Sugar and Spice_ An L.A. Candy Novel - Lauren Conrad [68]
Besides, she was curious to see if Sophie was home—and if so, if she was alone. After tonight, Madison realized that she was going to have to be more vigilant than ever about her baby sister. Sophie was beating Madison at her own game.
Chapter 26
Relationship Problems
Scarlett tried to pay attention to what Professor Friedman was saying about their latest assignment, Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost. She had just started reading the eighteenth-century French novel about a nobleman and his girlfriend who had serious relationship problems.
Yeah, join the club, Scarlett thought with a heavy sigh.
She and Liam had not spoken since her birthday party four days ago. He had texted her later that night, saying that he needed to “take a break,” whatever that meant. In response, she had started about twenty different emails to him, but ended up hitting Delete each time, because she couldn’t seem to express exactly what she was feeling.
Which was that she missed him. And that she was mad at him. And that she was mad at herself.
She was mad at Liam because he wouldn’t meet her halfway that night and just make an appearance at Coco de Ville. Of course she knew he couldn’t be filmed. She got that. But he could have avoided the cameras and hung out with their friends at an out-of-the-way table until it was cool for the two of them to slip away . . . at which point they could have driven to that romantic little inn in Malibu and really celebrated her birthday.
She was also mad at herself because she couldn’t seem to figure out how to meet him halfway. Not just about her birthday, but generally speaking. She knew that dating her was making it hard for him to get work. Since Gossip magazine outed them as a couple (and PopTV fired him as a result), producers weren’t sure they could trust him not to try to date the “talent” on their own shows. She also knew how much he hated watching the recent L.A. Candy episode where Trevor had somehow managed to make her scenes with Naveen look seriously flirtatious. In one case, he had patched together a shot of Scarlett staring intently at (probably) the wall . . . and a shot of Naveen staring intently at (probably) a hot waitress . . . and set the whole thing to “You and Me” by Lifehouse, resulting in a cliffhanger brimming with romantic tension. Gross.
Of course, Liam, being a former PopTV employee, was well aware of Trevor’s creative use of editing techniques and cheesy soundtracks. But still, it couldn’t be easy for him.
Which left the ball in Scarlett’s court. Could she stand up to Trevor and demand that he stop using her so shamelessly for ratings? She had promised him that she would be more cooperative this season and not take everything so seriously. So far, she’d been successful—hadn’t she? Unfortunately, her “success” had taken its toll on her relationship with Liam. She wasn’t sure how much more he was going to put up with. And now there was Liam’s Evite mysteriously disappearing into the void.
To make things even worse . . . the day after the birthday party, Jane had shown her a little brown notebook belonging to Trevor. She’d found it at Coco de Ville during the setup for the party. Most of the pages were filled with gibberish—Trevor’s handwriting was even worse than Jane’s—but Scarlett had been able to make out enough of it, with Jane’s help, to see how obsessed he was with plotting the girls’ “scenes” on the show. It was as though he were writing a script from scratch, not producing a reality show.
Scarlett hadn’t been surprised to learn that Trevor’s mind worked this way. But she had been surprised (and shocked and disturbed) by how much he’d lied to her and the others to get them to do his bidding.
So basically, she had been wrong about what she told Liam over dinner last week: She was Trevor’s puppet, which was the last thing she wanted to be. Between that and Liam’s unhappiness with the show . . . Well, one option would be to bail after Season 2. Sure, the money was great, and she loved being financially independent from her parents. But