47
We walked through the Brooklyn streets in silence. The afternoon sun stroked the red-brick buildings with the softness of a caress, and yet each step felt heavier than the last.
Tess had lowered her sunglasses—not to hide from paparazzi (they’d evaporated along with her dream of revenge)—but to hide her eyes. I kept my hands in my pockets and stared at the sidewalk, as if concrete had suddenly acquired a fascinating texture.
Around us, Brooklyn kept doing its thing: kids chasing a half-flat soccer ball, a hot dog vendor sighing behind his cart, a pack of skateboarders zooming down the street.
Too busy with their lives to notice that beside them walked the woman who, for one brief day, had been the supposed “flame of Zane Ryder.”
The air was thick with smells: gasoline, warm pretzels, the damp trace of last night’s rain. I felt like we were in an indie film that had run out of budget for action scenes and was now betting everything on silence.
Every so often I glanced at Tess. She walked tall, chin up, as if still strutting down an invisible runway.
But her stride was slower than usual. Not defeated—Tess never truly surrenders—but not victorious either.
Suspended, somewhere in between. And me, beside her, all I could do was keep her company in that silence, waiting for her to speak first.
“Bea…” Tess finally said, after a whole block of silence. Her voice was hoarse, but carried that touch of theatricality that made it unmistakably hers. “Tell me. I held on to a shred of dignity, didn’t I?”
I burst out laughing so hard a homeless guy pushing a cart turned to stare. “Tess, you spilled two glasses of water, yelled at a broken jukebox, and cursed out a tray of pancakes. If that’s dignity, then I’m the new First Lady.”
She dipped her head, then laughed too. “Okay, maybe I got carried away. But I had a plan, Bea. And plans must be defended to the last drop of blood.”
“Defended?” I shook my head. “You looked like the female version of Al Pacino in Scarface, just with more hand gestures.”
“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Not that bad? It was the perfect sequel to the day Chad dumped you: Tess 2, The Revenge. ”
She sighed, then smiled, her eyes glinting with the same ironic spark that had carried me through weeks of madness. “Then it’s fate. I never lose my dignity quietly. I lose it in surround sound.”
“With full echo,” I added, and we shared another laugh that finally cracked the wall of gloom trailing us since the diner.
We kept walking, our laughter spilling out like little shards of light in all that gray.
Then I lowered my voice, more serious, though still with my usual cynical edge.
“You know what, Tess? At least you tried. I would never have had the guts to stand in front of a packed diner and shout my truth to the world. I’d have stayed home, hiding under blankets with Netflix and a pint of ice cream.
You, though… you always fight. Even when you lose. ”
She looked at me from behind her sunglasses. A slow smile spread across her lips. “That’s why I keep you by my side, Bea. You’re the only one who can say that without making me sound like a heroine. Just a stubborn lunatic.”
“A stubborn lunatic who, for a second, made Ryder sweat,” I added.
Tess chuckled, shaking her head. “Oh, I definitely won him over. If only he’d been a little less gay…” She paused, then raised her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, a lot less gay. But the en ergy was there, Bea. I know it was there.”
I shook my head, unable to stop smiling. “Sure, Tess. The spark was there. Too bad it was between him and Bernie.”
She laughed again, and that laugh held everything: bitterness, madness, and also a strange, inexplicable freedom.
“Anyway…” Tess pulled the scarf tighter around her shoulders. “Admit it, Bea. One way or another, this mess brought me somewhere I couldn’t have imagined just weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “From being dumped in front of a banana milkshake to shaking up the world’s press… I’d call that progress.”
She smirked. “And hey, there are still shelves of self-help manuals at the library. The Countess wasn’t the only voice in town…”
I looked at her, exhausted and amused all at once. “Please don’t tell me you’re already plotting your next mission.”
Tess shrugged with fake innocence. “What can I say? Some women collect shoes. I… collect impossible missions.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself. Deep down, though, one thing was certain: I couldn’t wait to get home, sit at my laptop, and write the ending to my novel.
Tess gave my shoulder a pat. “Bea, at least we can say we changed music history. ”
“Yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes with a half-smile. “Because now Zane Ryder has a new boyfriend.”
“The problem,” Tess added, laughing, “is that Bernie doesn’t know it yet.”
THE END (but you already know Tess is plotting her next disaster)
P.S. from Bea (the unwilling narrator):
If you made it this far, congrats — you officially survived Tess’s first mission.
Now I have just two tiny favors:
Leave a review. Even one line like “This book made me laugh-snort my coffee” is pure gold. (Indie authors run on reviews — without them, we faint. It’s not pretty.)
Keep going. Tess’s chaos doesn’t stop here. In How NOT to Seduce Your Bully’s Husband , her revenge game levels up. Spoiler: yes, it gets even wilder.