Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,16

with that,” it was the last thing she said before exiting the trailer, and leaving me to follow her back to set like a lost puppy.

I felt gutted and insecure. It wasn’t every day that I spilled such personal information to strangers. Hell, I barely shared anything with the people I considered my friends.

The moment we stepped back onto the soundstage, all attention was on us. It was like they could sense from the look in Madeline’s eye, or maybe the gloat in her step, the change that had just occurred, and when Georgia saw Madeline coming, a spark of expectation lit her face as if she knew exactly what was about to happen.

Madeline took her place on set, the lights hit her face, the camera began rolling, and, just like that, Madeline became Adley Adair, talking her reflection into having sex with a boy she barely knew and, unknowingly, changing the course of her life forever.

It was the final take, and the entire crew applauded the inspired performance.

I excused myself to go throw-up in the bathroom, wishing more than anything I could rebury all the things that had just crawled their way back to the surface after four years of repression.

Chapter Four

Adley

“You’re not thinking of rejoining the world of size 0’s, are you?” Cam asked across the table. His plate of pancakes was almost gone, while I’d been pushing the same amount of scrambled eggs around with my fork for the past fifteen minutes. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your body’s always been great, but these boobs you’ve acquired are topnotch.”

I flung a biscuit at him. It missed by an inch and hit his stainless steel refrigerator instead. At least he’d have to clean it up. He deserved it. He knew I wasn’t a morning person.

“Excuse me, I was told at fifteen that I had the prototypical body to be a professional ballerina. I was supposed to be thin. It was for art not vanity…And I’m barely a size 4 now!”

“And I suppose that’s not vanity either?” he shot back with the same smirk that had been driving me crazy for years.

“Fabulous metabolism.” Even if my throwing arm was off, my glare hit him hard. “Besides, I’m not dieting. I’m distracted.”

The silence that had become our third roommate finally made its appearance at the table, and I repressed a sigh, not wanting to be the first one to call attention to it. It was obvious that there was something bothering him. Certain things I would do or say, seemingly unrelated and random, would send his brow into a squished furrow and his eyes into concentrated distraction.

The problem was that I couldn’t call him out about it without drudging up my own issues. Admitting how affected I’d been the day before helping Madeline, would be like opening Pandora’s Box. There was just no way to deal with one issue without bumping into all of the other ones that had become stowed away between us, gathering dust.

So we’d reached a stalemate, and for the time being, settled into an unspoken resolve to dance around the issues at hand. Hence, our newest, frequent visitor: awkward silences.

“We should probably head out if we want to beat traffic,” he said clearing his throat.

I nodded and helped him with the dishes. We worked efficiently together, in the same way as two people who had done the same job together many times before.

Leaving the kitchen, I headed through the living room and up the stairs, to the room I’d claimed as my own. Other than Cam’s master bedroom, there were three guest rooms (one of which he’d turned into a second library). I’d picked the room farthest from Cam’s, relying on distance, as I always had, to protect me from things I didn’t want to deal with.

My room remained as completely impersonal as it had the day I’d arrived. Unless you opened the closet or one of the three dresser drawers I’d taken hostage, you’d never know a person inhabited it. I grabbed a sweatshirt in case I ended up on soundstage three (it was freezing all the time), and went to meet Cam in the garage.

After he’d returned the Range Rover, we were back to driving his real car. It was dark gray, foreign, and something I would never expect him to own, but it drove like a dream and gave me a chance to sit back and relax during our daily rides.

“That’s where Declan lives, right?” I asked spotting a stretch limo parked