Escape (Part Three) by Zelda Reed Read Free Book Online

mouth. “She doesn’t know anything about you.”
    Soon she would. Soon the world would know parts of me I’d intentionally tucked away.
    Hours before Jonah sat down with Jennifer and Cheryl’s producer, picking through acceptable and unacceptable questions. Jennifer had the last say and she chose all the questions lined in red, the ones conjured up to humiliate me the most. How many boys did you sleep with in college? Did they have girlfriends? Do you remember their names?
    Jonah put his foot down when it came to my sister. “I told them, this interview revolves around you. Laura will only be brought up if you go off script.”
    My responses were drilled into me by Jennifer and Jonah, the pair of them leering over me as I sat on the edge of my bed and spit out recited lines. “Yes, I knew my boss was seeing Jennifer but I didn’t care.” “Yes I knew I could’ve hurt someone but I’m very selfish.”
    “They want me to lie,” I said.
    Chace nodded. “Jonah told me. But you don’t have to do that.” I looked at him. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever she has on your sister can’t be that bad.”
    The corners of my mouth turned down. Chace didn’t know anything about me either. He probably assumed everything he should know about his girlfriend – favorite color, favorite food, the last thing I said to my mother – were hidden in the foggy recesses of his memory, instead of buried in piles marked “unimportant”.
    Before his memory loss I told him little things about me and he conveniently forgot them all. As much as I cared for Chace, he didn’t feel the same. His feelings were fabricated like his vague memories. He thought he loved me, but he didn’t, like he thought we were together but we weren’t.
    A scruffy P.A. crossed the room. “We need to get you mic’ed.”
    I turned to Chace. This was it, the moment where I told him the truth.
    Chace raised an eyebrow before he leaned forward and planted a kiss to my lips. “Last chance,” he said, words ghosting over my mouth.
    I swallowed the lump in my throat and entered the room.
     
    ***
     
    Cheryl was far less intimidating behind the camera. It was the lights propped around us that caused a pool of sweat to break out at the back of my neck. Jonah was standing a few feet behind her, out of sight from the cameras but in my line of vision. He dramatically wiped his hand across his forehead, mouth forming around the words, “You look nervous.”
    The cameras were rolling. We weren’t live but that didn’t calm my nerves. I felt them in my hands, my feet, and my stomach, dancing around like fireflies, pinching the underside of my skin. I was sitting with my back straight but not overly-confident, the posture of a girl who had to teach herself how to sit properly. (“Keep that,” Jonah said, “it’ll remind the audience that you’re an average girl just like them.”) My knees were pressed together conservatively (“Don’t do anything to suggest peeking under your skirt.”) and my hands were folded neatly in my lap. I was the picturesque school girl, non-threatening and innocent.
    “Alice Posner,” Cheryl said, my name sliding off her tongue. “You are only twenty-two years old and yet you’ve made quite a name for yourself.”
    I cleared my throat. “I suppose you can say that.”
    “ Oh I can say that. But while other girls your age are writing web series and books and breaking barriers for women in the fields of science and math, your name is plastered over the world wide web because, not only did you sleep with your boss, he was in a relationship with his pregnant girlfriend while you were doing it.”
    “I didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.”
    “But you’re aware that she’s pregnant now?”
    No shit . I bit the inside of my cheek. “Yes.”
    “And how does that make you feel?”
    My gaze traveled to Jonah. Jennifer was next to him, her arms crossed over her chest, breasts popping out of another