We were walking out the door and she stopped and shook her head. “A real agent? I mean, I dreamed, I thought maybe. I just can’t believe it’s really happening.” She smiled at me with such unadulterated excitement that, for a moment, everything that brought us to this moment was worth staying a few more days.
* * *
It would beridiculous to pout because Kate hadn’t emailed me yet. I definitely wasn’t pouting.
After recording the second half of the interview, I went to track down Emma and Harrison when Kate said she was going back to the hotel to rest. I wanted an excuse to stay with her. But she seemed so tired and in need of alone time.
I paced the lot, waiting for my friends, refreshing my email an embarrassing number of times. I couldn’t sit still. If I pulled up my email one more time only to be disappointed, I might snap. I was worried about Kate. How would all this buzz impact her? How her thankfully now ex-boyfriend might respond to those baseless internet rumors.
I thought again of the picture of her looking at me. Maybe not completely baseless? No. I was hoping.
I decided to just head back to Harrison’s without my friends and swim some laps or use his home gym. I couldn’t stay at the studio anymore. It was the first time I’d itched for a drink today, and the longing took me by surprise. Being with Kate kept me in the moment, it had never even occurred to me until now.
I made my way to the front of the lot and stopped dead in my tracks.
Pete Klester was walking determinedly into the building I’d just exited. The building where Kate might still have been if she hadn’t already left for the hotel.
I puffed myself up, arms crossed, and stepped directly in his path.
Pete stopped abruptly and he took me in.
“Oh. Great. You.” He tried to inch around me.
“You’re not going in there,” I said, impressively calm, considering I felt like I could easily rip him limb from limb.
“You can’t keep me from my girlfriend,” he whined. His gross goatee was overgrown and there were dark bags under his eyes. He reeked of stale booze.
I kept my features impeccably unaffected. “Ex-girlfriend.”
His face went instantly red. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I flicked a glance up to find a security guard exiting his booth and heading toward us. I held up a finger subtly to keep him at bay as Pete tried to rush past me again.
“I have a pass. You can’t stop me,” he said.
“I absolutely can.” I lifted my arm and he bounced off it.
“This is your fucking fault,” he spat at me. “You know that? Ten seconds in her life and you’ve already ruined the only good thing she had going.”
I really didtrynot to snort, but mistakes happened.
I raised an eyebrow looking down at him. He was a tiny little excuse for a person.
“She’s created this whole fantasy about you. All her little stories.”
His words filled me with rage, but I kept my mouth shut, flicking a glance to the guard watching our interaction closely. I suppose that was the only good thing about being back: I was easily recognized and had a lot of pull.
“You never deserved her.” I shouldn’t have said it. But I was human, sue me.
He shoved my shoulder. Without looking, I raised a hand to stop the security guard who jumped into action. Pete remained clueless. This was the moment I had dreamed of so many times since Kate announced she was dating him. I could knock him out with one punch, and he would have deserved it. But how would that impact Kate? How would that make her feel? I managed to swallow down my temper.
There was a substantial petty part of me that enjoyed seeing him this visibly upset.
“Fuck you,” he spat. “She’ll come back to me. You’ll see.”
It was getting harder to be the bigger person. It would be so easy to punch him in his weaselly little face. “I’m losing patience for this conversation.”
His pinched face grew redder.
