Scandalous!

"You seen the papers?" Was almost the first question that Gabe asked when Lynn walked into his apartment at six o'clock that evening.

"No why?" Lynn asked, already dreading the answer.

Gabe laughed, being able to tell from her tone that she didn't want to hear it.

"There," he said pointing at a magazine that lay open on the kitchen desktop counter.

With a groan Lynn walked towards the table and glanced at the magazine. It was this weeks copy of People magazine and it showed the picture of her and Gabe shopping.

"I need to go to the hairdressers," Lynn suddenly said looking at the picture very closely. "My hair is way too split ended."

"That wasn't quite the reaction I was looking for but still…" Gabe said with a laugh and poured Lynn a glass of red wine, and twiddled with a dial on the stove setting the temperature for chicken that was cooking away in the oven.

Lynn swatted Gabe away as he made to take the magazine away and kept reading, a grin spreading out on her face.

"A tall dark haired mystery man?"

Gabe rolled his eyes and handed her the wine glass, which she took gratefully.

"Don't you start too, Ryland won't shut up," H=he said slightly bashfully, something very unlike Gabe.

In fact, although Lynn never realised it, Gabe was all too often very 'un like Gabe' when in the presence of Lynn. The cocky, self-assured and often the over confidant side of Gabe seemed to vanish completely. And he hated himself for that.

Whilst the two of them talked about the oddity of seeing their own faces in magazines and how ludicrous the rumours were, a smell that reminded of burning slowly filled the kitchen, both Lynn and Gabe noticing too late.

When the smell finally reached the pair it was too late, and no dramatic leap of Gabe's to the other side of the kitchen could rescue the charcoal black chicken.

Lynn found this incredibly amusing and for five minutes her laughter was uncontained.

"Looks like we'll have to order in." Gabe said with a grin, throwing the attempted chicken into the trash and headed for the phone, already knowing that Lynn would want a medium thin crust Hawaii pizza.

Lynn walked into the living room and graciously flopped onto the sofa with her wine glass still in hand.

From the kitchen she could her Gabe attempt to order the pizza, struggling to understand the man at the other end of the phone.

Lynn smiled to herself and thought how lucky she was to have Gabe. Ever since they had first met he had always been there. If there was one guy she could count on it was Gabe. Tour never was an excuse for him; he always managed to call her, even if rather irregularly but she knew that he would.

Even after all the drama with Pete he would still be there for her, Gabe was never really all that happy about Lynn dating Pete and in then getting engaged to him. But Gabe accepted it and kept quite, knowing that if he had told Lynn that Pete was cheating on her, she would not have believed it.

Gabe came into the room three minutes later with a packet of gummy bears and the bottle of wine.

"Had trouble?" Lynn asked looking up at Gabe, who just grinned and set the bottle down on the table.

"The guy hardly spoke English so if you end up getting a four cheese pizza I apologise in advance."

Lynn laughed and patted the spot next to her on the sofa, which Gabe gladly occupied and held out the now open packet of gummi bears towards Lynn, who with a smile took a handful.

"Wine and gummi bears?" She asked with a laugh.

"Only the best." Gabe said with a small smile, before a more serious tendency took over his face. "So how've you been then? Honestly?"

Lynn paused for a minute from her sorting out the gummi bears into their colour groups: the orange ones, the yellow ones, the white ones followed by the green ones and then the best ones: the red bears.

The red bears were always the yummiest.

"Not too good." Lynn said with unflinching honesty and plopped an orange bear into her mouth. "I hate seeing myself in those stupid tacky magazines, I hate knowing that there are people following me with cameras ready to take pictures of me and my friends. I don't feel comfortable anymore Gabe."

If there was one thing that Lynn could be around Gabe, it was utterly honest. There seemed no way around it, maybe it was the way that Gabe started you down with his big brown eyes when he knew that you were lying, or maybe it was just the way that he was prepared to listen.

Gabe pulled her into a close hug.

"Don't worry it'll all blow over soon and then you'll have your peace and quite –" Gabe was about to continue when the doorbell rang.

With a quizzical brow Gabe looked at his watch.

"That was quick," he said, meaning the pizza delivery.

He signalled to Lynn that he'd only be a minute and heaved himself off the sofa and walked to the door humming to himself, from his jeans back pocket he extracted he dollar bills that he always stowed there and pulled the door open expecting to see the usual pizza delivery boy with the bad acne.

Instead he saw an unwashed and unshaven Pete Wentz standing in front of Gabe's door in crumpled clothes that hadn't been changed in days.

Before Gabe could say anything Pete walked into the apartment.

"Gabe I need to talk to you…" Pete started off but didn't get very far.

"Come on Gabe! If you don't hurry up with that pizza you're going to have a corpse in your apartment."

The unusually sunny voice of Lynn drifted through the apartment and before Gabe even knew it she was standing in the door frame that lead from the hallway to the living room, and vice versa.

So now there was not only an unwashed and generally miserable Pete Wentz in Gabe's hallway, but now also Lynn who had until now been happy and content, but who at the sight of Pete froze and went very white.

It was the scene from hell.

And Gabe was right in the middle of it.