Rock All Night(31)

Guy smoked weed all day long, but drank Perrier in a bar? Weird.

“You okay?” Ryan asked in my ear, making himself audible above the chatter and loud music.

I looked over at him in surprise. “Yeah – why?”

“Cause you look like you’re about to go kill somebody.”

I stepped back into my own body and realized my hands were clenched so tightly – one in my lap, the other around the wine glass stem – that they hurt. My jaw ached from grinding my teeth.

I sighed at first – and then gradually became more heated as I went on. “It’s just… they throw themselves at him like that! It’s disgusting!”


“It’s pretty outrageous,” Ryan agreed.

“Outrageous doesn’t even begin to cover it! Don’t they have any self-respect?”

He was repressing a smile.

“What?” I asked defensively.

“Little jealous?”

“What?! No. Why would I be jealous?”

“Come on, Kaitlyn. You two had something pretty special four years ago.”

“No we didn’t,” I protested.

He gave me a Give me a break kind of look.

“We didn’t,” I insisted. “And even if we did, that was four years ago. That was ages ago.”

“Feelings can still be pretty strong even four years later.”

I watched as Derek posed for a picture as an Asian beauty and a stunning blonde each kissed opposite sides of his face.

“Not for everybody, apparently,” I griped.

Ryan looked over at his best friend’s escapades. “You shouldn’t let this get to you.”

“I’m not,” I snapped, even though it was obvious to anyone with functioning eyeballs that I was.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

“That’s kind of what bothers me.”

Now some other girl was taking a selfie with Derek – and she quite boldly took his hand and placed it on her boob as she smushed up next to him.

UGH.

I turned away from the spectacle and looked at Ryan, if for no other reason than I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. “Why aren’t you out there, soaking up the female attention?”

He laughed. “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the hat.”

That was interesting.

I raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like.”

I cocked my head and inclined it slightly, an expression that said …aaaand?

He grinned. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“I am a journalist, you know.”

“Fine. Yeah, I’ve done the wild nights and empty sex, and it just doesn’t really hold any allure for me anymore.”

“Seriously.”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

I swept my arm out at the dance floor. “You could have any one of these gorgeous women tonight, and you’re going to tell me that, naaaah, you’re not interested? What are you, a monk?”

He laughed. “I don’t know if I could have any one of them.”

“You could pretty much have your pick.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“So why don’t you?”

He looked straight into my eyes, and I could feel the earnestness and warmth radiating from them. “Because it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Explain.”

“I got tired of sleeping with girls ten minutes after I met them. I got tired of waking up next to strangers whose names I couldn’t remember. I got tired of the utter meaningless of it all. There was no depth, no connection… no passion. It was like somebody lining up an endless series of shots on a bar. The first twenty or so were fun… and then you start to get sick of it. Just like alcohol poisoning. And then you realize that it’s doing something to you… making you numb and dead inside, disconnecting me from what I set out to do in the first place, which was make amazing music… and it wasn’t fun anymore. It was just something to do, a way to ease the boredom and the loneliness on the road.”

“Daaaaaamn,” I said, really impressed – and depressed, all at the same time. “You make it sound awful.”

“It was. Well, not at first… like I said, the first twenty were fun. You know what made me stop?”

“What?”

“I’d just slept with a woman I kind of liked. She seemed really cool and friendly, and I was thinking about having her stay the night when I overheard her in the bathroom talking on her cell phone. ‘Guess who I just slept with – the bass player for Bigger!’”

“Ew,” I said, wrinkling up my nose. “Gross.”

“Yeah – but that’s not the best part. There was this pause like her friend was asking her a question, and then she says, ‘No, I couldn’t f*ck Derek, he was already with some other bitch – but I’ll use the bass player to get to him, just watch.’”

My face contorted in horror. “OH MY GOD, THAT’S HORRIBLE!”

Ryan just laughed. “Yeah. That was the last time I ever slept with anybody I met the same night. Actually…” He seemed to count off a number. “…that was the last time I slept with anybody I met the same week.”