Dedicated to Mariam, beause the re-appearance of her favourite character is about to happen.

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            The next morning, when I came to, I realised I’d been sleeping in possibly the least comfortable position known to man.

            My arm was twisted oddly around my neck, fingers splayed across the opposite cheek, and the space around me was much too small to have either leg stretched out fully. One was pressed up against a cold surface – which I later recognised as the car window – while the other remained tucked beneath me.

            Eyes blinking hazily, I tried to pull myself into a more upright position, realising then that everything ached. Across from me, zonked out in the passenger seat that had been reclined all the way back, was Leon. His mouth was wide open, and he was snoring with an enthusiasm that seemed to rattle the whole car.

            It was all coming back to me now. Snippets of last night, returning to me in dribs and drabs, filling my head and leaving me to wonder how I’d forgotten in the first place. After what had happened at the pool, Leon and I had made a dripping exit, making our best attempt to dry ourselves with the blanket in his boot. Once re-dressed, we took off for a quiet country road and ended up watching the stars from his car bonnet.

            Somewhere between stargazing and making the sensible decision to return home, we must’ve fallen asleep in his car.

            I was aware of how horrifically cliché the entire thing was. It was the sort of thing you’d find in one of Rosemarie’s online fan fictions – only made more ironic by the fact I was actually doing this with the real Leon. Had it been anyone but me, I probably would’ve scoffed.

            And yet somehow… it was me.

            I cleared my throat. “Leon?”

            He continued snoring, still lost somewhere amongst his dreams. So I tried again, louder. “Leon.”

            Yet more snoring. Deciding there was nothing else for it, I leaned over the seat and shook his shoulder, causing him to awake with a start.

            He yelped out loud, jolting upright in his seat and looking around with a panicked expression. When our eyes met, I frowned, watching as he searched my expression. “Coraline? What are you…?”

            “Sorry,” I said. “Bad dream?”

            “The usual, really,” he answered, twisting slightly in his seat so our faces were angled towards each other. “Was about to go onstage at Wembley before realising I was totally and utterly naked.”

            The snort escaped me before I could stop it, but I clapped a hand to my mouth anyway. “That’s what pop stars dream of?”

            “The definitive pop star nightmare,” he told me, with a mock shudder. “Anyway. That’s probably a lesson not to fall asleep in my car. Remind me how that one happened again?”

            “I think we tired ourselves out being disgustingly cliché and looking at the stars.” I shook my head. “Can’t believe you talked me into that one. It literally sounds like one of those ‘What would be your ideal date?’ questions in those teen magazines.”

            As he laughed, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, turning on the screen to check the time. There was really only one appropriate response: “Shit!”

            “What?”

            “It’s half past eight!” I said, feeling my heart already beginning to pound beneath my shirt. “I’m supposed to be on the nine o’clock hotel shift this morning.”

            “Crap,” Leon said. “What about your parents? Aren’t they going to be worried sick about the fact you’ve been out all night?”

            “Luckily I had the sense to text them yesterday,” I assured him, with some overwhelming relief of my own. “When I figured we’d be out late, I said I was staying over at a friend’s. So I guess that’s one less problem to deal with. But we do need to get back to the hotel right this minute.”

            “I’m on it.” Leon clambered over the gearstick, almost throwing himself into the driver’s seat and thrusting the key into the ignition. Quickly, I climbed into where he’d had been sleeping just minutes ago, my seatbelt clipping into place just as the car moved off the curb.

            He was really pushing his speed all the way back to Walden, but I wasn’t about to complain. Looking at the broken clock on Leon’s dashboard was useless, of course, so I had to resort to checking my phone incessantly over the course of the journey. The roads were mostly clear, coming to the end of the window of pre-beach traffic, and we were actually making pretty good time.

            That, of course, didn’t stop me imagining the telling-off I’d receive from my dad when I showed up late for my shift, having not showered or put a brush through my hair.

            Thankfully, we turned into the hotel car park with five minutes to spare, leaving my breathing just enough time to return to a normal rate.

            “Just in time,” I said, pulling down the sun visor and checking my hair in the overhead mirror. It was still pulled into a ponytail, which had almost entirely fallen out over the course of the night, and I yanked the band out to start combing it down with my fingers. It certainly didn’t look like I’d spent any time at all styling it that morning, but at least it was less of a giveaway to the fact I’d been sleeping on a pop star’s backseat.

            Leon didn’t bother putting on his sunglasses as we climbed out of the car; the walk up to the hotel’s entrance wouldn’t take more than twenty seconds, and it all seemed pretty quiet anyway. I hurried up the steps with him on my tail and pushed through the main doors.

            Luckily, we’d timed it so that Rosemarie wouldn’t even be out of bed yet, let alone anywhere near the hotel, so there was almost no danger of her unexpected appearance.

            As it turned out, however, what we did come face-to-face with was a whole lot worse.

            There was a girl stood at the counter; she was tall and lean, oozing confidence in shoes so high I wouldn’t have been able to take a step in them. With her tight black skirt, she must’ve been baking in the summer heat, but wasn’t showing it. I didn’t pay her much attention initially; there were other things on my mind. But when her head snapped in our direction, and Leon simultaneously stopped in his tracks, I realised something was going on.

            “Leon.” I couldn’t work out the thoughts behind the girl’s facial expression; her lip was curled slightly at the edges, and the single word seemed to bounce right off the walls of the room. A glance back at me, and Leon looked entirely like a deer in headlights.

            “Collette?” he said eventually. “What are you doing here?”

            “Actually,” she said, taking a remarkably balanced step forward, “I think I’m the one who should be asking that question.”

            Now she was closer, I realised I vaguely recognised her, though I couldn’t quite link the name and face. Auburn hair was cropped with the line of her chin, and her strikingly pretty features made it slightly unnerving to stare too long.

            Leon didn’t seem capable of responding, his mouth opening and closing aimlessly, so Collette went to continue.

            “What were you thinking?” she asked. “What on earth is Allison going to say about this when she gets her hands on you?”

            He swallowed, seeming to regain his voice. “How did you find me?”

            “Come on, Leon. Ever since you disappeared my entire job has been to track you down. Not much of a PA with absolutely no idea where you are, am I? And then last night these CCTV images started circulating. Unidentified brunet spotted breaking into some public pool. By some kind of lucky streak, I got wind of them. All I had to do was a little bit of research and… boom. I’m here.”

            I felt kind of awkward, standing there between them, unsure of whether I really counted as being involved in this or not. Still, I wasn’t willing to bet on the fact Collette wouldn’t tackle me if I tried to make an escape; in her eyes, I was probably just as bad as Leon. We were in those CCTV images together, after all.

            “Collette,” Leon said now, a note of pleading in his tone. “You’ve got to help me out here. You haven’t told Allison yet, have you?”

            I watched as her dark eyes searched his expression. “Not yet. I wanted to reach out to you first, see what was really going on before she came barging her way in. Still, I’m not going to be able to keep this from her forever. She’s going to find out soon.”

            “I just wanted some time off. That was all.”

            Collette folded her arms over her chest, already shaking her head. “And you thought this was the right way to go about it? Come on, I thought you had more sense than that.”

            “I don’t know,” he said. “When I took off from the set, I wasn’t thinking straight. There was so much going on… it all got too much. I know I should’ve talked it out with the company, but I didn’t. Please, Collette. Don’t tell Allison. She’s going to kill me.”

            “She won’t kill you,” she pointed out. “How’s the record label going to make any money without your angelic little voice?”

            A small smirk was creeping onto her face, and Leon seemed to relax slightly at the sight of it. Though Collette was intimidating upon first impression, I realised she was probably the least of our worries when it came to Leon’s management. From the way they were talking, it seemed like Collette was a kitten against this Allison.

            “Can’t you just pretend you didn’t find anything? Give me another week or two, and I swear I’ll come back to you lot. I’ll do exactly as I’m told, however many shoots and concerts you want to throw at me. Please.”

            “This is my job we’re talking about,” she said, shaking her head. “I get where you’re coming from, Leon, but Allison’s in charge of all of us. If she finds out I’ve been here and haven’t told her, I’d be fired at the snap of her fingers.”

            “I’ll say it was all my fault. I won’t let her fire you.”

            Collette looked uneasy. “Sorry, Leon. There’s nothing I can do. Especially not now you’ve dragged your little girlfriend into this.”

            It took me a few seconds to realise they were both looking at me; I’d become so absorbed in  viewing this conversation as an outsider that I had forgotten I was actually standing between them. I had given up on trying to work out what Collette was thinking, especially as her eyes swept over me, but in that moment I couldn’t seem to read Leon either.

            “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said eventually.

            “Yeah, well, try telling that to the tabloids once they get a hold of these CCTV pictures. The whole world’s going to see it. I can’t believe you would even think about doing something like this, Leon.”

            He ducked his head in a way that reminded me of a small child being scolded by their mother.

            “I know I sound ridiculously like Allison, but there is some truth in her ranting: you have to start considering your image. You think the media’s going to go easy on you if you’re caught breaking into public property and going missing for months at a time?”

            “I know,” he said quietly.

            “Look, we’re going to fix this, okay?” Collette said, with a newfound positivity injected into her tone. “This isn’t the end of the world. I’m going to do whatever I can to stop those pictures spreading, and in the meantime we’re just going to have to distract them. Maybe Allison will push forward the music video release date, or something. We’ll work it out.”

            “So you are going to tell Allison?” he asked.

            Maybe Collette had been about to say something; she sure looked like she’d been about to. As it turned out, however, we were all interrupted by the sound of the bell overhead the main doors, as well as multiple car engines outside. As my neck snapped in that direction, and my actions were mirrored by both Leon and Collette, and we were faced with what was sure to be a thunderstorm.

            Though I’d previously assumed it impossible, the woman in the doorway was wearing higher heels than Collette, leaving her standing at over six feet tall. With a blonde pixie cut, impeccably blended eye make-up and a fierce expression to top it all off, there was really only one person she could be.

            “Oh, don’t worry,” the woman said, “Allison already knows.”

            I noticed then she was holding a shiny-screened tablet, which she held up for us all to see. Displayed on it was what looked like a news website, headed by a title just too far away for me to read. One thing that was clear, however, was the large photo of Leon and I, very obviously snogging in the middle of the pool.

            “Leon McCarthy,” she said, in a voice that had even my heart leaping, “explain yourself.”

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Hello guys! Long time no see, huh? It's been about two months since I last uploaded anything on Wattpad, and for that I'm really sorry. The good news is that my A-levels are now over and I have the next three months pretty much free, so there should be a LOT of new stuff coming your way soon!

I'm hoping to get my act together on this story, and get it finished once and for all, because I know how frustrating it must be to have to wait so long between updates. Also, Camp NaNoWriMo starts in a week's time, for which I'll be writing my new novel (if any of you follow me on my other social networks, you'll know it's the long-awaited twin story). That should also be uploaded very soon.

So, that's basically it. This is basically my return to Wattpad after a brief absence. Hope you enjoyed, and as always, drop me a comment for the chance of a dedication. Love you all :)