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  I kiss him back, moaning into his mouth, tugging at his shirt and the waist of his jeans. “God, I hate you,” I whisper against his lips.

  “I don’t believe that. I almost think you love me.” My heart skips and jumps and he pushes me down on the couch, laying his hard body over me.

  And in a matter of minutes, he’s inside of me and I’m moaning. And this, Justin, this is the way it is supposed to go. This is how the love stories unfold. I knew you’d come around, my sweet love, I knew it, because I believe in you. Actually, I believe in you and me because this is right. This is right. I have to save you from yourself, you idiot.

  I wake up in his arms, the hustle and bustle of the city audible through the single pane window. Cobain snuck into the room at some point and is lying at the foot of the bed, his heavy weight on top of my foot is causing it to go numb. I shake my leg, but he doesn’t move. Justin shifts in the bed and groans. “What time is it, babe?”

  I look around for a clock, finally spotting one on the dresser. “Eleven.”

  “Fuck.” He rolls on his stomach, shoves his face into the mattress, then covers his head with a pillow. “I have a meeting I’m supposed to be at.”

  I rub over his broad back. His skin is so warm and smooth, and I just want to lie here and touch him all day. “Don’t go,” I whisper.

  Laughing, he tosses the pillow to the floor, then wraps his arms around me, tugging my body closer to his and kissing over my neck. “That simple, huh?” Another kiss. “Damn, I do think I should love you.” And what do I say here... “Don’t you?” he asks. I shrug and he pinches my side. “You aren’t good for my ego, you know that, right?”

  “You should do whatever you want.”

  “Mmm. Whatever I want, huh?” His teeth sink into his bottom lip. His hand sweeps over my hip. “Fuck you are something else.” And then, he rolls out of bed, grabs some clothes, and stumbles into the bathroom.

  I sit up, looking around the room for my clothes. My shirt’s by the door. My jeans are on the floor. I throw the sheets back, searching for my underwear. Ah-hah! There they are, balled up at the foot of the bed. Justin walks back into the room with his toothbrush in his mouth, blue foam covering his lips as I’m shimmying them over my hips.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, still brushing his teeth.

  “Home.”

  “Uh-uh.” He darts back into the bathroom. I hear him spit and the taps turn on. He comes back out wiping a towel over his mouth. “You’re staying right here.” He leans over the bed, caging me in his arms. “I’ll only be gone for like an hour.” He kisses me and heads to the door, stopping to point at me before he steps out. “I mean it, your sexy little ass better still be here when I get back.”

  I smile. “Don’t worry.”

  I wait until the front door closes and then I hop out of bed and go to the little window above the radiator. I wait until I see Justin step onto the sidewalk, then I turn, slip one of his t-shirts on, and walk through to the kitchen.

  The apartment is eerily quiet except for the annoying chirping sound echoing from the air conditioning vent. I fill a cup with water, lean against the granite countertop, and stare out over his living room. My eyes train on all those autographed pieces of memorabilia behind that red couch. His ex-girlfriend. I nearly scoff at the idea of Justin with anyone else, but then I wonder...

  The internet, well, social media, makes it far too easy these days to find out anything about anyone. Oh, sure you can set your profile to private, but do you really know half of the people you approve to be your “Facebook Friend”? Oh, well, we’re only Facebook Friends, not real-life friends. Yet, you let them see every aspect of your life, where you check in at, where you’re vacationing—who you’re fighting with, who you love, who you once loved.

  I pull up Facebook. Chastising myself for not having done this earlier, and I scroll through his pictures. Nothing in 2016. 2015 is a bunch of selfies. 2014 random pictures of him and his guy friends. 2013, 2012—nothing. I’m all the way to September of 2009 before I find a picture of her. There’s only one and it’s of the two of them in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. She’s all cozied up to him, scarf and coat, her bleach-blonde hair sticking out from a pink toboggan. Blonde? Blonde! Justin, she’s a fucking blonde? Her lips are pressed right up against the scruff on his face, and his arm is around her. I wish I could erase from my memory the look of utter bliss radiating from his blue eyes. I stare at the picture, studying it. Taking her in. She looks like the girl next door who would bake an apple pie for the new neighbors. The Justin Wild I know, well, he wouldn’t dare give this girl a second glance—at least, I didn’t think he would. Then again, this Justin Wild was a college student. He was scraping by, living off Raman noodles and Sam’s Club sodas. And just when I have convinced myself that it doesn’t matter if he did love her, that it was seven years ago. That guy with the unkempt hair and wool coat isn’t the same Justin I adore. I notice her hand. I zoom in on the picture, and there, on her left hand—her ring finger—is a ring. He was engaged?

  I recite the lines to the beginning of Chapter 32, book 3 of his series: All of love is but a façade, a lie we tell ourselves so we don’t feel alone. We want to belong and be important, we want to hold meaning, and what better meaning is there than to be loved by the one you adore above all others? To look into her green eyes…I zoom in closer. Her eyes are green…and see your unborn children within them. To know that within her soul lies all your future desires and wants and needs? And what can be more tragic, I ask you, than the moment you realize there is no future with that woman? When you understand that her words were thorny lies and unkempt promises, that your reality, for so long, has been nothing but one of life’s most grandiose facades. Love. Is. Dead. And so shall she be.

  He wrote that passage about her. My stomach twists and knots, kinks and bunches. He wrote that book a year and a half ago, but the pain seemed so fresh. What are you hiding, Justin? What are you hiding?

  Setting the phone in my lap, I take a good look around his apartment. There’s a bookcase on either side of the window. I cross the room, stopping in front of the left bookshelf and thumbing over the titles. They’re all his books. Every last one. Copies of his own books. The bottom shelf is crammed full of other author’s books, most likely thrown at him during a signing, the author praying to God that he reads their book, likes it, and mentions it on social media. Kneeling, I pull a random title from the shelf: When I was Young by A.A. Madison. Well, that’s a fluffy sounding read. I flip open to the front page.

  Justin,

  Couldn’t be any happier with how close we’ve become. Such an “inspiration”.

  xx- Amanda

  I find myself curling the pages back in an angry grip. It’s obvious he hasn’t touched this book. Not one page is bent, not one smudged fingerprint over the ink. But still—she put inspiration in quotations and I can’t help but wonder if she was his fuckbuddy, too. I shove the book back in its place, right next to—mine? My book has been slammed in here with those other whore’s books? I clench my jaw. I want to yank that book out and throw it across the room. I want to take the other book and rip every page out and litter the floor of his expensive apartment with them. Set them on fire, but I don’t. I just move to the other side of the bookcase. I expect Stephen King, James Patterson, John Grisham. But—much to my dismay, there’s only one fucking copy: Revival shoved carelessly amongst books on Nirvana and the life of Kurt Cobain, books on Jim Morrison and Zeppelin, Steven Tyler. All books about musician’s lives. Where are Misery and The Long Walk, Carrie? Where is the goddamn literature, Justin? I spin around, taking in the room again, thinking surely I must have missed something. Surely the Stephen King’s and John Grisham’s have their own very special spot. And then…then my eyes land on a diploma, halfway hidden behind a framed picture of him and his damn dog. I move the frame to the side and gasp. Emory University bestows upon Justin Wilder Thompson, all the rights and privile
ges…yadda, yadda, yadda…that come with the degree of... Exercise Science? What the fuck? His name isn’t real, and he didn’t even major in forensic psychology? He is a liar through and through. One book by King, none by Grisham. Exercise Science instead of psychology. Thompson instead of Wilder. The girl next door over the bombshell whore?

  Anger floods me, heating my skin just below the surface because this is not the man whose words are beautiful beyond compare—oh, he may have strung those sentences together as an outlet for his own rejection, but the man he has led the public to believe he is, this—my gaze drifts back to the shelves filled with autobiographies of musicians—this is not that man. This is not the cocky, arrogant little shit that all the girls swoon over. This is a weak, pathetic liar, uncomfortable in his very own skin. And if you can’t be who you really are, if you can’t love yourself, Justin, how in the hell are you ever going to love me?

  I stand and pace, Cobain following me. I walk around the coffee table, through the kitchen and back, and then, I see his laptop on the ottoman. I know I shouldn’t, but... I grab it, open it, and—no password, Justin, really? Tsk-tsk.

  First, I go to pictures. Book covers, pictures of Cobain and then... then there are the pictures of all those girls he’s fucked. Selfies of them. Pictures of the naked on hotel beds. His bed. Some faces I recognize from the signings, and those, well—I look around in a panic for his iPhone charger, clapping when I find it next to the sofa. I grab it, pull the outlet piece off, and hook my phone up to the laptop, downloading those pictures for safe keeping. You little shit, Justin. Just when I’m about to close everything out, I notice a PDF of his book set to release next month—his traditionally published book. I download it, because why should I have to wait for it to release? I am, after all, fucking him. That gives me privileges. Cobain’s ears perk up and he trots to the door with a low, gruff bark. My pulse bangs in my chest and I quickly snatch cords and shut things down before I toss the laptop back onto the ottoman. I grab the magazine from the coffee table, open it, and lie down on the couch.

  The lock to the front door clicks, the knob twists. I can’t help but think of all those women who have seen me with him at signings who must think I’m a fool. It flames anger deep inside my chest. The hinges creak and Justin steps inside, dropping his backpack to the floor.

  “Now, this,” he says. I glance over the arm of the sofa and he smiles as he walks toward me, arms out to grab onto me, “I could most certainly get used to.” He kisses me. And I melt. Figuratively, melt, just like those girls in romance books, I am weakened by his mere touch even though I want to hate him. He pulls away and walks straight to the kitchen, opening the fridge and grabbing a bottle of water. My heart bang, bang, bangs against my ribs as I watch him twist the top and turn the bottle up. I watch bubbles travel up the neck. “What’s up with you?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “Oh, don’t go getting all weird on me.” He smirks as he crosses the room. “Don’t do that to me. I like you too much to have you going all weird on me.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  He kisses my neck, his lips cold from the water he’s just drank. “Fact.” And I can’t believe anything that comes from his mouth. I giggle and push him away. He arches a brow before tossing the bottle of water down. “Oh, you did not just push me away from you.” He playfully reaches for me. I bob and weave with each attempted grab. He misses. Swears beneath his breath. I take off running around the back of the black and white striped chair, and he chases after me. I squeal. He laughs.

  “Come here, babe. I just wanna kiss.”

  “Nope.”

  “You little shit.” He smiles. “When I get ahold of you... ” He jumps on the chair, one foot lands on the back, which causes it to tip over. In one smooth movement, his arm is around my waist and I’m falling to the floor with him, both of us laughing.

  Gently brushing the hair from my face, he studies me. And there is that softness, that bliss I saw in that picture in front of the Rockefeller Center Tree.

  “I think you like me, Justin Wild,” I whisper.

  “I think that’s obvious.”

  “A little.” I shrug and he places his palm on the side of my face, cupping my jaw. And this is that moment where you can feel it—that buzz in your chest, that tugging in your gut, that sensation that this is where you belong. So what if the man I love has a bookcase filled with lies? Don’t we all tell little white lies, embellish things to boost our image? And so what if he smells of another woman’s perfume? This is all part of it, part of the game, the trickery. I pretend I have no idea he’s a little whore, because it’s the innocence and his very own guilt that will get him in the end, and really, if he comes back smelling of that particular perfume again, I’ll just find her and end her.

  “What is it about you?” he asks, sweeping his fingers over my cheek, staring into my eyes like the world begins and ends with me. I coyly shrug, but my heart is humming in my chest because this is it. Oh, Justin, I see it in your eyes, I can tell there’s hesitation, but I can feel the words that are on the tip of your tongue. A small smile pulls at his lips before he kisses me, tenderly, reverently. “God, I think I’m crazy.”

  “Why?” I whisper, trailing my lips over his neck.

  “Because,” he inhales and exhales and the waiting is excruciating, “promise you won’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Of course.” I wrap my arms around his broad shoulders and stare up at him.

  “I just... ” but he never says it, he simply strips me down and pulls my hair, calls me his dirty little slut. He fucks me until sweat’s dripping down his back, until I’m breathless and my body is sore. And then I lay on his chest, listening to his heart beat as he falls asleep. When the steady breaths become ragged and deep, I lean up by his ear and whisper, “I love you, too.” Because I know that’s what he wanted to say.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Justin

  “Starboy”- The Weeknd

  Marisa: Want to get dinner? And then attached to that text is a picture of Marisa, completely nude. My dick swells a touch and I reach down to readjust myself.

  She’s stepping out of her apartment right when I walk up. She has on this little white dress that’s blowing in the breeze, showing just enough of her thighs to make dirty thoughts swirl in my head. She skips down the steps, smiling. “You look cute,” she says.

  “Aw, exactly what I’ve always wanted. Cute.”

  “Shut up,” she shoves me and I grab onto her arm, looping it through mine, and I can’t help but think that this is actually nice. Being with someone. Walking with someone...

  “You ever been to Elmo’s?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  “Ah, it’s so good. They have this massive burger. Fuck me…” I glance down and she is as stone-faced as a pretty girl can get. “Jesus, you have that resting bitch face down, don’t you?”

  She glances up and bats her eyes, a slight smirk playing over her lips. “Yep.” I grab the door to the restaurant, holding it open for her. “And they say chivalry is dead,” she says with a laugh as she ducks underneath my arm.

  “I’m a gentleman if ever there was one.”

  “Right.”

  We’re shown to a booth and just as I take a seat, I notice Amy at the table behind us with some redheaded chick. I pick up the menu and open it, attempting to hide my face. “The soyaki salmon is fucking great.”

  “You gonna have a drink?” Marisa asks.

  “Of course.”

  The waiter stops by and takes our order, and when he walks off, I see Amy staring at me. I quickly look away and reach across the table, grabbing Marisa’s hand. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

  She smiles. “Thanks.”

  “Did Pam get in touch with you about the signing in South Beach? She said she had a table for you.”

  “Yeah, she did. Do you already have a room?”

  “Yeah, and you’re staying with me.”

  And then... “Justin?�
� I glance up to see Amy beside the table, all hips and tiny waist and green eyes and innocent smile. “Imagine running into you.” She glances at Marisa, then back at me, still smiling. “Is this your... your girlfriend?”

  Marisa’s scrolling her phone, not even paying attention. You’ve got to be kidding me? Most women would be seething, nostrils flaring while they attempt to rein in their hormones. “Oh, uh, nah. Amy, this is Marisa,” and I’m about to say something that will get under Marisa’s skin like nothing else will, “my dear friend.”

  Marisa glances up, smiling at Amy. “Nice to meet you.” She shakes Amy’s hand. “Justin’s a great guy,” she says, then goes right back to her phone.

  “Yeah... ” Amy bats her eyes at me. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later. Maybe we can have coffee again?”

  I cringe at that comment. “Yeah, sure,” I say and smile as she heads back to her seat.

  I tap my fingers over the table and stare at Marisa. “That didn’t bother you, did it?”

  “What? Her…” she shakes her head, “Oh, no, why would it?”

  “I don’t know, shit like that usually makes women lose it.”

  “Yep, well,” she drops her phone to the table, “I’m not most girls, babe.”

  Fuck me. I should revel in this. I should like the fact that it seems I could do nothing to get a rise out of this girl…I should be excited I found a hot chick that wants to use me as a fuck buddy instead of trying to pin me down and get knocked up... but for some reason, it bothers the shit out of me. I want her to be jealous. I want her to want me to the point she’ll do the crazy shit all girls do. I feel like I’m losing, so I guess I’ll just need to step up this game. Take it to the next level. If there’s one things girls don’t handle well, it’s thinking they aren’t in first place.

  Chapter Nineteen