Page 2 of Irresistible Temptation
From under the towel, I could hear the notification bells dinging, one after the other. I groaned in mortification, wondering what sorts of messages and comments I was receiving after that show I put on. I reached under the towel and grabbed my phone, peering at it cautiously as if it might spring to life and beginrecording again. Thankfully, I didn’t see my face staring back at me, but instead saw several texts from my best friends.
Five from Gabriella:
OMG.
JULIET!
You’re livestreaming!
Shut off your phone.
NOW.
Four from Sadie:
TURN YOUR PHONE OFF!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
JULIET! YOU’RE ONLINE!
CALL ME
I grimaced slightly. My best friends had seen me bear it all, along with what I believed to be around 270,000 other online viewers based on the number I saw on my screen before I shut it down.If I hadn’t been awake before, I was now, but I was desperately wanting to climb into bed and never see the sunrise again.
My phone rang, startling me. It was Gabriella. I tightened the towel around my body and secured the one strewn over my head of sopping wet hair.
“Hello?” I answered with a croak of a whisper.
“Juliet?” asked Gabriella, her voice shrill.
“Yep. It’s me. Your mortified best friend who will never recover from what just happened.”
“What the hell happened?” she asked with concern in her voice.
“I don’t know!” I groaned. “I was doing the whole ‘everything shower’ before my first day of work and thought I would use my phone as a mirror to shave. A real genius decision, I know. And somehow it livestreamed…”
“Okay. Okay…” Gabriella took a deep breath. I could tell she was trying to calm down on the other line. I could imagine her pacing her bedroom, trying to find a positive to this situation. Unless I was pursuing a career as a cam girl, I wasn’t sure there was one.
“Maybe it’s not so bad…” she suggested, her voice raising an octave.
“Maybe I didn’t just show my goods to the entire world.”
“It wasn’t the entire world.”
“Just close to three hundred thousand…”
“Shit…”
“Yeah.” I sighed, running my hands down my face defeatedly. I pulled my phone away from my ear to check the time. I had to get going. As much as I wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear, I still had to go to work. “I have to go. My new job awaits.”
“We’ll figure this mess out, okay?” said Gabriella. “Just brush it off and focus on your new job.”
I nodded in response, even though she couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to brush this off.
“Juliet?” she asked worriedly.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Thanks, Gabriella. Will you call Sadie for me?” I asked, not wanting to face another mortifying conversation like this.
