Can you believe that?”
“She called me your boyfriend?” Emily noticed Cory didn’t sound nearly as entertained as she had been by Jenna’s suggestion.
“Yeah.” She laughed. She thought maybe he’d laugh with her, but there was silence from his end of the line. “That’s just what she assumes, I guess. I’ve never said it, because we’ve never said it.”
“No.” He paused, then added, “We haven’t.”
“So are we?” She waited for him to answer, but if he’d heard her question, he wasn’t talking. “Cory?”
He coughed. “Sorry, babe. Luke just came out to ask me something again. Are we what?”
“Dating. Boyfriend and girlfriend, or whatever you want to call it.” The answer should be easy, she thought, thinking about how she’d walked the red carpet with him and the nights she’d spent at his place.
She heard the sound of his hand covering the receiver while his muffled voice said something to Luke. A few seconds later, he removed his hand from over the phone.
“Hey, Em, it’s kind of a bad time for this. They need me to go lay down some vocals now.”
She paused, then gave her head a shake. “Okay. It was just a yes or no question, though.”
“Not really.”
She waited for him to explain what he meant, but he remained silent.
“We aren’t dating?” she asked.
“Don’t be upset,” he told her. “You know I love hooking up with you.”
“Hooking up?” Emily repeated.
“You have to admit, we’re great at it.”
“That’s all this is to you?” she demanded. “A hook-up?”
“It gets a little more complicated than that. We should talk about this later.”
“Complicated how?”
Cory exhaled loudly before answering. “You know my band’s album release is coming up and that I’m going to be on tour soon. It’s going to get a lot crazier than it has been. I just don’t think this is a really good time to be talking about a serious relationship.”
Emily found herself unable to speak while trying to digest what he had said. Before she could respond, he spoke again. “Look, I’ll call you when I’m out of the studio and have more time to talk. It’s a bad time for this right now with this session, and with getting ready to fly out to Raleigh later this week for a show.”
“You’re going to Raleigh?” she repeated.
“Yeah, we have a gig out there. We’re doing a couple of one-off shows before the album drops.”
“Oh.” This was news to her.
“I really have to go, Em. I’ll call you later, though, okay?”
“Okay,” she answered. It was the only word she could come up with.
“Bye, babe.” He hung up the phone before she could say goodbye.
She held her phone out in front of her, staring at its screen. Had he really meant they weren’t dating? Or that after all the time they’d spent with each other over the last few weeks, including the times she’d slept—or, well, not slept—at his house, and how happy he’d seemed to have her at his side at the awards show on Friday, this was only a hook-up to him and he didn’t want to keep seeing her?
Slumping down into her chair, she tossed her phone onto the desk and stared at the calendar alert on her computer screen. Her next call was in fifteen minutes. She knew she needed to at least pretend to be in a good mood while talking to the potential advertiser for Zeeked. This day just kept getting better.
Ding. Her new email alert played over her computer speakers again. She looked down to the bottom of her screen just in time to see the email notification.
From: Abigail Wylie. Subject: Cory Sampson.
Here we go, she thought. Her email inbox had lately become a repository for letters from Cory’s fans who’d gone to Zeeked and found her email address. Most of his fans were kind and simply wanted her to give him messages from them. Some of them could be a little overzealous, but she assumed their hearts were in the right places. She opened the message.
It contained two sentences and a photo. “From last night at El Bar. If it was me, I’d want to know.” Below the message, a dark photo loaded. The photo was of Cory sitting beside a woman who looked like Cady Sugarman. She couldn’t tell if anyone else was with them.
Emily scrolled back up to the message. Last night? she thought. Cory had been rehearsing last night. That’s why he’d texted her at three a.m. instead of calling her earlier in the night like he’d planned to. Or at