The Best Friend Scandal - Lucia Jordan Page 0,19

losing my temper, and I didn’t want to, not with her.

“Umm, that question sounded weird,” she said. “And a little aggressive. Everything okay?”

“No,” I shouted. I could tell that my sudden change in volume startled her. “Everything is not okay. The show is next week, and you’re not going to have any of this ready in time.”

“Arlo,” she said, looking upset. “You just told me about the pushed-up deadline like five minutes ago. I’ve been working according to the deadline you had already given me, and to be quite honest, I’ve been working even harder and faster than I needed to be in order to meet that deadline. If the deadline has changed, that’s not my fault. I’ll do the best that I can do to try to meet the new date, too, but there’s no reason to get mad at me about it. I’m not the one who changed the date.”

She was right. I knew she was right. But I couldn’t reign my temper back in once it had gotten out. I was angry about several things—the date change, the models dropping out, but mostly, I was angry about Cai, and that was the one thing that I couldn’t tell her I was mad about. I was furious that she had invited him here for a fitting without asking me first. I was irritated that he had invited her out to a party with him and that he had stayed last night to help her clean up. Most of all, I hated myself for asking her to stay late and putting her in a position where Cai would get to her.

But I couldn’t tell Hensley any of those things. I didn’t even know why I was so irate about them, to begin with. I wasn’t like she had done anything wrong. Hell, Cai hadn’t even done anything wrong. He had helped her, which was completely out of character for him, and he came to make sure his clothes were properly fitted for the show. I should be thanking him for both of those things instead of trying to run him out of the building. But the only thing I could express my anger aloud with was the runway show. The rest of it I had to keep inside. Unfortunately, that meant that I lashed out at my friend, who had done absolutely nothing to deserve it. And, instead of just stopping myself there and walking out to cool off as I should have, I had to take it one step further as if that would somehow help me feel better.

“You’d better hope you can get it all done in time,” I hissed at her. “This opportunity isn’t going to come up for you again.”

I saw the look of deep hurt and shock on her face, and then I turned to walk away before I started to beat myself in the head for being such an ass. That definitely didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel much, much worse.

7

Chapter Seven (Hensley)

I stood there in stunned silence after Arlo had left. I had absolutely no idea why he had gotten so angry with me. I knew he was upset about the runway show's changed date, but it seemed like there was a lot more to it than that. I sat down on my stool, and even though I tried not to get teary-eyed, I couldn’t help it. Things seemed like they had been going so great. I was on schedule, we had the show and the roll-out to look forward to, Cai was finally coming around, and instead of being arrogant, he was actually helpful and cooperative. Everyone seemed to be generally on the same team—well, except for Kerynne, maybe. But now, my only friend, and the guy who just so happened to be holding my career in the palm of his hand, was ultra pissed-off at me for something that wasn’t even my fault. I didn’t know what to do. If the runway show was a flop, then it would negatively affect us all. I had to try to get everything done in time.

I got up and told myself that I would just power through it all. I would stay here at F.I.T. for the whole night since the workshops were open twenty-four hours, and I would make sure all of this got done by next week. If I focused hard enough on work, then maybe I wouldn’t think about how awful Arlo had just been. He was