Page 16 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
“Jesus Christ,” I sighed, “I was hoping that after reading the manual you’d tone things down a little. Maybe get distracted, sure… daydream a bit. But I also hoped you’d eventually realize it was all nonsense. Empty theories scribbled by some nineteenth-century proto-influencer with way too much free time.”
“Nonsense?” Tess echoed, as if I’d just blasphemed in church. “Are you kidding me? Listen to these pearls!”
She launched back into reading with a vibrating voice: “Be the wound, not the bandage… Make him suffer without touching him… Cruelty is a form of respect… Silence is the most seductive scream… Never kiss before the war…”
She stopped, eyes shining with emotion. “Isn’t it beautiful, Bea? This book is solid gold from the first page to the last. A treasure. The lessons I’ve drawn from it are… what’s the word… inexhaustible? No. Inestimable.Invaluable!”
She spun around, arms wide like a romantic witch under a full moon. “And I don’t even dare to imagine where this will take me! Because seduction, Bea, is everything. Not just in love. Everywhere. It’s a social force.”
She stepped closer to the bed, solemn as a priestess. “This book has instantly boosted my confidence. My self-worth. And soon—very soon—it will improve my social and financial standing too. I will no longer be Tess Martini, broke roommate. I will be Tess Martini, femme fatale. Elite influencer. Cultural icon.”
Tess resettled herself on the edge of the bed with ceremonial slowness, then laid the manual down between us as if it were a ticking time bomb.
I watched her in silence, then said in a flat voice: “Okay. So now, infused with all this new wisdom, I imagine you’ve put things in perspective. Like: you’ve realized it was ridiculous to feel bad about Chad, and now you’re going to move forward, live your life…”
“Hell no!” Tess burst out, indignant. “All thenegative energy Chad dumped on me—it was fuel, Bea. Motivational fuel! Every ignored text, every silent humiliation, every like he gave to that model with the tattooed eyebrows… it all pushed me toward this evolution.”
She stepped back, then thumped her chest like a gladiator thirsting for revenge. “But it’s not over—not until my transformation from ugly duckling to spectacular swan is complete. And not just on the inside, Bea. On the outside. For everyone to see.”
She came closer to my bed, lowering her voice. “It’s true, inside I already feel like a Queen. With a capital Q. But that’s not enough. Not enough! Everyone has to see it.”
A flash lit her eyes. “Hehas to see it. That bastard Chad. I want him to look at me and be blinded by my sexual energy. An energy that, obviously, is no longer aimed at him.”
“Good,” I sighed. “I’m glad you’ve chosen to deal with it this way. Some girls crumble, get depressed, turn into wilted houseplants after a breakup. You, on the other hand, look ready for war—like Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“Damn right,” Tess said, puffing out her chest.
“But let me get this straight…” I turned toward her, narrowing my eyes. “Because there’s one detail I’m still missing.”
“Go on, darling,” she said, with the magnanimous tone of a queen granting a private audience.
“This whole production—the Blitzkrieg seduction, Zane Ryder, the psychological traps, the manual… all of it, you’re staging just to make Chad jealous, right? So far, so good.”
“Jealous?” she scoffed, laughing. “His eyes will fall right out of their sockets. He’ll crawl to my doorstep on his knees, clinging to my ankles, begging me to take him back.”
“Right, see, that’s where I was going…” I raised an eyebrow. “But in the end, do you actually want him back? Is that the real goal behind all this?”
Tess looked at me like I’d just asked if she wanted to marry a pigeon.
“Are you kidding me?” she sneered. “Chad is an insect.”
Then she smiled. Slowly. Dangerously.
“I just want towin.”
8
I woke up around noon.
Partly to recover from Tess’s tragicomic meltdown the night before, partly because—let’s face it—I was slowly but surely slipping into a life of vice.
The vice of doing absolutely nothing.
Once upon a time, I was all about discipline. I used to get up before dawn, just in time to greet the sunrise as it peeked over the buildings, coffee in hand and brimming with good intentions.
I liked to think that, among all the aspiring writers in the world, only a rare few were up at that hour to write.
And practically none of them were unemployed.
