Again, everything she said hit uncomfortably close to home.
“So, what, I should throw it all away just to sleep with Derek? Once? Maybe twice?”
She grinned. “Well, you know what I would do…”
I didn’t smile back. “He’s a player, Shanna. He sleeps with women, and he uses them, and he throws them away.”
“Other women. That’s not the way he looks at you. When he said he loved you – ”
“Don’t,” I said, wincing. To hear those words was like rubbing salt on an open wound in my heart.
“ – I think he meant it. I can tell you this much: I hope I find a boyfriend someday who looks at me the way Derek looks at you.”
“Will you look at your boyfriend the same way, though?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
She grinned. “If he’s built like Derek Kane, I might.”
55
Present Day
I sat there at our table in the lounge, listening to Shanna order some specialty off-menu cocktail, and thought about everything that had happened between us in that dorm room four years ago.
Once she was finished, I told the waiter, “Just a glass of merlot, please.”
“Jeez, you’re a cheap date,” Shanna said as the waiter walked off.
“I don’t have as much money as you.”
“I told you, I’m buyin’ first round. You shoulda got champagne to celebrate. Maybe not Cristal, but…”
“Mm.”
Life had gone well for Shanna over the last four years. Her parents hadn’t let her go back to UGA, so she’d gone to community college, just like she’d predicted. And then she’d flunked out of there, too. Too much partying, too much living life like it was her last day on earth.
However, her other… skills had led to more interesting prospects. She slept with an up-and-coming (pun intended) fashion photographer and ended up in a relationship with him. Because she didn’t have anything else going on, he took her on as his assistant – and she became pretty good at it. When they broke up a year later, she leveraged the contacts she’d made and moved out to New York City. She started working as an assistant making peanuts, but through befriending and partying with models, she’d met some people and snagged a pretty sweet job at a modeling agency. Because she knew photography, she was valuable in that respect, and she was a hell of a people person. Now she had a good salary, shared a small apartment in Manhattan with another woman at the agency, and was leading a pretty nice life for a 23-year-old in the Big Apple.
As opposed to me, who had $50,000 in student loans, no job to speak of, and had to beg my parents for rent money for a shitty studio apartment in Queens.
Which is another reason it had been so hard to turn down the Rolling Stone gig: I was so tired of being a flat-broke failure.
“If you take the gig, you’ll probably be drinking Cristal every night,” she prodded. “Or at least really good bourbon. I hear they like to party hard.”
“I doubt Ryan does.”
“Ha! That’s probably true.” She sighed and propped her chin on her palm. “I hit on two band members before they got rich and famous… and I struck out with both of them.”
“Ryan wasn’t your fault. He was a little too innocent.”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “I know. I could’ve taught him a thing or two, though.”
“Or twenty or thirty.”
“See? You can interview me for the article, too. Just call me up and tell me what kind of quote you need – ”
“I’m not taking the job.”
“Why not?!”
“There’s too much… history there.”
“Funny, I was under the impression there was a certain lack of a history there.”
I glared at her. “I can’t be objective.”
“Who gives a fuck?”
“Journalists, that’s who.”
“Fuck journalists. And I say that as someone who has actually fucked a couple of them. You know who doesn’t give a shit about ‘objectivity’? Derek Kane’s fans. They couldn’t care less if you slept with him or not. All they know is he doesn’t give interviews to anybody, but he’ll give one to you.” She paused and reconsidered. “Actually, if they knew about the history between you two, they’d probably want to read your article even more.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well, true, some of his female fans would want to claw your eyes out… but they’d still drool all over themselves reading your article anyway.”
The waiter came and set down our drinks. I sipped at mine morosely.
Shanna rolled her eyes. “Just go see him and write the fuckin’ article. What are you so afraid of?”