Girl That You Love

Emma hung up the phone and jumped out of bed. She was ecstatic that somehow Patrick had worked it out and decided not to try and end things with her. She wondered what made him decide to believe her in the first place, but decided quickly that it was better not to dwell on it. The most important thing was that they were okay, and she could move forward with everything. Overcome with a renewed sense of optimism and peace, she took a shower and got dressed for the day. After two days of laying in bed, feeling nauseous one minute and hungry the next, it felt good to let the hot water wash off all of the sadness and uncertainty that she was feeling. Once dressed in jeans and a maroon long sleeved v-neck, she headed downstairs to find Marie sitting on her couch watching a Lifetime movie, while Robbie was taking a nap on the loveseat.

“Wow, look at you two,” Emma laughed, as she entered her living room.

Marie jumped up when she saw her, a huge smile on her face. Robbie’s eyes opened and he looked over at her intently. “Emma! Look at you! You’re dressed!”

“And showered,” Emma retorted. She gave Marie a hug. “I just got a call from Patrick.”

Marie’s eyes widened, and Robbie sat up. “What did he want?” Robbie asked her. She thought she could hear a note of panic in his voice, but quickly whisked that thought from her mind.

“He called to apologize,” she replied. “He doesn’t want to break up or stop the wedding.”

Marie let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god, I was about to go to LA myself to talk some sense in him.”

“I was about to go with you,” Emma admitted. “And I also told him about the baby,”

“Baby? What baby?” Robbie exclaimed, rising to his feet.

Emma blushed. “Oh, yeah, Robbie, I didn’t tell you yet. So, um, I’m pregnant.” She gave him a smile, but he didn’t return it.

“You’re pregnant with Patrick’s child?” he asked her.

Emma glanced at Marie questioningly. “Of course, Robbie, who else’s baby would I be having?”

Robbie shook his head. “I can’t believe it.” He looked dazed and put off.

Emma turned away from him and addressed only Marie. “I know, it’s crazy. So, have you talked to Barbara? I saw that she had left me a few frantic voicemails.”

“I told her when I knew something, I’d tell her, so I guess I’ll give her a call and let her know the wedding is still on,” Marie said, hugging her. “I’m so happy Patrick came to his senses.”

“You’re telling me. I just don’t know what changed his mind. He seemed so convinced to give it all up a couple of days ago.”

“He probably remembered that none of his friends would talk to him again if he messed things up with you again,” Marie retorted crossing her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow.
Emma shrugged. It didn’t matter though. She was just happy that everything could get back on track, albeit the addition of a baby.

Robbie stood up and angrily stormed past Emma and Marie and into his room. Emma glanced at Marie before turning to follow him. “Robbie, what’s wrong?” she called out as he was about to answer the door.

“You know what’s wrong,” he said curtly, and then slammed the door behind him.

“Jesus, he’s a little touchy isn’t he?” Marie commented, lowering her voice.

Emma sighed. “I think he’s mad about me taking back Patrick,” she replied, matching her voice level with Marie’s.

“Uh, why? I mean A. it’s not like it’s his job to care, and B. why?”

Emma took a seat next to Marie on the couch. “I don’t know. I’ve told him to mind his own business about it, but I think it’s my fault. When he first came on as my security guard, we struck up a pretty good friendship, and I’ve confided in him a lot. I think he thinks he’s protecting me, my feelings in a way.”

“Em, that’s not your fault. He should know better that at the end of the day, his paycheck comes from your fiancé. He just needs to get over that and know that you two aren’t really “friends”.”

Emma nodded. Marie was right of course. Emma had been too liberal with her relationship with Robbie. She forgot that just because he was around all of the time, did not mean she had to share everything with him. She made a silent promise to herself right then to ease their relationship into a more professional realm.

Once Patrick apologized and Emma accepted, it seemed that the tabloid fodder had died down dramatically within the next few days. And while Robbie hadn’t apologized to Emma for acting out, he did keep his thoughts to himself, which Emma appreciated. She was getting tired of feeling like a bad guy, when she really didn’t do anything wrong. However, she couldn’t focus on that at the moment. She could only focus on getting through the following week and all of the plans that came along with it.
Once Wednesday and Thursday had come and gone, Friday was upon her. It was her last night alone at the condo before Patrick and the boys returned to New York Saturday morning, and she could barely contain her excitement. She left work early to clean her house, but was so anxious, she had finished her cleaning quickly and was left sitting her condo itching for something to keep her mind off the fact that she still had to wait to see her fiancé. Robbie was in a fouler mood Friday than he had been the past couple of days, so he was poor company to entertain her. Luckily for her, Marie had finished with a luncheon for the MoMA that she had been planning and decided to whisk Emma way for a dinner at 15 East, a popular Japanese restaurant on Gramercy. While Marie and Emma went in to eat, Robbie elected to stay outside to watch for paparazzi.

“If I’m allowed, I think Robbie’s even more Scrooge-like today than he was a few days ago,” Marie remarked, after they both ordered some sushi and beer.

“I’m just ignoring it. I mean, I don’t understand it, and I don’t really care. If he wants to be a jerk, then let him. Not my problem,” Emma replied flippantly.

“Wow, that carefree attitude of yours is refreshing.”

“Hey, I have about one week left before I get married. I am going to let all of the little things roll off me right now.”

Marie sniggered. “Right. So, I suppose you’re going to let this roll of?” she pulled a US Weekly magazine out of her purse and handed it to Emma.

On the front cover was a picture of her fiancé shaking hands with Joel in front of the guys’ recording studio in LA. The headline read, “No Problems in the Stump Household.” Emma looked up at Marie shocked. “When was this taken?”

Marie smiled a little. “About three days ago.”

Emma pulled her phone out and dialed Joel’s number.

“All right Emma, I guess I should start out with an apology,” Joel said by way of greeting.

“Apology? What about an explanation? Did you go out to LA three days ago?”

“Yeah, I did. I know you said there wasn’t anything I could do, but then, I realized there was. I went to LA and set everything straight with Patrick.”

“I’m sure he was super excited to see you,” she said sarcastically. “Speaking of seeing you, he didn’t mention your visit to me.”

“I told him not to. I knew you’d blow a gasket if you found out that I had went there.”

“So that’s why he forgave me,” she said glumly.

“Part of the reason, sure. But I think , from talking to him, that deep down, he had already forgiven you and placed all his anger on himself for the way he acted. All I think I did was convince him that he just needed to forgive himself and call you.”

She glanced at Marie who watched her face with interest, trying to guess at what Joel might have been saying over the phone. She gave Marie a smile that indicated that everything was okay.

“So, how’d you end up getting your picture taken? You hate getting involved in that stuff, I thought,” she teased him.

“Oh, well, call that my last favor to you. See my old college roommate, Dustin is one of the managing editors at US Weekly, and I asked him to shoot the picture and put it as a cover story. A way for the press to put an end to speculations so that you and Patrick could have some peace.”

“Wow, Joel, I didn’t know you had friends who worked in the grimy world of tabloids.”

“Well, now you do. And if you tell anyone, I will have to kill you!” he said jokingly.

Emma laughed. “Right, I’ll make a note of that. Well, thanks Joel, for doing that for me. I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it. Oh, but one other thing… so when I was talking to Dustin, I had asked him where he was getting all of the pictures of you from, you know because remember I was curious as to the angle of the photos of us? Well, he pointed me to an email address…”

“Really? Oh my god, what’s the email address Joel? You have to tell me!” she said rushed. Her heart quickened with the anticipation of being able to lay into the person who was trying to wreck her life.

“Okay, Emma, I don’t know who you’re around right now, but just don’t act out. The email address he gave me was a robbie5483@gmail.com.”

Emma’s heart leapt into her throat, stopping her breathing. “Wait a minute,” she whispered.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I was thinking the same thing,” Joel said. “I think Robbie has been sending the pictures of you and Patrick to the different media outlets.”

“B..But why?” she stammered, glancing over Marie’s shoulder at Robbie. His head kept turning side-to-side, looking around for potential paparazzi. Marie followed her gaze, and Emma, startled at Marie’s act, grabbed her by the shoulders with her right arm and turned her back around again.

“I don’t know why, Emma, but it makes sense. Remember when I said the pictures of us had to have been taken from somewhere inside the building? Who else in the building would want to expose a fake love tryst in your building? I mean, the rest of the people who live there are as rich if not richer than Patrick. Perhaps, Robbie wanted the money.”

“But you said they weren’t the only pictures he sent…”

“No, Dustin indicated that that email address had sent multiple pictures, and a video, the video of you getting beat up by that fan, to his team.”

Thoughts all started rushing around in her head, making her dizzy. “Joel, this is… Shit, I have to find out if this is real.”

“Okay, but you have to be careful.”

“Yeah, I know. Okay, thanks Joel. I am at dinner right now, so I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up and just stared at Marie. “Emma, what the hell is going on?”

Emma lowered her head and said, “Joel went to LA to apologize to Patrick. And while he was there, he met up with his friend Dustin who’s a managing editor at US Weekly, and well anyway he gave him the email address of the person who’s been sending pictures of us to him… and it is Robbie’s email address.”

Marie’s eyes widened. “You’re bodyguard with anger issues? Why would he do that? Does he need the extra money?”

Emma shrugged. “Not sure, but I have to find out if it’s real. He can’t keep working for Patrick if he’s invading our privacy.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure what he’s doing is illegal,” Marie agreed. “But what can you do?”

Emma glanced sideways. “Robbie mentioned going out with some friends tonight, so I think if he does, I will do a little investigative journalism.”

“Emma, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Marie interrupted.

“Why not?”

“Well, I just remember this one time like a couple of months back where Joe had picked up Robbie’s laptop to use it for some reason or another, and Robbie had a shit fit about him touching his stuff. Joe really thought it was weird.”

“Wait, this happened and you guys didn’t tell us about it?”

“Patrick wanted someone to protect you. You seemed to really like Robbie, so why should we have?”

Emma glanced over at Marie’s shoulder again and looked directly at Robbie. “I bet he’s hiding his stuff in that laptop. I have to get in there tonight while he’s gone.”

Marie rubbed her hands together nervously. “Just be careful all right?”

Emma grinned, “Marie, this type of thing is part of my job. It’s something I can be very good at if I want to be.” Their sushi ordered arrived just then and Emma and Marie got themselves situated to eat.
“Just try not to make it obvious that we have been talking about this okay? I don’t want to let on that we might know and then he try to find a way to back out of his plans for tonight.”
Marie nodded. “Right, I’ll try to act like I just didn’t find out something completely and totally insane about your bodyguard.”

They ate the rest of their dinner in almost complete silence. Neither one of them really knew what to say because they could both only think about one thing. When dinner was over, they left the restaurant where Robbie was waiting for them with a cab already to go. “Good dinner?” He asked them.

Emma could barely look at him for fear that he would be able to see right through her. “Uh, yeah, nothing like uncooked fish to fill an empty stomach.”

Robbie curled up his nose in disgust. “I don’t know how you can eat that shit. Give me some bar-b-que any day of the week.”

Marie started laughing in a weird high-pitched laugh that sounded extremely fake. Emma jabbed her in the side, and Robbie glanced at both of them. “You guys all right? You didn’t get salmonella poisoning did you?”

“We’re fine, Marie’s just tired, so she’s getting slap-happy,” Emma explained, pushing Marie into the taxi cab.

Robbie filed in after Emma and then the cab started driving to Marie’s house. The three sat in an uncomfortable silence. Emma felt awkward sitting so close to Robbie, especially knowing that he could be the reason there has been so much strife in her relationship the past few months. She wanted to address it right then and there, but realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea.

“So,” Marie said, trying to drum up some conversation. “Tomorrow morning. You need me to pick you up?” she said to Emma.

Marie’s statement threw Emma off for a second. “Oh, to the airport!” she exclaimed, realizing that Marie was referring to the boys’ coming home. “Oh, well,”

“No, I’m taking Emma,” Robbie interrupted abruptly.

Emma and Marie glanced at each other. “Robbie, if you don’t want to go, it’s fine,” Emma started.

“It’s my job Emma, remember? Plus, makes no sense Marie coming up this way to pick you up. Be faster for both of you if she went by herself and I took you.”

Marie started to object, but Emma stopped her. “You’re right Robbie.”

The car stopped out front of Marie’s condo. “You sure Emma?” she said, as the cabbie got out to open the door for her.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow at the airport,” Emma reassured her.

Marie shook her head and stepped out of the cab. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once she closed the door, it was just Emma and Robbie in the cab. Emma wondered if Robbie could feel the air filling with the tension between them. Emma could feel Robbie’s residual anger from the past few days, but could he feel her distrust and apprehension about him?

When they made it back to the condo, Emma decided to prod Robbie about his outing that night, hoping she could push him into going. “So, you going to head out soon to see those friends of yours?” she asked him, setting her purse down in the kitchen.

Robbie walked up behind her, his large presence intimidating suddenly. “I was actually thinking about staying here tonight, so we could spend some time together before… everyone got back.”

Emma turned around and eased herself away from him. His closeness irked her in that moment. “Oh come on Robbie. It’ll be fine. Go out and have a good time. God knows you haven’t been able to enjoy yourself these past few months.”

“Emma,”

“Really, Robbie, I insist. I’m probably going to go to bed now anyway. The sooner I go to sleep the faster I get to see Patrick.”

Robbie’s eyes flashed. “Right, Patrick. I forgot how much you were missing him.” He stormed out of the kitchen and she heard him slam the door to his bedroom.

Emma was confused by his fits of anger whenever she brought up Patrick. It didn’t make any sense to her. She quickly went upstairs to her bedroom to give off the impression that she was going to bed, and waited silently to hear Robbie leave. Once she heard the front door slam shut, she waited about ten minutes before she crept downstairs.

She called out for Robbie to see if he might be in the hallway, but to her satisfaction, silence greeted her. Then she walked over to his room, and tried to turn the knob. Not to her surprise it was locked. Luckily, Robbie didn’t know that she and Patrick had extra keys made for all of the rooms because they both had bad habits of losing keys. She pulled the keys out of her sweatpants pocket and unlocked his door.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting when she opened the door, but a clean and tidy room, was not it. She noticed his laptop sitting on his bed, and walked over to it. “Please do not be password protected, please do not be password protected,” she chanted, opening the lid.

The laptop screen came alive and luckily it went straight to a desktop, no password screen to go through. “Score!” she exclaimed. His desktop background was of a stock picture of a mountain, but there weren’t any icons on it. She glanced at his dock and saw his email app and the Finder app. She opened both.

When she opened up the email, she started scanning the sent box. Sure enough, Emma found a ton of emails to various people from People Magazine, US Weekly, and Perez Hilton, including a number of other entertainment news outlets that went as far back as October. She pulled up one from November that read, “Emma Mann and Dan from Imagine Dragons.”

“Shit,” she said, opening the email and seeing the exact picture of her and Dan together at the Stone party in November. “It wasn’t Joel.”

Her eye suddenly caught another email with the subject line “Video Money.” She opened it up.

“Robbie. Okay, did what you wanted, but my friend Chrissy and I want more money. Not only did we get kicked out and couldn’t see the show, WTF but there’s the fact that people are cursing us out. If you don’t give us $500 more I’m going to find a way to tell FOB what you did.”

Emma gasped. The fan that attacked her was paid to do it by Robbie. But why would he do that? She thought wearily. It didn’t make sense. It seemed like he was literally trying to ruin her relationship with Patrick. She shook her head and when she did, she caught her eye on a black box in the corner of the room. She jumped up and went to explore. What she found shocked her: inside were the same kind of “death threats” that she had been receiving for the past few months, including supplies to make more. Was he really doing all of this himself? She wondered, shocked that none of them were able to catch him.

She shut the box and went back to the computer. She started poking around through the file folders, and called Joel.

“Hey Emma, what’s up?”

“You were right, Joel. He has been sending the pictures and stuff,” she blurted out.

“Wait, what? You confronted him?” Joel asked her, shocked.

“What, no, god Joel, I’m not that crazy. No, he went somewhere and I snuck into his bedroom.”

“Right, you’re not as crazy as I thought, you’re insane,” Joel replied.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“You shouldn’t. What did you find?”

“Loads of email traffic back and forth between him and a ton of tabloid people. He even orchestrated the fan attack during Thanksgiving! Oh, and I found a box full of supplies to make those nasty death threats I keep getting!” she let her excitement of her findings shine through in her voice.

“Whoa, Emma, are you serious?” Joel sounded taken aback. “That doesn’t sound strange to you?”

“Sure it does. I just can’t put my finger on why he would want to do it though,”

“Emma, I,”

Her audible gasp made him pause. Emma stared at the folder she had just opened with wide eyes.

“Emma what is it?” Joel asked her.

Emma couldn’t quite articulate what she was seeing. In the folder she had opened up were pictures, of her, unknowingly taken in various states of undress and in sleep. It was as if Robbie was sneaking into her room at night or bathroom to take pictures of her. She started feeling sick. She kept scrolling through the pictures, seeing parts of her body that only Patrick has seen suddenly on the computer made her feel dirty. How could she not feel or sense his presence? She had always thought herself a light sleeper, but now she was beginning to doubt that.

“Joel, why does he have pictures of me sleeping and half naked on here?”

“Emma, you have to get out of that bedroom now,” Joel ordered.

Emma shut the laptop and ran out of the room, locking it behind her. Her heart was pounding in her ears. “Joel what the fuck!?” she cried out.

“Emma, this is what I was worried about. I think he might be obsessed with you.”

“No shit Sherlock! But what the hell? I mean I had no idea!”

“Didn’t you? Didn’t you say that he acts annoyed or angry when you mention Patrick. And he got upset after you told him about the baby?”

“But he keeps saying he just wants to see me happy. I figured he didn’t approve of the relationship,”
she said numbly.

“Doubtful. Emma, Look. You cannot confront him okay?” Joel said sternly.

“What?! How can I not! He’s completely invading my privacy not to mention there has to be a few indecency laws he’s breaking!”

“Emma, remember that article I did a couple of years ago on stalkers and serial killers? Robbie’s actions fit that bill. I am worried that if you confronted him without Patrick or Robbie’s boss there that things might get out of hand.”

“Joel, I can handle myself.”

“I have no doubt Emma, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with. This isn’t confronting a friend who’s lied to you. This man obviously has some delusions of grandeur and if you break it down, his psyche may come apart and you will be a victim of it.”

“Joel,”

“Emma, no. Just listen to me on this. Patrick comes home tomorrow right?”

“Yeah, in the morning.”

“Good, wait until then. Tell him about it and let that guy Mario,”

“Marcus,”

“Right Marcus, let him take care of it. Please Emma, if not for you then for your baby.”

“Wow,” she said curtly. “Low blow there, but I got it. I won’t do anything okay?”

“Thanks Emma.”

“Yeah, well I guess I’ll try to go to sleep then and not think about my body guard sneaking into my room and taking pictures of me.”

“I suggest you lock the door,” he said.

“Yeah, no worries, I already had that covered.”

Once they hung up, Emma ran up to her room and locked the door behind her. She crawled into bed and turned her TV onto the weather channel. She tried to go to sleep, but all she could think about was Robbie taking pictures of her. Robbie’s hands grabbing at her, his eyes leering in her direction. It was enough to sufficiently creep her out. At that moment, all she wanted was for Patrick to be home. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.