Page 28 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
She grabbed his hand and, with a complicit smile, whisked him away.
“Sorry,” he said with a half-shrug. “I was waiting for her.”
Game over.
Tess returned to the bar without the slightest hint of frustration. Heels still perfect, makeup untouched, dignity polished to a mirror shine.
“Well?” I asked, as she tapped her fingers lightly against her glass with serene composure.
“I’m incredibly pleased with the outcome of my test,” she replied.
“As in…?”
She looked at me. “Bea, itshouldhave turned out this way! This is a manual for conquering Doomed Artists, not submissive office drones! An opium poet downing wine from a golden chalice doesn’t react the same way as an accountant from New Jersey! The ego of a visionary demands a higher challenge. It’s pure alchemy.”
“So the warm-up test with the men is… over?”
Tess raised her glass in a ceremonial gesture, as if consecrating a magic potion under the full moon.
“Splendidly over, I’d say!”
And she toasted.
To herself, naturally.
11
At first, I thought the theory that the Countess’s techniques had failed because those guys “just weren’t high caliber enough” was nothing more than a clumsy excuse—like tossing a lace doily over a minefield. I didn’t even have the strength to mock her: reality had already heckled her harder than I ever could.
But then, on the way home, I started noticing something strange.
Not for a single second—and I mean not even one—had Tess lost her unshakable optimism. She walked as if she were strutting down some invisible runway, chin high, eyes glittering, lips curved in that unmistakable, wicked little smile of hers.
Not a fake smile. Not the smile of someone pretending the night had gone well.
It was the smile of someone who had a plan. And—far more unsettling—of someone convinced that the plan was unfolding flawlessly. Exactly as expected.
“See, Bea,” she said on the subway ride home, asthe train jerked along the tracks like an old, exhausted bull. “I was simply… out of their league. My techniques are BEYOND. Like, literally on another dimension.”
I stared at her, because she was talking with the inspired air of a woman explaining quantum physics to the entire subway car.
“It’s like when you let a cat play with a ball of yarn,” she continued. “The cat only enjoys it if you toss it close, tease it a little, then—bam!—snatch it away at the last second. But me? I wasn’t even in the same room as the yarn. I was on another planet. Miles away. Light years away. The only option they had was to walk off… because they didn’t get it. At all.”
“Wait, wait…” I cut in, trying not to laugh. “Weren’t you the one who swore, before we left the apartment, that you’d hypnotize them, seduce them, and leave them drowning their sorrows in whiskey because of their unrequited feelings for you? Or something like that?”
“Yes, okay, true,” she admitted, without losing a single ounce of poise. “I said that. But I hadn’t yet grasped the true power of the Countess’s methods. Don’t you see? I used a bazooka to fish goldfish out of an aquarium. Of course it didn’t work. It was counterproductive, if anything.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to dismantle her theories—half Sun Tzu, half cursed romancespellbook.
The truth—the one I’d never admit out loud—was that deep down, I was glad she hadn’t lost her momentum. That her enthusiasm remained intact, sparkling, inexplicable.
Because at Spice, watching her launch herself at those poor, unsuspecting men with the confidence of a praying mantis in an evening gown… I’d had an idea.
An idea so strong, so sudden, I’d almost bolted out of the bar to run home, open my laptop, and start typing with trembling fingers before the thought slipped away.
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
Because the greatest comedy show on earth was unfolding right before my eyes. And I had a front-row seat. Reserved. Perfect view.
