Rock All Night(95)

I squinted. “…what does that even mean?”

“It means – f*ck what it means. The point is, you’re hogging all the men, Kaitlyn.”

“I am not.”

“Okay, the hot, rich, rock star ones, then.”

“I am not.”

“Okay, just the lead singer and the bassist of Bigger, then.”

“I am NOT!”

“Whatever, Ms. ‘De Nile Ain’t Just A River In Egypt.’”

“Can we talk about something else?” I fumed.

“Okay… how’s the article coming?”

I groaned. “Next topic.”

She waved her hand. “I get it, I get it – you’re too busy ‘researching’ right now. You can write it when you get home. When are you headed back?”

Again, my stomach started roiling – but for a different reason this time. “I… don’t know.”

“Well, you can’t stay in Never-Never Land forever, Tinkerbell.”

My immediate reaction – from the depths of my subconscious – was, Why not?

But I didn’t say anything.

She frowned at my silence. “Kaitlyn… you’re going to have to come back to real life sooner or later.”

“I know,” I grumbled.

She continued offhandedly as she took a bite of French toast, “And he’s going to go back to his.”

“What does that mean?”

She gave me a You’re an idiot look. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

She doubled down on the look. “You really need me to f*ckin’ spell it out?”

Now my hackles were up. “Yeah. Fuckin’ spell it out for me.”

“He’s a rock star, honey. And a scorchin’ hot one, at that. You’ll go home, back to your life, and write a great article… and he’ll go back on tour, singing to throngs of adoring models and groupies every night… and… doing what rock stars do with models and groupies.”

She edited the end of that sentence out of deference to me. She must have seen the pain on my face.

“I’m not saying you guys won’t hook up every once in awhile and have an incredible weekend,” she continued in an effort to soothe me. “I’m not saying he won’t fly you out to the occasional show, and you won’t still have mind-blowing sex and a lot of fun and – ”

“You’re wrong,” I said, my voice low and angry.

“What, you won’t have mind-blowing sex and a lot of fun?”

“It could work,” I insisted.

“What could work?”

“A… a relationship.”

“Yeah, if you’re all three of those ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil’ monkeys rolled into one,” she snorted. “Although I guess it’d be more like ‘See No Sexin’, Hear No Sexin’, Speak No Sexin’.”


When I didn’t hit her with a comeback, she stared at me for a moment – then looked around like she was searching for a hidden camera. “Wait a second, am I being punked? Are you the same Kaitlyn Reynolds who almost didn’t come out here because Derek Kane is a man-whore who uses women by the dozen – excuse me, the hundreds?”

I bristled. “I was afraid about crossing a line – as a journalist. And about everything I might have lost when I walked away from him in college. And if I did sleep with him, maybe I’d built it up too much over the years and it would never match up to reality – ”

She rolled her hand in the air like Come on, keep going. “…aaaand I seem to recall something in there about him sleeping with lots of other chicks.”

“I was wrong.”

“What, that he slept with lots of other chicks? And that he’ll continue to sleep with other chicks? No, I don’t think you were wrong about that one.”

I gritted my teeth and didn’t say anything.

She sighed again and reached out across the table to touch my hands.

I pulled my fingers back as though her touch had scorched me.

“Kaitlyn,” she said in a kind but tired voice, “I would love nothing more for you than for Derek to fall completely in love and give you everything you want, which I assume is a big-ass rock on your finger and him never looking at another woman’s ass till death do you part. But honey… you’re not looking at this realistically – ”

“He said I was his girlfriend,” I blurted out.

That stopped her.

For a second.

She raised one eyebrow. “…really.”

“Yes.”

“He said the actual word ‘girlfriend’? About you?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“No, no, I just… did he use the ‘L’ word?”

I froze. The fact that he hadn’t yet… bothered me.

“…no.”

“Were you guys arguing at the time, maybe?”

I didn’t say anything.

She narrowed her eyes, seeing she had hit pay dirt. “And was anybody naked at the time, or did a certain someone want to get naked, and the other someone didn’t?”

My memories of that night were scrambled and hard to pin down… but more than anything, I remembered the trancelike sex and the many, many orgasms.