kinda just a subplot, so much more is gonna happen and i'm so excited!
ALSO extra is #1 in kyliejenner right now ARE YOU KIDDING????? i literally can't thank you guys enough okay that's insane. wow. okay. anyways i hope you guys enjoyed!!
5 votes and i'll update <3
xoxo