How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar (How NOT to Seduce #1)

1

I was in the zone, deep into what I was convinced would become the Great American Novel, when Tess burst into my room with all the subtlety of a SWAT team raiding a crack den.

“That asshole dumped me!”

I didn’t even look up from my typewriter.

On any other day, I would’ve kicked her out without a second thought.

But something in her eyes—something wild, the emotional equivalent of a Category Five hurricane—made me pause.

I decided to sacrifice a few pages. With any luck, she’d unleash her monologue and evaporate like a passing thundercloud.

Tess stood in the doorway, striking a full-on melodrama pose: one hand on her hip, mascara slightly smeared, her ponytail looking like it had just come back from war.

“Chad?” I asked.

“Chad.”

“But... you two seemed so into each other.”

“Cute.”

She flopped onto my bed with all the grace of a sack of potatoes shot out of a cannon. Bounced once on the mattress, then sighed like she’d just closed some sort of karmic cycle.

“So... he dumped you? Are we celebrating? Should I grab the champagne?”

“Maybe. My quality of life can only go up from here.” Then she paused, looking at me with the grave intensity of someone about to announce a death. “But you haven’t grasped the real tragedy.”

“The real tragedy would’ve been staying with Chad. That guy is the human equivalent of a ten-minute voicemail.”

“Exactly. But the tragedy... is that he won.”

“Won what? Did you two fight it out in Mortal Kombat?”

“He won because he did the dumping. Whoever dumps wins.” Tess tilted her chin like she was stating a universal law. “Whoever gets dumped… loses. End of story. Like gravity.”

“But you told me you were going to break up with him! Weeks ago!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t. He did. And now he gets the gold medal in Assholery while I’m stuck here with the ‘Most Humiliating Breakup of the Month’ trophy.”

I stared at her. “So... let me get this straight. You’re not upset the relationship ended. You’re upset because he dumped you before you could dump him?”

“Brutally,” she clarified, crossing her arms. “KO in the first round. And I didn’t even have a helmet.”

“How did it happen?”

She stood up, pacing the room, overheated with agitation. She shrugged off her jacket and flung it onto my reading chair. One of its legs had been wobbly for weeks, but of course, it chose that moment to finally collapse.

“Bea, picture this: I leave the house, heart singing, thinking about my banana milkshake... and he greets me with a ‘We need to talk.’”

“Oof.”

“And then he tells me I’m intense.”

I clutched my chest. “No!”

“Yes.”

“Intense?”

“Intense. Boring. Frigid. Psychotic.”

“I don’t believe he actually said all of that.”

“He didn’t have to. Come on, Bea. When one of your characters is thirsty, you don’t write ‘she’s thirsty.’ You make her lick a puddle. I read between the lines. No highlighter needed. ”

“Couldn’t you clap back? Tell him he’s an emotionally stunted cheapskate with the depth of a teaspoon?”

Tess shook her head gravely. “It would’ve just sounded like a desperate attempt to even the score. You don’t get it, Bea. Seriously, don’t you get it? You spend all day locked in your room writing, and you still haven’t figured out basic human dynamics?”

She paused, then went on, sharper now. “If I’d told him I was planning to break up with him too—just waiting for the right moment—do you think he’d believe me?

Even if it was the God-honest truth—and you know it was—he’d still think I was lying.

A pathetic Hail Mary to reclaim a scrap of the dignity he just dumped all over me with a bucket. ”

“So you stayed quiet?”

“No, I said something… actually…”

“What did you say?”

“Honestly? It would’ve been better if I’d just kept my mouth shut.”

“Oh no.”

“Exactly…”

“You humiliated yourself?”

“I yelled so loud I probably woke ancient Aztec gods. At one point I lost peripheral vision.”

“Oh God...”

“Picture a football coach losing the Super Bowl by a single point in the final second. Now multiply that despair by ten. I caused a scene so dramatic people at the bar will tell their grandchildren about it. And him? Calm as a Zen rock, with that smug guru face like he’d ‘won.’”

“Try to see it in perspective. It’s just human vanity crap. Who cares if Chad ‘won’? And who gives a damn about the people at the bar? You’ll never set foot there again, end of story.”

“Easy for you to say...” she scoffed. “Meanwhile, I can already see that smug bastard strutting around with his dumb little smirk, telling his buddies: ‘I knew she was into me, but that into me? I really hit a nerve, poor thing.’”

“Let him think whatever he wants. Let him keep his bargain-bin victory. You’re stronger than that.”

“You know what this sounds like?” Tess shot back, eyes rimmed with mascara and defeat. “The kind of bullshit pep talk people give losers.”

I was starting to lose my patience. “Then why the hell did you barge into my room if you won’t even let me try to cheer you up?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for disrupting your sacred creative flow, Miss Woolf!

” she snapped. “You ever hear that story? A woman goes to therapy, talks for hours and hours, and by the fifth session she says, ‘Doctor, I already feel so much better. Where did you study to understand the human soul so well?’ And he says, ‘Lo siento, senorita… pero no hablo inglés.’ ”

She paused. “Sometimes you just need to talk, Bea. To get the poison out. That’s it.”

She stood up, stomped to the door, yanked it open, and slammed it behind her with enough force to knock a chunk of plaster from the ceiling.

But there was no way I was letting her have the last word.

I stormed to the door, flung it open, and shouted, “And what part of ‘when you interrupt my creative flow, it takes a goddamn ten-ton truck to get it moving again’ do you not understand?! This is my job!”

Then I slammed the door in return.

I heard her laugh—pure evil. Her voice came muffled but clear through the wall: “Jobs usually come with paychecks, y’know!”

I didn’t respond. She’d already lost spectacularly this afternoon—I let her have that tiny win.