“No! He didn’t! What the hell else did he say?”

“He said I should consider dating him instead. He’d be better for me. He also brought me soup.” I coughed out my last words.

“Soup?” She laughed. “Oh, he’s good! What did you say to him then?”

“I told him I love Ryan and that he should leave. He sort of worried me a bit at the end. Like he didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Marie stayed in the waiting room while I went in to see my doctor. He informed me that I had a sinus infection and bronchitis. For as terrible as I felt, I was wondering if there weren’t a few other lung infection terms missing from his diagnosis.

We stopped at the local pharmacy where I got a multitude of antibiotics, nasal spray, and an inhaler. I mistakenly glanced over the front of Celebrity Weekly while standing in line at the checkout. The cover of the magazine had a by-line that stated distance was tearing Ryan and me apart. He just left for Scotland this morning; how could we be split apart already?

“Why are you buying that shit?” Marie scowled. “As if you aren’t in bad enough shape already, you need to torment yourself more?”

“I’m not buying it.” I coughed violently into my sleeve. “I hate the media. Why do they do this?” I showed her the cover.

I had no intentions to spend even a penny on that crap. It was lies like these that enticed people to buy the garbage in the first place. And every time someone bought one of those magazines, it allowed some idiot to keep his job as a purveyor of lies and gave another idiot incentive to exist as an intruding photographer. Every dime spent on those rag magazines perpetuated the nonsense.

That’s when Marie informed me that a photographer approached her the other day and offered her two thousand dollars if she’d get him pictures of the inside of my apartment. These leeches were now going after my friends. Of course Marie declined, but it was apparent that the magazines wanted to get their hands on actual photos of our “love nest” as they put it. Now I was even more paranoid about having anyone in my apartment.

Ryan called me every day while he was in Scotland, even if it was for only five minutes. He tried to describe the landscape and architecture so I could visualize the experience he was having; he even sent me a few cell phone pictures, but I still wished I was there with him to experience it firsthand.

It didn’t take long for pictures of the cast in Scotland to surface on the Internet. Ryan’s fan site was quite reliable with the latest selection of candid photos. Tongues around the globe were sent wagging once the photos of Ryan and Suzanne’s “love scene” were leaked. Even Kat called me to make sure I wasn’t going to go ballistic from seeing the scandalous photos.

For some reason the lies about Ryan and Suzanne’s rekindled romance didn’t bother me as much as it did when I first met him. I guess I knew both of them well enough to know that Ryan didn’t have any romantic feelings for her despite how often his lips had to touch hers. I knew Ryan harbored deep resentment for Suzanne and her antics. She had wronged him too many times in the past for him to ever let go of his grudge, let alone ever love her.

I did however worry about Suzanne. Many of the little stunts she pulled all pointed to her being madly in love with him. I was onto her little game;

after all I too was once young and foolish. She didn’t try to break us up for Francesca’s benefit – I was wrong with that assumption. Her comments and evil tongue only had one beneficiary. She had made additional comments after her little failed tryst with Ryan’s friend Scott, indicating that she had hoped that if his friends thought she was good enough to sleep with that maybe he might feel the same way. Unfortunately, her actions had the opposite affect on Ryan.

The media sure had fun with all these rumors and lies. According to the reports, Ryan was back with Suzanne, Suzanne reportedly told me to stay away from her man, our relationship was over, and I was having a secret affair with my former bodyguard behind Ryan’s back. It was beyond ridiculous.

“You feeling up to getting out of the house today?” Marie asked, interrupting my private viewing of several old Ryan Christensen interviews on the computer. I clicked the video pause button and gave her a bit more of my attention. I’d been holed up in my apartment for an entire week.

“Tammy wants to take us to lunch. We have to stop at the jewelry store and then we need to go look at bridesmaid dresses,” she rambled through the telephone.

I was feeling a lot better and getting out into the fresh air did sound appealing. I was also hoping to squash some of the new worries that mysteriously cropped up in my brain.

Marie and Tammy had been acting, I don’t know - strange towards me for the last couple of days. I couldn’t pinpoint the specifics; I could just sense it. Maybe it was the new way they both awkwardly smiled at me that caused me to feel weird?

I had been really ill and I was extremely thankful that my two best friends were there for me, but I couldn’t help but worry that they were getting tired of me and my new life of drama.

“Tammy, your wedding band is beautiful!” I gushed, watching the diamonds sparkle in the light. She handed a check to the sales clerk.

“Thanks!” Tammy glowed. “Only six more payments and it’s mine.”

“Hey Taryn, come look at this one!” Marie called out. She was looking at emerald rings.

“How much is that ring right there?” Marie pointed to a very gaudy ring.

The lady took it out of the case and checked the tag. “This one is three thousand.”

My eyes bugged out. It was an ugly ring for three thousand dollars. Marie tried to put it on her finger, but it wouldn’t go past her knuckle without a good shove.

“Here Tar, you have tiny fingers. Model it.”

I slipped it on my right hand and held it out to her. It was the kind of stacked setting that would take a layer of skin off someone if you brushed up against them accidentally.

Marie played with the ring on my finger, checking the look of it from several angles. I was surprised that she even liked this style of jewelry.

She held my hand out to the sales clerk. “So, what do you think? Does it fit her?”

“She would need to be sized,” the lady answered, twisting it freely on my finger. “You could probably go down a half size smaller.”

I took it off immediately and handed it back to the clerk. I didn’t want anyone to think I was interested in buying this ugly ring.