"And, how did you come up with the company's name, Speed Motorcycles?"
I feigned not being able to hear her and pointed towards the party inside the ballroom. "No more questions for now. I'm afraid I'd better be going."
She lowered her microphone in disappointment, but looked pleased as she turned back towards her cameraman. I'd given her a good sound bite for her show that would no doubt boost their ratings and her career.
There was no way I was giving her anything more than that, especially since it might harm mine.
Turning my back on the frenzied line of paparazzi, I strolled into the party and breathed in heavily, taking in the celebratory atmosphere.
I was wearing a new tux by Dolce and Gabbana and looking damn good. The alcohol from the bar was flowing freely, and everyone was having a good time. I just couldn't see the one person I was looking for.
Slowly, I circulated through the party, shaking hands and chatting with old friends and new, ingratiating myself to the public and smiling for selfies. A lot of my old friends from college were there, and we talked about old times and current successes. Graduating from an Ivy League university, a lot of them had gone on to head Fortune 500 companies, and inviting them to the launch party was a good way to market to potential customers with the kind of funds to sponsor future design research. It was the kind of P.R. bullshit I hated, but an important part of making my company a success. Besides, I needed a way to keep myself occupied until Kayla arrived.
Every time I saw a head of blonde hair, my heart skipped a beat, but when the beauty turned around, I was always disappointed to find it wasn't her. Where was she? What was taking her so long to get there?
Suddenly, a pair of soft, feminine hands covered my eyes from behind and a sexy voice whispered, "Guess who?"
Grinning foolishly, I turned around to face her and cried out in surprise. "Gwyneth, what are you doing here?"
She was the last person I wanted to see. Gwyneth Manzranni was the girl who had broken my heart over two decades ago. We started dating in college and then she brutally betrayed me, leaving me feeling shattered. I guess the fact that I hadn't had a real relationship with a woman since was proof that I never put the pieces of my heart back together again. We saw each other rarely during social events over the past few years, but whenever we did, it brought back all those old ghosts.
She looked just as good now as she did back then, perhaps even better. She wore her blonde hair short now, in a sexy shag that flowed freely around her still un-lined face. Her green eyes were lively and sharp, and her red lips were plump and begging to be kissed. She was dressed in a black cocktail dress that hugged her voluptuous curves in all the right places. The plunging neckline played peek-a-boo with her full breasts, while the short hemline showed off her best feature: her tanned, athletic legs. Just looking at them, I remembered how good it felt when those legs were wrapped around my waist while we were making love under the light of the moon. It stirred feelings in me I wished would die forever, but just kept coming back up every time I saw her.
"Victor invited me. I'm his plus-one," Gwyneth said in answer to my question, and I knew she meant my former college roommate, Vick Plumb.
We'd been frat brothers and then roommates. He been there during the tough months after I'd quit Krueger and hadn't yet sold my first bike. He was there for the birth of The Rebel and the struggle it had been to finance it. He'd paid my share of the rent when I wasn't able to, and I tried to make up for it by giving him a free motorcycle every year since as a way of saying thanks. Vick was a good friend, but how he could bring Gwyneth there when he knew how I felt about her was beyond me.
"Well, aren't you going to ask me to dance?" she asked, batting her lashes in an exaggerated fashion.
"I'm not much of a dancer," I glowered, but she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me towards the dance floor.
"Come on. What better way to show there are no hard feeling between us?" she said, knowing there was no way I could object without admitting I still hadn't gotten over our break-up.
I'd been nothing more than a kid when I met her. She wore her hair long back then. We were both hanging out with our individual groups of friends at a bar near the university. I'd thought she was cute, and my buddies dared me to go up to her and offer to buy her a drink.
I thought she was way out of my league; after all, I was just a kid on scholarship and she was obviously from a rich family. So, when she said yes, it exceeded my wildest dreams. Before I knew it, we were knocking back shots and she invited me back to her place to snort lines of coke.
"I've never done anything like that," I had said, not sure I even wanted to.
"It makes sex even more incredible. Just wait and see," Gwyneth had purred, and that was all the convincing I needed. She'd been right, and after that night, my heart was in her hands.
She’d convinced me that I could be anything I wanted to be and do anything I wanted to do. She was the one who gave me the courage to strike out on my own when I'd quit Krueger.
"You've always had money. You don't know what it's like to wonder how you're going to come up with next month's rent," I'd told her, with my head in my hands. "Maybe I should go to Krueger and beg for my job back."
"Fuck him." Gwyneth had sounded so confident as she came up behind me, naked. She wrapped her arms around my chest, and I could feel her naked breasts against my back as she kissed my neck. "You don't need to go crawling back to some asshole who doesn't respect your creative genius. You can manufacture your designs without him."
"Yeah, right. How?" I scoffed. "You got a spare hundred grand you can give me?"
"I don't, but the banks do. Go apply for a business loan. Then, you can start your own motorcycle company and be your own boss."
"Do you really think I could?" I had asked, but my heart was already pounding and my mind was already turning with ideas. She had planted the seed within me, but I was the one who turned it into a thriving orchard.
Those happy days of Gwyneth playing the supportive girlfriend were long gone, though. They'd been replaced by memories of a harping, nagging bitch, watching my every move, complaining constantly, always judging, and continuously telling me what to do.
"You're the biggest fuck up God ever made. Everything is turning to shit around you, and if you keep going the way you're going, you'll never amount to anything," I remember her screaming at me at two o'clock in the morning.
The neighbors had called the police that night, but by the time they got there, the fight was over and Gwyneth had moved out. That was the last time I saw her until years later. I'd thought I'd gotten over her, but seeing her again just brought back all the memories, all the feelings, and all the pain.