It was like hitting a wall made of foam rubber—you bounced off, but not even hard enough to feel pain. And honestly, who’s to say literary agents even existed? Maybe it was all an elaborate scam. Maybe they spent their days selling off the personal info and mailing addresses of desperate hopefuls who mailed in their manuscripts from every corner of the country. Yeah. Forget talent scouting—that would’ve been a goldmine. Way more lucrative than trying to sell novels in a world where people don’t even read shampoo labels anymore.
I smiled at the ridiculous thought, and Tess, still not looking at me, said, “You’ll make it.”
It was her version of an apology. Subtle as a tank, but still.
“I’ve never seen anyone more tenacious than you,” she added. “People like you usually make it. Maybe when everything seems lost… but they make it.”
I crumpled the letter—there was no more room onmy walls to pin them like reverse trophies—and tossed it into the trash under the sink. Then I grabbed a bottle of red wine, poured us two generous glasses, and sat down next to her on the couch.
I handed her the glass, and we toasted with a loud clink.
“I feel the same about you,” I said. “Except your defeats tend to come in the form of men with skyscraper-sized egos.”
Tess took a sip like she was swallowing a pill the size of a rock, then shook her head, disillusioned.
“To failure—yours and mine,” I said. “Character-building and all that.”
Another toast. This time she downed the whole glass like a barfly in a movie.
I got up, grabbed the bottle, and poured her another generous round. Then stayed close. I had a feeling she’d need it.
“You know what my grandma always said in moments like this?” I said, solemn. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”
Tess snorted but didn’t bother to reply.
“You find someone new. Preferably hotter. Two birds, one stone: you forget him and make him jealous.”
“Impossible. The jealousy part, I mean. Forgetting him would’ve been a breeze if I’d been the one to dump him. But that ship has sailed, andwe’ve been over this…”
She paused for breath and buried her face in the couch cushion like she was trying to smother her own dignity.
“As for making him jealous... nope, Bea. Chad’s ego is ridiculous. He thinks everyone around him is a low-IQ extra in the sitcom of his life. If he saw me with someone else, he’d probably just laugh and assume I hired the guy on Fiverr to make him jealous.”
“So... like a reverse paranoid?” I ventured.
“Exactly. Someone who thinks the universe revolves around him... in a good way. He genuinely believes the cosmos is conspiring to compliment him.”
“Let him choke on his own ego, that overinflated balloon. Sooner or later, all the crap he dumped on you will come back to him tenfold. That’s karma.”
“Thanks, Bea, but karma’s not exactly comforting right now. I don’t doubt that someday he’ll get dumped hard and end up sobbing in a bathtub listening to sad songs... but it’ll be over some other girl, not me. In Chad’s mental filing cabinet, I’m stuck in the folder labeled ‘sad girls who were lucky I dated them for a bit.’ And I’ll never move from there. Ever. I’ll never end up in the folder called ‘regrets.’”
“Tess... we’re talking about Chad. The man who made you walk three miles in heels because herefused to pay for parking ‘on principle.’”
She didn’t laugh. Not yet.
“Come on, seriously. I doubt there’s a filing system in that brain of his. At best, there’s one fly bouncing repeatedly against a glass window.”
“He may be the last of the assholes... but he still won.”
I stopped trying to talk her out of it. Every attempt only made things worse. I changed the subject, and for the rest of the evening we made small talk, but I could tell—her mind was somewhere else. Fine. She’d snap out of it.
Then again, maybe this hit had landed harder than usual. And not because of love—Tess was never the type to sob into her pillow—but because of principle. Chad had punched her pride right in the gut. He’d been a thorn in her side for the entirety of their brief, questionable relationship... and, apparently, he wasn’t done tormenting her even in his absence.
She didn’t mention him again that night. At least not directly. Just a few throwaway lines here and there—or so they seemed. At the time, I didn’t think twice. Just random chatter. But looking back, one of those lines—delivered as casually as someone commenting on the weather—would prove crucial to Tess’s very-near future.
A commercial had just come on for Zane Ryder’s world tour. One of those classic ads: him leapingonstage in leather pants, shirtless, long hair whipping in the wind, eyes smoldering like a sexy predator. A sea of screaming fans reached toward him like he was a divine apparition. Wild. Powerful. Magnetic. The biggest rock star alive. And okay, his music wasn’t half bad, even if it wasn’t really my thing. But the man had undeniable appeal.
Tess looked at the screen, let out a small laugh, and said, “If I really wanted to make Chad jealous, I’d have to get with Zane Ryder.”
