Gisele Vs. Guitar Hero

Don’t worry, Stone will probably start talking to you right as soon as he wakes up…

15

Stone

I wake up, my arm under Gisele's head, the pins and needles throbbing up and down my arm from it having gone to sleep long ago. I slide my arm out from underneath her, shaking it to get the tingling sensation out, and then grab my phone off the nightstand. I’m awake now; it’s time to see what the world has done without me over the past 12 hours.

I thumbprint my way into my phone and then start flicking through it.

Hold on …

Google Alerts has gone crazy on me. I usually get a few each day, although after my cock-waving move last week, I've certainly gotten a lot more. But this morning …

Well, I’m not going to say that it’s as much as it was last week, but I also don’t know if it’s much less.

Tell-All Blush Magazine Article…

The Internet Goes Crazy With New Revelations…

Is This For Real? Or is Gisele Taylor Trying To Sell Us a Bill of Goods?

My chest hurts, and I think for a moment that I might hyperventilate, but staring at these headlines…

Surely not. Surely this isn’t what I think it is.

It can’t be. Gisele, lying next to me, each breath an adorable little snore; Gisele, dancing in my arms last night; Gisele, cumming in my arms…

Hands trembling, I click on an article at random and start skimming it.

Oh Gisele, how could you?

There, she talks about how I’m taking this experimental drug and how I’m high half the day and how I don’t remember doing things and she’s interviewing doctors about the drug and she’s…

She’s betraying my trust. Every word, every syllable on the page is a betrayal.

I vault out of bed, shoving my feet into my shoes before realizing that I have to put on my socks first, and okay, maybe my boxer briefs and my pants and then my shoes would be helpful and I’m throwing the clothing on, not even caring, just wanting to get out of there, away from the person I had trusted, the one person in the world that I’d told, and who’d broken that trust, who’d taken it and smashed it into smithereens, all to get a story, a headline that no one else could get—Exclusive! Why Stone Slayer Pulled a Slayer (And the Truth on Whether It’ll Happen Again)—and using me, oh God, so calculating and cold. I’m used to people wanting to be close to me because of what they think they can get from me. I’m used to people conniving to be around me so they can get what they want and fuck the rest, but I’d trusted Gisele and I don’t know why.

Magnetism?

Stupid Stone. Stupid, stupid Stone. Trusting a reporter. The most rookie mistake in the book.

And as I’m fleeing the room, I can hear Gisele calling out to me, asking me what’s going on. I must’ve woken her up somewhere along the way, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I have to run and I can’t go back.

My better-than-cocaine Gisele has turned out to be the most destructive force of all.

16

Gisele

Tears are dripping off the end of my nose, which officially makes me the most pathetic Gisele who's ever walked the face of the planet. Here I am with Apollo and Ashley—who I’ve taken to calling Ashlo in my mind because they’re never more than three inches from each other’s sides—and Kathy. We’re at one of the hottest bars in NYC—the Pink Elephant—and I should be laughing and drinking and having a grand ol’ time.

Instead, I’m a mess. Like, a mess.

Have I mentioned that I have tears dripping endlessly off the end of my nose? I think my bourbon is half bourbon, half tears at this point, but

I can’t seem to stop.

“What were you thinking?” Kathy asks, unsympathetically. And, not for the first time. She’s asked me some variation on this question three times already. I'll admit that so far, I’ve just been shrugging and bawling harder as my “answer,” so I suppose I deserve this endless string of questioning.