The guy snorted. "You hear that, Darla? Suites. And I thoughtwewere lucky to get a balcony."
The woman returned her attention to me. "I know! You were in that movie about the hockey player."
I had no idea what movie she meant, but I got this sort of thing a lot. Normally, I would respond with the kind of cold indifference that stopped the questions in their tracks. But today, it wasn't bothering me like it used to, and I decided to have some fun with it.
I hitched a thumb toward Emily. "Nah,she'sthe famous one."
Emily laughed. "Infamous is more like it."
The woman turned and gave Emily a long, careful look. "Well, youdolook important." She perked up. "Wait, you're on Channel Eight, right? You do the news."
Emily gave the woman a warm smile. "He was just joking. Trust me, I'm nobody important."
She was wrong.
She was becoming very important tome. And that might be a problem.
When the elevator reached our floor, Emily wished the couple a great day, and we both walked out of the confined space, leaving the two of them to go back downward on their own.
As we walked toward our suite, Emily asked, "Do you get that a lot? You know, where people onlysortof recognize you?"
"More than you'd think." I was no movie star, but for people who didn't follow business news or celebrity gossip, I just looked like one of those faces – somebody they saw on some random screen. Movie screen, TV screen, computer screen – it was all the same to me.
If I hadmyway, I would erase all of it and start fresh.I mean, hey, I'd done it before.
Emily asked, "Do you ever get tired of it?"
I returned her question with one of my own. "Doyouever get tired of waitressing?"
"But that's totally different."
"No kidding."
With a laugh, she asked, "So why'd you bring it up?"
"Because," I said, "I want to know your answer. Will you call this Freddie guy and ask?"
"For the time off?" She paused for a long moment before saying with a little frown, "I can ask, but I already know what he's gonna say."
I smiled.Funny, so did I.
Chapter 52
Emily
On the phone, my mom was saying, "I don't care what anyone says,youwore it a lot better than she did."
I gave a mental groan. My mom was ridiculously wrong, even if I loved her for the lie. Just yesterday, a new photo of me had gone totally viral in the worst possible way.
Adding salt to the wound of my humiliation, the photo wasn't even new. It had been taken nearly four weeks ago while I'd been Daisy Duking it down that lonely stretch of road, wearing high heels and sporting one heck of a wedgie.
As best as I could tell, the photo had been taken by Morgan and Nikki – or more likely pulled from the dashcam of Morgan's car as they'd driven up behind me all those weeks ago.
Already, it had been more than three weeks since I'd moved into Reese's suite at the Diamond Resort, and I was having the time of my life – well, except for stuff like this.
The wedgie image would have been bad enough on its own. But it was made doubly worse by the fact that a hot new photo of Cassandra Bloom wearing a nearly identical outfit had surfaced only hours after mine had gone viral.
Now the internet was buzzing with side-by-side comparisons of me and Cassandra wearing the same outfit oh-so-differently.
