Page 14 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
Nothing. Zero. Not even a glance. Not even a twitch of an eyelid. Tess was lost in that manual as if it were the final fragment of some long-buried secret of the universe.
After lunch, I retreated to my room. Not because I felt inspired—let’s be clear. It was more of a Pavlovian reflex than any genuine desire to write. As if my body, after years of ruthless discipline, simply couldn’t resist sitting down at the typewriter whenever I was within five feet of it.
I sat. Slid a sheet into the roller. And without any expectations, I tried giving shape to one of the thousand ideas I’d stockpiled while working on my misunderstood masterpiece. They were always there, lined up like angry passengers at a bus terminal. And now one of them was finally boarding.
I banged out three paragraphs at lightning speed, like I was trying to outsmart my own brain. Then I stopped. I reread them slowly, the way you open your final report card of the year: with equal parts hope, dread, and nausea.
I tried to figure out if those damned words… well, if they “leapt off the page,” like he’d once said. But I couldn’t tell anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. And that’s when I realized I was doomed.
It wasn’t just the humiliation of Bronson. It was worse. It was the awareness. The damned awareness. Now I knew there were living words and dead words out there, and every time I sat down to write a sentence, an inner voice would start judging: “Pulsating organ or typographic corpse?”
It was like a tennis player who, instead of hitting a ball coming at 110 miles an hour, suddenly thinks:Wait… better to go 40% biceps and 60% deltoid? Or maybe 30% ulnar, 20% coracobrachialis, and 50% triceps?
Result: ball to the face, career over.
That’s exactly where I was. Whether I tried to write a pathetic little romance or some deep, soul-crushing story of love and death.
Screwed. Totally, gloriously, irreparably screwed.
I dumped the Olivetti into the trash can, right on top of the mountain of crumpled paper. It sank slowly, Titanic-style, swallowed by weeks of failed attempts. Then I collapsed onto the bed, arms spread, staring at the ceiling as if it might reveal the deeper meaning of life. Spoiler: it didn’t.
I stayed there all day. Crawled out of my cave only twice. The first time was to go to the bathroom—where I found Tess perched on the edge of the bathtub. Yes, an actual bathtub, the kind nobody has anymore but that she refused to give up “forpoetic reasons.” She didn’t even flinch when I sat down across from her to pee. I mean, the whole thing could’ve been staged as some Scandinavian theater drama, that’s how surreal it felt.
The second time, I found her on the couch, lying upside down with her legs crossed over the backrest and the Countess’s book still clutched in her hands, as if she were absorbing knowledge straight through osmosis.
Both times, I tried a joke.
First attempt: “Zane Ryder, brace yourself… she’s coming for you. She’s gonna scramble your brain and ruin your career. With love.”
Second attempt: “I have a feeling this story’s going to end with a restraining order.”
But Tess didn’t even look up. Not once.
She was completely possessed. By a manual published in 1894. By a French seductress.
And me? I was jealous. Jealous of that damn book.
7
“I finished it!”
…
“Bea, wake up! I finished it!”
I shot upright, my heart thundering in my chest like a deranged drummer. “Finished what? Your last brain cell?” I mumbled, still half-asleep.
A suddenclick!and the room flooded with operating-room brightness. Tess was standing there, eyes wide, grinning so big it could’ve scared a clown.
“Are you insane?” I groaned, throwing an arm over my face and collapsing back against the headboard like I’d just survived a war. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I finished the book, Bea. The manual!”
“What, that nineteenth-century relic supposedly written by a French countess who was probably just a charismatic bartender in Montmartre?”
“Bea, please! Show some respect for the Contessa Éloïse de Saint-Rouge. That woman was agenius. A Machiavelli of seduction. No—better: aSun Tzu in a corset!I’ve never read anything so… strategic. Did you know she was exiled from Paris for being too scandalous? And do you know what they said about her? That a single glance from her could ruin a marriage.”
My eyes struggled to adjust to the violent glare of the ceiling light. I blinked a few times until I finally managed to focus: Tess, perched ecstatically on the edge of my bed, was stroking that damn book like it was a newly adopted puppy.
