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“Well, Chaucer says you’re wrong.”
“Does he now.”
“Yup. So do the queen and all the women of the court. They agree with the knight, so they spare his life. But the ugly old chick – ”
“You’re such a feminist,” I taunted him.
“Shut up, I’m helping you get an ‘A,’” he grinned. “Anyway, the ugly old chick tells the queen about the knight’s promise, and she says she wants to marry the knight. The queen says, ‘Done deal. You’re married. BOOM.’ The knight is NOT happy, but he has no choice, so he marries her.”
“Sucks to be him.”
“Just wait,” Derek cautioned me. “So, they go up to sleep together, but she can tell he thinks she’s fug-lyyyyy. And she’s mad about it, so she says, ‘At least you know I won’t cheat on you. Which would you rather have, an ugly old wife who doesn’t cheat, or a beautiful young wife who sleeps around?’ And he says…”
He paused for dramatic emphasis.
“Care to take a guess?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“A hot chick.”
I mean, that’s the obvious choice. That’s what all guys want, right?
Derek grinned. “No. He was smart. He said… ‘You decide.’”
“Ahhhhh.”
Okay, maybe Chaucer was onto something.
Derek continued, “And the old lady is happy because the knight gave her power over him, so she tells him he can have both – a hot chick who’s loyal to him. She tells him to kiss her – and when he does, she turns into a hot chick, and they live happily ever after.”
“Now I see why you didn’t sleep with my roommate,” I teased him.
Interestingly enough, Derek looked a little alarmed when I said it. “Why?”
“You probably go around kissing ugly old chicks, hoping they’ll turn into hot ones.”
It was a totally stupid nonsense line, borne of a sleep-deprived brain at 3AM. Of course he didn’t go around doing that.
But his response knocked the breath out of me.
He stared me right in the eyes and said, “No… it’s because when I find a beautiful girl I like, that’s the one I stay with.”
Holy shit.
I could feel my cheeks burning. And that wasn’t the only part of me getting warm.
I stared at him, speechless.
He just watched me with those sexy, half-lidded, emerald-green eyes.
Then he leaned in to kiss me –
And I jumped up from the floor like somebody had shocked me with electric wires.
“I have to go to bed,” I babbled. “It was really nice meeting you.”
He stumbled to his feet, too. His face was grim, like he was a little bit pissed off.
“You too,” he said.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll see you around,” I said, and waved goofily.
“Definitely.”
I darted inside my room and closed the door, but the entire time I was looking at him.
The last thing I saw was his emerald-green eyes peering straight into mine.
I turned the lock and stood there in the darkness, my heart thudding in my chest, listening for the sound of him walking away.
It took forever, but finally I heard his feet pad down the hall and the stairwell doors open and close.
I felt the strangest mix of emotions.
Relief – that I’d stayed faithful to Kevin.
Sadness – that I’d missed out on something I desperately wanted, deep down in my very core.
And anger… whether at myself or my absent ex-boyfriend, I couldn’t have told you.
But the strongest feeling was one of loss.
12
Present Day
Glen stared at me like I’d just turned down a million dollars for doing nothing more than writing a book report.
“What?” he asked, stunned.
“No,” I croaked, fully aware I was throwing away the best opportunity of my career thus far. Maybe even the best opportunity of my entire career, even if it lasted four decades. “Sorry.”
“You do understand what I’m offering you, right?”
“To write an article on Derek Kane.”
“And the band,” Glen stressed, as though that might be the piece of information I had overlooked.
“Yeah. No thank you.”
“Not just a half-page fluff piece – I’m talking a full-on, six-page spread. I mean, if you turn in a good enough story, we’re potentially talking the cover.”
“Yeah. Thank you, but no.”
The longer he stared at me, the more his disbelief turned to anger. “You do realize that is a one in a million offer, right? You don’t just get handed the cover of Rolling Stone – not when you’re some unknown writer a year out of college. I mean, you realize that, right?”
