Page 2 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
“I don’t believe he actually said all of that.”
“He didn’t have to. Come on, Bea. When one of your characters is thirsty, you don’t write ‘she’s thirsty.’ You make her lick a puddle. I read between the lines. No highlighter needed.”
“Couldn’t you clap back? Tell him he’s an emotionally stunted cheapskate with the depth of a teaspoon?”
Tess shook her head gravely. “It would’ve just sounded like a desperate attempt to even the score. You don’t get it, Bea. Seriously, don’t you get it? You spend all day locked in your room writing, and you still haven’t figured out basic human dynamics?”
She paused, then went on, sharper now. “If I’d told him I was planning to break up with him too—just waiting for the right moment—do you think he’d believe me? Even if it was the God-honest truth—and you know it was—he’d still think I was lying. A pathetic Hail Mary to reclaim a scrap of the dignity he just dumped all over me with a bucket.”
“So you stayed quiet?”
“No, I said something… actually…”
“What did you say?”
“Honestly? It would’ve been better if I’d just kept my mouth shut.”
“Oh no.”
“Exactly…”
“You humiliated yourself?”
“I yelled so loud I probably woke ancient Aztec gods. At one point I lost peripheral vision.”
“Oh God...”
“Picture a football coach losing the Super Bowl by a single point in the final second. Now multiplythat despair by ten. I caused a scene so dramatic people at the bar will tell their grandchildren about it. And him? Calm as a Zen rock, with that smug guru face like he’d ‘won.’”
“Try to see it in perspective. It’s just human vanity crap. Who cares if Chad ‘won’? And who gives a damn about the people at the bar? You’ll never set foot there again, end of story.”
“Easy for you to say...” she scoffed. “Meanwhile, I can already see that smug bastard strutting around with his dumb little smirk, telling his buddies: ‘I knew she was into me, but that into me? I really hit a nerve, poor thing.’”
“Let him think whatever he wants. Let him keep his bargain-bin victory. You’re stronger than that.”
“You know what this sounds like?” Tess shot back, eyes rimmed with mascara and defeat. “The kind of bullshit pep talk people give losers.”
I was starting to lose my patience. “Then why the hell did you barge into my room if you won’t even let me try to cheer you up?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for disrupting your sacred creative flow, Miss Woolf!” she snapped. “Youeverhear that story? A woman goes to therapy, talks for hours and hours, and by the fifth session she says, ‘Doctor, I already feel so much better. Where did you study to understand the human soul so well?’ And he says, ‘Lo siento, señorita… pero no hablo inglés.’”
She paused. “Sometimes you just need to talk, Bea. To get the poison out. That’s it.”
She stood up, stomped to the door, yanked it open, and slammed it behind her with enough force to knock a chunk of plaster from the ceiling.
But there was no way I was letting her have the last word.
I stormed to the door, flung it open, and shouted, “And what part of ‘when you interrupt my creative flow, it takes a goddamn ten-ton truck to get it moving again’ do you not understand?! This is my job!”
Then I slammed the door in return.
I heard her laugh—pure evil. Her voice came muffled but clear through the wall: “Jobs usually come with paychecks, y’know!”
I didn’t respond. She’d already lost spectacularly this afternoon—I let her have that tiny win.
2
The truth? Tess was right. I hadn’t earned a single cent from writing. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Ever since I’d decided to become a writer—years ago now—the only thing "in the black" was my list of expenses. Mostly reams of paper. Which I inevitably crumpled up and tossed into the trash, a trash can that had long since exceeded capacity and now resembled a mountain of paper-based frustration.
