So, here's the good news: This chapter is almost entirely Cabbie, and the next chapter is going to be dealing with Tandre. Here's the bad news: I will be gone for another week to attend church camp. I'll be leaving on Sunday and returning on Friday. Hopefully I'll have another chapter posted by the time I leave. I really hoped for 100 reviews in the last chapter, and I'm three away. But it's okay. We'll hit 100 now. Thank you guys so much for reading, and remember, if you're reading, leave a review.
Cat was over at Robbie's house most of the next week. She always told Tori that she had to work late, and the more she lied to Tori, the easier it became. It was like the lies were just running smoothly out of her mouth by now, and Tori and Trina had no idea what was going on. Robbie, on the other hand, was coming along differently. The more he lied, the worse he got at it. He hated seeing looks of confusion on his friends' faces, and he always felt sick whenever he had to lie to them. Several times, he figured that it would just be easier to tell everyone what was going on and get it over with, but then he would change his mind. All of them had enough to worry about without having to worry about Robbie and Cat getting together. And he knew that they would worry.
One day while Cat was at Robbie's house and they were watching a movie, Robbie drifted off into his own thoughts. If only he wouldn't have to lie, even just for a little while. If only he could get away from it all for just a couple of days…
And then the idea hit him. He and Cat had to get out of town for a weekend. That way, they could be alone without worrying whether or not their friends were going to barge in on them. He almost jumped off the couch he was so excited, and Cat glanced over at him curiously.
"What's up?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.
"We're going away this weekend!" Robbie exclaimed. Cat looked confused, and he went on. "Don't you worry about all of our friends finding out about all of this? We need to get out of town so that we can be alone. Just for the weekend, and then we can come back. It'll be fun."
Cat frowned and turned the television off, no longer interested in the movie playing. "I don't know," she said skeptically. "I mean, what are we supposed to tell everyone? If we leave together for the weekend, won't they get a little suspicious?"
"But that's the thing," Robbie said as he turned around to completely face her. "We're not leaving together. You can say that you have a fashion show or something to go to, and I can uh…I can say that I'm looking for a job out of town."
"You can't look for a job out of town! Then I'll be here all by myself, and-"
"Cat," Robbie said, placing a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. "I'm not actually looking for a job out of town. We're only saying that I am. We can go to a hotel in San Diego and stay there for a couple of days."
Cat bit her lip and thought about the whole thing. Sure, it sounded like a great plan, but there was always the chance that someone would find out something. And she really, really didn't want anyone to find out. But maybe the pros of this plan outweighed the cons, and she suddenly got excited about it all. She never would have dreamed that she'd be sneaking around with someone behind her friends' backs, especially if that someone was Robbie. It was all so exhilarating.
"Okay, sure," she said. "But we'll have to lie about where we're going. We can't be going to the same place at the same time."
"Right, whatever. Let's just go get packed." Robbie jumped up from the couch and darted into his bedroom, while Cat let out a squeal of excitement and ran out the door, heading for Tori's house to get all of her things packed for the weekend trip.
…
That Thursday, Cat was in the guest bedroom making sure that she had enough clothes packed for the weekend. When everything looked good enough to her, she rushed down the stairs where she found that all of her friends were sitting in the living room talking. She smiled and made sure that she was completely composed before she walked over to them. She had to make sure that they believed her, although she knew that they would. She was getting so good at lying.
"Hey, guys," she greeted them happily as she sat down on the couch next to Andre. "So guess where I'm going this weekend?" She had their full attention now, and she grinned. "San Diego. They're having a fashion show down there, and my assistant and I are going to go."
"That's so weird," Trina said, with a hint of curiosity in her voice. "Robbie just told us that he's going to look for a job down there. Although I don't know why he is. He's not gonna find anything."
Cat pursed her lips together in disappointment as she turned her head to glare at Robbie. He wasn't even looking up at her, but he knew the mistake that had been made. "Huh, that's funny," Cat said, crossing her arms. "It seems like Robbie could've gone to look for a job somewhere else. Not San Diego."
"I can't control where I go to look for a job," Robbie said innocently. "Do you want people to think I'm lying? I'm not lying."
"Yes, you can," Cat said, raising an eyebrow at him. "You can control where you go."
Robbie frowned and looked up at all of his friends, who were all staring at him curiously. "Yes, I suppose I could. But I'm still not lying."
Cat rolled her eyes and got up from the couch to go scour the kitchen for something to eat. None of her friends seemed to be suspicious of anything yet, even though she thought it was fairly obvious what was going on. She might as well just be glad that they believed Robbie, even though he was a terrible liar.
They didn't even say anything when Robbie left early the next morning and she left a couple of hours later. She met up with him at a coffee shop, and then they headed off to San Diego together. Cat could almost feel the stress melting away from her as they got farther and farther away from Los Angeles and their friends.
"Andre is watching the house for me this weekend," Robbie said. "I had to make sure to get all of your stuff out before I left. I couldn't lie to him if he found anything."
Cat sighed as she gripped his hand that wasn't on the steering wheel. He seemed to become less tense at her touch. "You really need to relax about the lying, okay? You went to a performing arts high school for four years. You should be able to lie now. I mean, who knows how long we'll have to keep this up? It might be a while before we decide to tell anyone anything. Just get used to it."
Robbie looked over at her and smiled a little, and she returned the smile. And right at that moment, he started to realize every little reason why he had cared about her so much in high school and why he was so grateful that they had met again after five years. Starting with her smile. It was perfect, just like every other thing about her.
"Ooh! I love this song!" Cat exclaimed, and Robbie was quickly brought out of his thoughts. He hadn't even realized that Cat had turned on the radio. "Makin' my way downtown, walkin' fast, faces past, and I'm homebound. Take the next part, Robbie."
"I don't know it," Robbie lied. He knew the song quite well, but he just wanted to hear Cat sing.
"Staring blankly ahead, just making my way, making my way through the crowd," Cat continued. "You have to sing the chorus, Robbie. Everyone knows the chorus."
Robbie smiled and looked over at her. She was watching him with her wide brown eyes, and he knew that he had to sing with her. It would make her happy. "If I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by?" they sang together, while Cat started laughing at Robbie. She had never heard him sing before, and she thought it was cute.
The rest of the ride was spent with the radio turned up loud and sharing laughs and smiles that they weren't able to share with one another when their friends were around. Now, they could just be Cat and Robbie. There were no secrets to keep.
When they arrived at their hotel room about two hours later, Cat accidentally dropped her bag on Robbie's foot as she rushed over to the bed in excitement. "Look! They left little chocolates on the pillows! Haha." She held up the little chocolate that she had picked off of the bed giggled some more as she unwrapped it and ate it.
Robbie was almost curled up in the fetal position because of the bag on his foot, and he quickly let out a breath and removed the bag, which was much heavier than it should have been to spend just two days out of town. "Cat, what do you have in there? Bricks?" He sat down on the floor and took off his shoe, hoping that none of his toes had been crushed.
"No, just my make-up, some clothes, hair products, a camera, a book, my cell phone charger, a laptop-" She stopped when she saw that Robbie was in the floor, and she hurried over to him to make sure that he was okay. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Are you okay?"
Robbie looked up at her, his eyes meeting hers, and suddenly nothing seemed to hurt anymore. He looked down at her tiny hand resting on his knee, and he placed his hand over hers. "Not anymore. I'm fine." He paused for a moment before continuing. "Hey, Cat? Can I ask you a question?" Cat nodded and scooted closer to him, her eyes wide with curiosity. "If you could be with another guy right now besides me, would you?"
Cat sucked in a breath and blew it back out, and she tilted her head to the side as she mulled over the question. "Hmm…no," she replied simply before getting up and plopping down hard on the bed.
Questions like that usually required a little more explanation than what she gave him, but Robbie didn't feel like he needed anything else from her. For some reason, he felt like she was telling the truth.
….
Andre had been waiting anxiously all week for a call from his producers to see if Tori could possibly be recording with him from now on. However, no matter how many times he begged his phone to ring, it never did. He didn't think they needed that much time to discuss it, and he was starting to get nervous.
Tori was out with her sister for the day shopping, and Andre was forced to tag along with Beck and Jade. They were at a small café on the other side of town, and Andre had his phone out on the table and willing it to ring.
"You know, staring at it doesn't make it ring any sooner," Beck told him.
Andre had known all day that Beck and Jade were trying to get rid of him. He knew they wanted to be alone. But he just didn't want to be by himself right now. What if the producers called with bad news? He wouldn't be able to handle it on his own.
"It's just killing me waiting on a call, you know? Tori deserves to be famous. She's incredibly talented." No sooner did he say that that the phone started ringing, and it was his manager. He let it ring twice so that it wouldn't make him look desperate, and then he answered. "Hello?" As soon as his manager started speaking, he excused himself from the table and walked outside.
"I bet it's bad news," Jade said as she watched him walking around outside the window. "His shoulders are slumping."
"Let's just hope it's good news," Beck said.
"Yeah, so I can get the hell out of here. I can't deal with his whining."
Andre walked in a few minutes later, unable to hide the frown on his face. He sat down at the table, shaking his head and breathing unevenly. They knew what was going on before he even said a word. "So how the hell am I supposed to tell Tori they didn't like her?"
"Want me to tell her?" Jade asked, and Beck shot a glare at her.
Andre sighed and stared at his plate of food that was not going to be finished. He couldn't eat now that he knew he was about to crush Tori's dreams.
….
Cat and Robbie spent the entire weekend in the hotel room watching movies and doing other things that they were unable to do when their friends were around. When Sunday morning came, they left the hotel reluctantly and returned to Los Angeles, where they would have to go back to pretending. To avoid any questions, Robbie dropped Cat off a couple of blocks from Tori's house, and he drove home to unpack, promising Cat that he would be over at Tori's house in just a couple of hours.
Robbie didn't expect to walk into his house and find Andre standing there in the kitchen with a creepy grin on his face. It was as if he knew something, and Robbie prepared himself for any lying that he had to do.
"So the hotel called," Andre said, crossing his arms and grinning even more. "They said that someone left a tube of lip gloss, some mascara, and some eye shadow in the room."
Robbie hesitated. He and Cat had searched the room three times. How had they missed that? "Um…yes, that was mine."
Andre frowned and stared at Robbie in utter confusion. "Dude, I just thought you hooked up with someone. But I mean…" He paused while Robbie was staring at the floor, his face starting to turn bright red. "Okay, one question, Robbie. And whatever you say, I'll believe you, alright?"
Robbie nodded, although he was a little wary. "Okay, sure."
"Okay." Andre rubbed his hands together and then slammed them on the kitchen counter, causing Robbie to jump. "Are you gay?"
"What? No, I just…you know, I hooked up. And I didn't want to tell you because it's so unlike me." If Robbie could have kicked himself, he would have. He was the worst liar in the world.
"Whatever," Andre said, shrugging. "You wanna go to Tori's house? Trina's cooking tonight, and I'm a little curious." He couldn't bring himself to tell Robbie about what his manager had said. It was killing him inside, and he knew that he couldn't tell Tori right now either. Not with everyone else around…
He and Robbie loaded up in his SUV, and they headed across town to Tori's house. The ride was mostly silent, except for the few times that Andre prompted Robbie to talk about his San Diego hook-up. Robbie refused to speak about it, afraid that he was going to dig himself into an even deeper hole than he was already in.
When they arrived at Tori's house, Robbie was relieved to know that only Cat, Trina, and Tori were there. Tori and Trina were completely gullible, while Jade could usually tell when someone was incredibly nervous about something. If Jade would have been there…Robbie couldn't even think about that. He and Cat would be outed before they even had a chance to defend themselves.
"What's for dinner?" Andre asked as they walked in.
"Parmesan chicken!" Trina shouted over all of the sizzling and smoke emitting from the kitchen.
"Smells great," Andre said, although there was a terrible burning scent floating in the air. He had a feeling he would be eating at his house tonight.
Tori walked down the stairs a few minutes later, and Andre suddenly remembered the awful news that he had to pass on to her. He would just have to pretend like everything was fine for now. "How's my favorite girl?" he asked, wrapping his arm around her waist and kissing her on the cheek.
"Doing great," Tori replied. He wasn't the only one pretending. The only word that was rushing through Tori's head as he kissed her was rebound.
Cat didn't appear until after a small fire started and Trina had to put it out. In fact, she didn't come downstairs until Trina laid out the burnt chicken in front of everyone and offered them some rather ugly-looking noodles.
"Hey, Tori?" she said as she sat down at the table, obviously the only one that didn't notice the horrendous dinner in front of her. "Like, half of my make-up bag has gone missing. I lost some lip gloss, some eye shadow, and some mascara. Any chance you might have seen it anywhere?"
Robbie looked up and dropped his fork with a loud clatter as soon as he heard the words leave her mouth. Tori was shaking her head and force-feeding herself the burnt chicken, completely oblivious to any tension that just formed in the room. Trina was rattling on about never losing her make-up, but no one was listening to her. Cat was staring at Robbie curiously, and Andre's eyes had widened a considerable amount in the last few seconds as he started to process this new information. And then he started pointing at Cat and Robbie and shouting.
"You! Ahhhh!" The rest of the words coming out of his mouth were muffled, because Robbie had instinctively tackled him to the ground in hopes of getting him to shut up. Andre was fighting him off as best he could, but he was so shocked by the whole situation that he just wanted to shout out all of his jumbled thoughts.
Cat immediately registered what was going on, and she jumped up from her seat and rushed over to Andre and Robbie, ignoring the looks of horror and confusion that she was getting from Tori and Trina. Without thinking, she grabbed an unused napkin off the table and stuffed it in Andre's mouth so that he would shut up, and then Robbie got up and dragged Andre out of the room by the leg, with Cat following closely behind them.
Tori and Trina both debated on whether or not they should follow after as soon as Robbie started dragging Andre up the stairs, but they both decided against it. They didn't want to be involved in whatever was going on up there, so they just sat in awkward silence for a few minutes.
"Oh, we're so stupid," Trina said as she started to take a bite of her chicken and then threw it back on the plate. "They're trying to kidnap Andre."
"For some reason, I doubt that, Trina," Tori said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
Upstairs, Robbie had hauled Andre into the guest bedroom that Cat was staying in and locked the door behind them. Andre was struggling against Robbie's grip on his foot, and then he realized that both of his hands had been free the whole time. He rolled his eyes and spit the napkin out on the floor, and he jerked his foot away from him.
"Okay, yes," Robbie said, before Andre could start screaming again. "Yes, Cat and I are together. We spent the weekend in San Diego together. But you have to stay quiet. Don't start yelling again."
Andre looked as if he was going to be sick by the idea of staying quiet, but then he crossed his arms and plopped down on the bed. "Since when?"
"Um…" Robbie glanced at Cat, and then turned back to Andre. "Well, we've only been dating officially for three weeks, but we've been sleeping together since the wedding."
"SLEEPING TOGETHER? MY WEDDING?" Andre shouted, and Robbie immediately slammed his hand over Andre's mouth and listened quietly to see if anyone had heard them.
"Shut up!" Robbie hissed, removing his hand when he didn't hear anything from downstairs. "We didn't want to tell anyone because we didn't want you guys to get all freaked out and stuff. We were going to tell you when we got ready to. Which could have been months…years from now, maybe."
"You can't tell anyone, though," Cat said, sitting down next to Andre on the bed. "Please. We just don't think it's the right time."
"But this is huge! I have to tell someone," Andre said as he got up and headed for the door. Robbie was faster, though, and he stood in front of the door. Andre looked like he was going through tons of internal torture as he struggled with everything that had just happened. He really wanted to tell someone all about this. It was just too huge to keep himself. But Robbie and Cat were both staring at him with hopeful eyes, and he sighed. "Fine, I promise I won't tell anyone."
Robbie smiled and Cat thanked him, and as Robbie moved to unlock the door, the door came flying open and almost smacked him in the face. Trina was standing in the doorway holding a broom.
"You guys are not going to kidnap Andre!" she shouted as she grabbed Andre's hand and pulled him back downstairs.