Celebrities Don’t Date Bookworms (Texting the Boyband #1)

Chapter 14

fourteen

“I don’t think this is that big of a deal,” Hudson said calmly. His eyes were following me as I paced back and forth in front of him, tucked away under the bleachers. I’d insisted we move somewhere more private to have this conversation, and this was where we ended up.

I snorted. “Easy for you to say, Mr. Celebrity.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You knew you were talking to a normal girl,” I said. “But me—I thought that I was talking to a normal boy! You told me you were just an average teenager, and now I come to find out that you’re—you’re—” I struggled to find the right word for what I was feeling.

“Hudson Shaw,” he supplied.

“Yeah!” I yelled. I was looking for something a little more insulting, but that would do. “You’re Hudson Shaw. I have been calling Hudson Shaw for the past week! ”

“You know, this doesn’t change anything,” Hudson said. “I’m still the guy you’ve been talking to. I’m still Bay.”

“No.” I pressed my thumbs to the bridge of my nose, already feeling a pounding headache to come on. “No, you don’t understand. This changes everything.”

“But why?” He grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop pacing and face him. I did so, but still avoided looking at him. I couldn’t deal with this right now. This wasn’t what I’d meant to happen. “Why does it have to change everything?”

“Because you’re…” I gestured randomly in his direction. “Because you’re you, Hudson! Don’t you get it? You’re famous. And I’m not.”

Hudson’s eyebrows scrunched together as he frowned in confusion. “What does me being famous have to do with anything?”

“What does it have to…” I scoffed, and shook my head. “It just does , and if you can’t see why it’s a problem, then I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

“You’re spiraling,” Hudson said. He stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. I hated how comforting the gesture felt. “You just need some time to process this. Once you do, you’ll see that everything is fine.”

“Why aren’t you freaking out about this at all?” I asked. I frowned at him. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit surprised at who I am? That Eggo is also the girl you spilled coffee on and chose as your guide at school? ”

Hudson looked a little bit uncomfortable. “To be honest… I’m not really surprised.”

“What?”

“I kind of… figured it was you. That day that I saw you at the mall. It all just came together.”

“Came together?”

“Yeah,” he said. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and looked at me sheepishly. “I, um, recognized your voice. You have this distinct way of talking.”

I frowned. “In a bad way?”

“No!” He said immediately. “No. In a cute way.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I just continued to stare at him silently.

“Your hair too,” he added after a beat of silence. “I’ve never seen somebody with such light blonde hair.”

He reached up and brushed a lock of hair behind my ear, his finger lingering there for a second too long. I should have told him to stop. I should have told him that anything that had been romantic between us when we were just Eggo and Bay had to be over now—because there was no way I was going to date a celebrity. Look how much negative attention I was already getting from being his guide; I could only imagine how much worse it would get if I were his girlfriend. But as he looked at me with his kind eyes, and stupid grin, and cute dimple, the words got lost in my throat.

I’d wanted to know what Bay looked like. And it turned he was a whole lot cuter than anything I could have imagined.

“I need some time to think about this,” I said. I stepped back and shook my head, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “This is… it’s all too much. I need time to think about it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was Friday tomorrow, which meant I only had to get through two 50 minute classes with him. Luckily, he didn’t have his one afternoon class with me, and for the past few days, I’d been making sure he went to it, instead of trying to sneakily join my class instead, until he convinced the teachers that was where he belonged anyway. Of course, that would be a little difficult to do, since it was an all-girls gym class, but I had a feeling he would try, given the chance.

“Just give me some time,” I said. I grabbed my bag from where I’d dropped it on the ground earlier and started to walk off.

“Wait!” He said. He grabbed my wrist, his touch so light that I could barely feel it, and I turned back to look at him. “Don’t forget. Tell me a secret.”

My face softened at the reminder. He was right that I was overthinking this. Sure, he was Hudson Shaw, but he was also Bay. I just needed some time to process that.

“I hate your band,” I said. Then I walked away, and it took me until I was all the way around the school to realize that I didn’t ask for one of his secrets too.

All I wanted to do was talk through my problems with the guys in the group chat, but that obviously wasn’t possible considering the current circumstances. Even though Hudson hadn’t expressly said it, I knew what him being Hudson Shaw meant; the other boys were, in fact, Take Five, just like they tried to tell me. Jude, the clown of the group, had just somehow convinced them to let me stay in their official group chat, and now here we were.

It was my own fault for not believing them in the first place, and I very well knew it, but I also couldn’t totally blame myself for my skepticism. What were the chances that they were actually who they said they were? They hadn’t offered any real proof, so I had no reason to believe them. If I had just taken their words at face value, and they turned out not to be who they said, then I would have been the fool.

What did this mean now, though? Should I stay in the group chat? Would I have to continue to pretend that I didn’t know who they were, or should I say something? Would Hudson tell them first? I felt like questions were spilling out of my brain, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. The only people I felt like I could talk this through with were the very people I couldn’t.

I wasn’t sure exactly when or how this shift had happened, where these boys that I didn’t know became my go-to people to talk to. Of course, I still talked to Sloane plenty, but there were so many secrets I felt like I’d been keeping from here lately. She didn’t know about the group chat or about Bay or that Hudson Shaw had anything to do with both of those. And now that I knew everything, I felt like there was no way I could tell her. As much as I loved her, I knew she would be more concerned about a potential romance springing up between me and Hudson than anything else, and that was not what I needed right now.

Unless…

I wasn’t sure I was ready to explain this whole situation to her, but maybe I could find a middle ground. A way to get her opinion on some stuff without telling her the whole truth. She knew that I was Hudson’s guide at school, so it would be plausible that he and I had fallen for each other without having to explain the whole backstory of Bay, and everything. At least then I could get her opinion of some of the situation, even if it wasn’t all of it.

Megan

What are the chances you can come over after school?

I have boy drama.

I knew the second text would convince her to do anything she could to be able to come over. Her parents were strict, but she was sneaky, and knew exactly how to get around the rules when she needed to.

Sloane

I’ll be there

That was how we ended up sitting on my bed later that afternoon, a bowl of popcorn between us, and music blasting to stop any unwanted listeners.

“I knew it,” Sloane said, shaking her head. “I knew you would fall for him.”

To keep the lie as close to the truth as possible, I told Sloane that Hudson and I had exchanged numbers, so he could text me any questions he had about the school, but that we’d soon started calling, and texting about non-school related things. I didn’t go into detail about what our conversations were like, but I didn’t need to. She could easily fill in the gaps and see where I was going with it.

“Well, I didn’t,” I groaned. I never thought I would see the day that I fell for a celebrity, and honestly, I was surprised that Sloane had. I didn’t know what about me screamed “will fall in love with Hudson Shaw”. I obviously couldn’t tell her this, but I thought that if he and I hadn’t met with false identities—even if we still had those same interactions in the coffee shop, and with me as his guide at school—I highly doubted I would have even come close to falling in love with him. And now I was in the really awkward position of having to reconcile who I knew Bay to be with who I thought Hudson was. In my mind, the two were as different as could be. But clearly, I was wrong about one of them… and there was one I was hoping for it to be.

“He’s perfect for you, Megan,” Sloane said.

“How?”

“He’s cute. Famous. Dreamy…”

“Are you just describing every member of Take Five?”

Sloane laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know what it is about him, Megan. I could just tell from the first time I saw you interact… there’s chemistry there.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Every interaction I’d had with Hudson in person had been awkward and uncomfortable for me. And all our interactions on Twitter had just been us insulting each other. Bay, on the other hand… Everything I’d done with him had felt perfect.

How were they the same boy? I didn’t understand.

I groaned and pressed my face into my hands. This was all such a mess, and I couldn’t even sort it out in my own mind.

“It’s not that bad,” Sloane laughed. She pulled my hands away. “Okay, he’s famous—so what?”

“I can’t date a celebrity.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s… him! And I’m me. Normal old me. You really think he would want to be with a regular girl?”

“Has he suggested that he does?” Sloane asked.

“I guess so?” He didn’t seem upset about it when I was talking to him. In fact, he’d actually seemed— dare I say it? —happy. But what if I was misreading this whole situation? He hadn’t expressly said that he wanted to date me or anything, I was just assuming that was what he meant. What if I was completely wrong? Or what if he liked me as Eggo, but now that he had gotten to know me as Megan, he felt differently? What then? “I told him I hated his band.”

Sloane stared at me blankly. “Why? Why would you do that?”

I shrugged. “He asked. And I told him.”

Okay, maybe he hadn’t technically asked me per se, but I didn’t want to get into the whole story. The point was that I’d said it.

Sloane let out a long breath. “Well, the good news is that if he still wants to talk to you after that, then he definitely likes you. And maybe it’s better that he knows everything up front.”

“You really think he might still like me?”

Sloane brushed a lock of hair over my shoulder. “If he doesn’t… it’s his loss. Trust me.”