HDU by India Lee Page B

“Why are
you hitting me?” he asked.
    Amanda calmed, realizing that she was in fact hitting
him, and that it was mostly unwarranted.   “ Because ,” she sputtered.
    “Oh, okay.”
    “ Because number one, you kept me waiting around cluelessly and number two, you just barged
into my hotel room like some crazy intruder!”
    Liam let go of her hands, delighting in her
fury.   “I booked this room.   I have a key and I can technically come
in whenever I want.”
    “That’s not true,” Amanda contested.   “That’s
wrong, that’s… perverted ,” she said,
still too flustered to be eloquent.   Liam let out a hearty laugh.
    “Don’t worry, I have zero interest in walking in on
you changing.”
    “Screw you!” Amanda blurted, immediately covering her
mouth with her hands.   She felt officially
embarrassed and additionally unsure of where her emotions had come from.   Liam only raised his eyebrows, rather
entertained.
    “Do you want me to walk in on you changing? I can.”
    “Shut up.   Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
    He relented, guiding her by the elbows to her bed and
sitting her down.   “What? Are you
upset about what your HDUers said about you?” he asked.
    “What’d they say about me?”
    Liam’s smile faltered.   “What?”
    “What’d they say about me?” Amanda repeated.
    “You should know.   You posted it.”
    “I went out with Ian before the comments started,”
Amanda said.   She eyed her laptop but
as if reading her mind, Liam snatched it off her desk.     
    “Let’s go.   We’re already late,” he said, no longer smiling, looking a little dull
and exasperated.   Amanda ignored
him and stood up defiantly.   She gripped
the edges of her laptop, playing with him a losing but relentless game of
tug-of-war.   “Stop it, Amanda,”
Liam said, annoyed.  
    “Give it to me, it’s mine,” she grunted, recognizing
her childish tone.   Liam rolled his
eyes and let go, sending her falling back onto the bed.   She ignored how silly her flailing legs
looked and opened up her laptop, navigating straight to the post and its
comments.   She read them.
    “not a gf for
sure. prob the maid. she’s got the uniform.”
    “ewww wtf am i
looking at?!?”
    “if liam brody
were to try dating non-models, he def wouldn’t start with this girl.   take it one step at a time, buddy!”
      “lol someone needs a stylist. and
makeup. and a gym membership.”
    Amanda stared, each comment seeming worse than the next
with very few about Liam himself.   It seemed that everyone was just in awe of her.   Her unremarkable looks – her ugly looks.   She swallowed hard and tried to recall if she had been
wearing enough makeup that day.
    “I don’t know if you know this, but there are a lot
of idiots on your website,” Liam said, leaning against her dresser.   “The only reason it’s popular is because
there are so many comments, and the only reason it has so many comments is
because those people are always home doing nothing.”
    Amanda didn’t bother explaining that the comments
were from users she liked, certain she’d cry if she opened her mouth to
speak.   That would be the ultimate
embarrassment.
      Liam
heaved a sigh, rolling his neck.   “So do you still want to go out or do you want to stay here?”
    Amanda paused.   She honestly wanted to go out – she was in New York for
God’s sake – but she didn’t want to give the gossip world any more
ammo.   There were thousands –
maybe tens of thousands – of people dissecting her every flaw at that very
second, tweeting about her ugly dress, messaging links of her photos to their
friends so they could all have a laugh together.   It was absolutely terrifying to think about.
    But at the same time, she knew that staying in would
be accepting defeat.   If the world
never saw her face again, their last memory would be of her wearing an ugly
blue dress that apparently looked like a maid’s uniform.   Before she could