Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (199 page)

“This is so exciting!” Melissa said.
 
“You are so famous.
 
I need to call Mom.”

“No!” Kenley said.
 
Her lip gloss fell into the sink and she
reached in and pulled it out.
 
Gross.

“Why not?
 
I need to tell someone about this.”

“Are you crazy?
 
You can’t tell anyone.”

“Not even mom?”

“Especially
not mom.”

One of the stall doors opened and a girl came
out and began washing her hands at the sink.
 
Damn.
 
Kenley hadn’t stopped to think that
maybe someone else would be in the bathroom, listening to her
conversation.
 
She racked her brain,
trying to remember if she’d mentioned Chad by name or had given anything
away.
 
She smiled at the girl
nervously, waiting for her to recognize Kenley from the pictures on the internet.

But the girl gave her a brief smile back and
then walked out of the bathroom, the way you’d do with any stranger.
 
Huh.
 
Kenley was surprised to find that she
was a little disappointed.
 
Not that
she expected to be famous already or anything.
 
But it was kind of cool how the fans
outside had reacted to Alyssa.
 
It
was like she was some kind of celebrity or something, like she --
“Hello!” Melissa yelled.
 
“Are you
even
listening
to me?”

“Yes,” Kenley lied.
 
“You said you wanted to tell Mom.”

“Yes.
 
And then I said that she’s been really worried about you.”

“Look,” Kenley said.
 
“Just tell her that I’m fine, that I’m
still in Florida and that I’ll be home soon.”
 
She tossed her lip gloss into the
garbage.
 
The sink looked clean, but
still – who knew what kind of invisible germs were lurking around in
there.

“But Mom’s going to see the pictures of you on
the internet!” Melissa said.
 
“You
can’t hide this from her.”

Shit.
 
Melissa was right.
 
Kenley’s
mother was one of those “cool moms” who kept up with the latest technology even
though she was almost sixty.
 
She
had a twitter, a facebook page, a linked in account, and even a tumblr, which
she used to post recipes and stories from her bowling league.

“Shit,” Kenley said.
 
“Look, just tell her that I’m dating Chad.
 
Then in a few days when this is all
over, I’ll call her and tell her we broke up.”

“You can’t lie to Mom!”

“It’s not a
lie,”
 
Kenley said.
 
“I’ll tell her the truth eventually.”

“And until then you expect me to cover for
you?”

“Melissa,” Kenley said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve
covered for you a million times.”

“Name one.”

“The time you wrote three bad checks because
you quit your job and didn’t have time to get another one, and you almost got
arrested.”

“Name two.”

“I have to go, Melissa.”

“Wait!” Melissa said.
 
Her voice lowered.
 
“Be careful, okay?”

“Okay.”

Kenley hung up the phone and walked out of the
bathroom.
 
Only two more days, she
told herself, and then she would be a hundred thousand dollars richer. She was
halfway back to the table when she stopped in her tracks.
 
Because across the room, getting up and
moving toward her, was her ex-boyfriend, Jeremy.

***

Kenley felt her heart speed up and her face get
hot.
 
She couldn’t believe that
Jeremy was here.
 
Of course, he
frequented the city a lot, because he worked in marketing and was always taking
clients out for fancy dinners.
 
It
was one of the things that had annoyed her about him when they were together --
he was hardly ever home for dinner.
 
But what the
fuck
was he doing
at this restaurant?
 
It was Times
Square!
 
Who took clients to a
restaurant in Times Square?
 
That
was a little hokey, even for Jeremy.

“Kenley!” Jeremy said when he reached her.
 
He leaned in and kissed her on both
cheeks.
 
The scent of his cologne
assaulted her nostrils, and Kenley suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia wash over
her.
 
Which was ridiculous.
 
She’d hardly thought of Jeremy over the
past few days, which just went to show how much their break-up really had just
been about her ego being bruised.

When they were together, Kenley would have the
thought that she should break up with Jeremy at least once a week, mostly
because she had started to realize that they had nothing in common.
 
Jeremy was what Melissa called a
flatliner – the kind of guy who never really got upset about anything,
the kind of guy who didn’t get all emotional and worked up, the kind of guy who
didn’t really have anything dark and broody in his past.
 
Jeremy’s upbringing had been
ridiculously normal, with super nice parents and a big back yard with a pool.

It wasn’t that Jeremy was boring -- it was more
that he and Kenley just didn’t really connect.
 
After they’d been together for a year,
they didn’t have much to talk about.
 
It was like they’d told all their stories, and so there was nothing
left.

Sometimes Kenley got the feeling that Jeremy
thought maybe he was a little too good for her.
 
She suspected that he thought she was
too emotional, that he wanted a girl like the ones he’d dated in high school
and college.
 
The kind of girls who
were Polo sweaters and pearls and had smooth blonde hair and perfect
orthodontic work.
 

When the break-up finally came, it had been a
total surprise.
 
Not because Kenley
had never thought about it, but because she’d had no indication that Jeremy
had.
 
There had been no warnings, and even
though
Kenley
had thought Jeremy
thought he might better suited with someone else, he had never once given any
indication that he was thinking the same thing.

He’d ended it one night at his apartment,
telling her that it just didn’t feel the same, that the two of them had nothing
to talk about anymore.
 
She’d
panicked and said that she thought they should work on it, that it was normal
to go through a period like this when you’d been together as long as they
had.
 
But his mind had been made up,
and later Kenley had cringed when she thought about how she’d tried to get him
to stay with her, especially since she’d been the one who’d wanted to break up
with him in the first place.

“Jeremy!” Kenley said, pretending to be happy
to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“Clients.”
 
He looked back toward the table, where two middle-aged men were sipping
beers and chatting.
 
“They wanted to
see Times Square.”
 
He rolled his
eyes like he couldn’t believe how corny the whole thing was.

“Well, at least you get to have a night in the
city.”
 
She kept the smile pasted on
her fact, hoping he was buying it.

“How have you been?” he asked, looking at her
with sympathy in his eyes.
 
He
reached over and squeezed her arm.
 
“I heard you went to Florida.”
 
His tone conveyed that he thought he
 
knew exactly why she’d gone -- to get
over him.

“Yeah,” she said.
 
“I, um, got laid off and so I used some
of my severance for a vacation.
 
I
figured I’d need it before starting to look for a new job!”
 
She kept her tone bright, hoping she was
making it clear that her trip was a normal
I-needed-to-get-away-and-relax-after-getting-laid-off kind of trip that had
nothing to do with him.
 
It was
humiliating to get laid off, but it was even more humiliating to have your
ex-boyfriend thinking that you’d gone halfway across the country because you
were desperate to get over him.
  

And okay, her break-up
had
been a little bit of the reason she’d gone on the trip.
 
But not the
whole
reason.
 
And who
had told him she’d gone to Florida, anyway?
 
Kenley racked her brain, trying to
figure out which one of their mutual friends she was going to have to kill.

“That’s great,” Jeremy said, sounding like he
still believed the trip was all about him.
 
“I’m sure it was nice to get away.
 
Listen, this might not be the best time to tell you this, but I didn’t
want to do it in a facebook message.” He ran his fingers through his hair and
looked at her nervously.
 
“I’ve been
seeing someone.”

Kenley’s mouth dropped open.
 
He’d been
seeing
someone?
 
They’d
only been broken up for a little over a week.
 
And now he’d been
seeing someone?
 
“Since
when?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“I never cheated on you,” he said, and held up
his right hand.
 
“Scout’s
Honor.”
 
Scout’s Honor was something
Jeremy liked to say.
 
It had always
pissed Kenley off.
 
Scout’s Honor?
 
That was something you said when you
were seven and actually, you know, in the Boy Scouts.
 
Which Jeremy had been, but still.
 
It was like, get over it already.
 
Plus there was that whole thing about
the Boy Scouts not allowing gay troop leaders.
 
That didn’t sound very honorable to
Kenley at all.

“Well, whatever,” she said, and went to push
past him.
 
She couldn’t deal with
this right now.

“Hey,” he said, and reached out to stop
her.
 
“Listen, the last thing I
wanted to do was hurt you.
 
If you
ever need to talk about – ”

“What’s going on here?” Kenley looked up.
 
Chad was standing in front of them, his
eyes dark with concern.
 
She was so
happy to see him that she literally threw herself into his arms.

“Nothing,” she said, and draped herself around
his neck. “I just ran into my friend Jeremy.”
 

“Hey, man,” Chad said, reaching out and
offering Jeremy his hand.
 
“I’m
Chad.
 
You’re a friend of Kenley’s?”

Kenley could have kissed him.
 
Without realizing it, Chad had said the
perfect thing.
  
He was acting
like he had no idea who Jeremy was.
 
Which wasn’t that hard, because Chad really
didn’t
have any idea who Jeremy was.

“Yeah, I’m…” Jeremy’s eyes were about to bug
out of his head.
 
He definitely knew
who Chad was.
 
Jeremy puffed his
chest out, apparently deciding that just because Chad was a famous baseball player
didn’t mean that he was going act threatened by him.
 
“I’m Kenley’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Cool.”
 
Chad looked over Jeremy’s head, seemingly bored.

“Well!” Kenley said brightly.
 
“We should get back to the table,
honey.”
 
She ran her finger down the
buttons on Chad’s shirt, then gave him a kiss on the cheek.
 
Chad turned to her and rubbed his nose
against hers.
 
“Bye, Jeremy,” Kenley
said.
 
She wiggled her fingers at
him casually.
 
“Take care.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said.
 
He still looked stunned.
 
“You too.”

***

“That’s your ex-boyfriend?” Chad asked once
they were out of earshot.

“Yes,” Kenley said.
 
They were walking back to the table
where Alyssa and Jay were waiting.
 
Kenley had felt a sense of happiness and vindication at the look on
Jeremy’s face when he’d seen her with Chad, but the high was short-lived and
now she was starting to feel defeated.
 
It was demoralizing, honestly, to realize that someone you didn’t even
like that much might have cheated on you.

And if Jeremy
hadn’t
cheated on her, he’d obviously broken up with her to be with
someone else.
 
But that wasn’t the
worst part.
 
The worst part was
thinking about the fact that she’d stayed in that relationship so long that he
had been the one to end it.
 
What
the hell was wrong with her?