Cover Model (21 page)

“Would you calm down! People are staring.”

Red haze stains my vision as I glance around at the surrounding offices and cubicles. Sure enough, people are watching. “So the fuck what?”

“So
what
? This is my workplace, Connor. Is it not enough that you are once again trying to ruin my interview, but now you have to try and ruin my entire
career
?”

“Is that all you care about? This interview and your fuckin
career
?”

“At the moment, yes. So either we drop this and finish the interview, or you need to go.”

I grind my jaw like I’m chewing nails.

“
Well
Connor?”

I hiss, “Did you sleep with Austin or not?”

“It’s none of your business, Connor!! It’s not like we’re dating! We’re not boyfriend and girlfriend so back the hell off!”

My face goes grim. “That’s right. We’re not. And we never will be.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She folds her arms across her chest. “So you just wanted to fuck me, is that it?”

“I guess so.”

“Screw you, Connor! It’s just like I said to you on grad night seven years ago! I’m just another notch to you! One more girl you want to fuck and forget! You disgust me, Connor Hughes! You are a piece of shit!”

I smirk. “So what?”

“Get out of here!” she screams, jumping to her feet.

<<<<<<<>>>>>>>

ELECTRA

I’m on the verge of tears. But I will never show them to my arch nemesis. “Go, Connor!” I spear my finger toward the door. “Leave! Go home, or wherever your next notch is waiting for you! You probably have ten girlfriends for all I know! Get out of my sight!”

Without saying a word, he yanks the glass door of the conference room open and skulks out the front doors in the lobby.

I nearly fall over after he’s gone. My entire body is shaking. I pull out the nearest chair from the conference table and drop into it.

The basketball sized wad of copies sits on the middle of the conference room table, mocking me.

Ugh.

The shame of knowing I slept with Connor Hughes after vowing I would
never
allow such a horrible shallow womanizer like him to lay one finger on me literally breaks my heart in two.

How could I have been so stupid?

I sit motionless for almost an hour. I literally can’t stand up or even move. I’m surprised I can still breathe.

The truth is, I have feelings for Connor and it scares the shit out of me. Who am I kidding? It
embarrasses
me.

I’ve only loved one person. Dylan Montgomery. And that ended up in disaster. It took two years before I even thought about men again. And another year after that before I went out on a single date. Dylan nearly broke me.

I don’t want to go through that again.

I thought I’d learned my lesson. But here I am doing it again. Letting an asshole into my heart. To make matters worse, Connor isn’t some random guy I met in college. Connor is the man who harassed me for four years. He’s the man who ruined grad night for me in a big bad way. He’s a horrible person. Considering our history, it seems stupid to consider
anything
with Connor.

I can’t date him.

I hate him.

With good reason.

It doesn’t matter how much I crave him. Lust isn’t love. Yes, he’s hot. But millions of men are hot, and none of them devoted themselves to making me miserable.

I let things go way too far with Connor.

I need to walk away now before I get any more confused. Heck, I should thank
him
for doing the walking away just now. He made himself perfectly clear when he left.

“Warmoth!”

I nearly have a heart attack. I didn’t know anyone had come up behind me. I slowly turn around, half dead to the world.

Vince leans his head in the conference room, smiling. For once. “I forgot to tell you the good news.”

All I can do is stare at him.

He steps into the conference room. “Hal Barrett wants this story on the next cover.”

I still can’t respond.

Vince is a happy camper and rambles on. “Hal thinks we need to attract a larger female demographic. He watched that dance video of Connor at Rom Com Con on
TMZ
and asked when he could expect to see
the
Connor Hughes on the cover of our next issue.”

The
Connor Hughes. Hearing that makes me want to vomit.

“Speaking of, where is he? Did you finish the interview already?” He checks his watch. “It’s nearly noon, so I’m assuming yes?” Vince is boyishly jubilant. He rarely gets like this.

Great. What do I tell him? That after Connor and I had sex on the copier, Connor informed me that I was just another random fuck for him, so I threw him out of the office before finishing the interview I promised Vince I’d have done by lunch? I’m sure Vince would
love
to hear that.

Vince looks suspicious. “Where is he, Warmoth?”

I’m suddenly furious. “I don’t know, Vince! And I don’t care!” I smile like I’m crazy.

“Ex-
cuse
me?” Vince’s happy time is clearly over.

I sigh like a woman ten times my age. “It’s complicated, Vince.”

Furious, Vince slaps his forehead. “What is it with you and this god damn interview, Warmoth? How many times can you screw it up?! I swear, you’re going to give me a heart attack before I eat my lunch today!!”

“I’m sorry, Vince.” He doesn’t deserve this. This is all my fault. I never should’ve slept with Connor. I
knew
better. But I did it anyway. Now
I’m
the one ruining my own career. I need to suck this up and make it happen. I need to behave like a professional. It doesn’t matter if Connor is an asshole. I have a story to finish. I will get it done if it kills me. In fact,
not
finishing it would somehow mean that Connor won. I’m not going to let him have another victory at my expense. I am better than him. “Vince, I’ll take care of it.”

“Take
care
of it? It sure looked like you were taking care of
something
in the copier room earlier when you should’ve been interviewing him!” His eyes flick toward the copy paper ball of shame on the table top.

“It wasn’t my fault, Vince! He—” I stop myself. I can’t blame Connor for this. I’m as guilty as he is for letting things go too far in the copier room.

“He
what
? What, Warmoth?”

I hang my head.

Vince jams his hands on his hips. “Are you sleeping with him, Warmoth?”

Shocked, I gasp. “No!”

He narrows his eyes. “You could’ve fooled me.” He nods knowingly, picking up steam. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Yeah, that’s
exactly
what it is.”

“What, Vince?” I’m suddenly afraid Vince is going to start listing all the dirty things Connor and I did on that copier. He’s going to call everyone in the office into the conference room and read off my list of transgressions like a prosecutor at a murder trial while playing back security camera video of the entire dirty deed.

Vince shakes his head with intensely parental disappointment. “You let me down, Warmoth. You lost your objectivity.”

“I’m not
sleeping
with him, Vince!”

Vince snorts. “That’s quite the denial, Warmoth.”

“I—” stop myself before I make this worse.

“It doesn’t matter if you are or not. The outcome is the same. You’re a part of this story. You’re no longer in a position to handle it like a professional.”

“It’s an
exposé
, Vince! Not Watergate! I can handle this, Vince. I swear!”

He crosses his arms and strokes his chin with one hand, thinking. He nods.

A good sign.

He shakes his head. “You’ve had your shot, Warmoth. I’m pulling you off this story. Audrey will take over from here. You’re done.”

“What?! You can’t do that!”

“Yes I can.”

A voice booms behind Vince:

“No you can’t.” It’s Connor, his voice hard.

While turning around, Vince says “Who are you to tell me what I—” He stops when he sees Connor.

“Do you want my interview finished today or not?”

Vince glares between me and Connor. “I don’t know what exactly is going on between you two, but I have a general idea. I need you to understand something, young man. A number of people’s
jobs
are at stake. Mine included. In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is quickly replacing printed publications like
Trending Magazine
. I’ve given Warmoth plenty of chances to get this right. For whatever reason, she can’t hack it. I’m replacing her with Audrey Fisher.
She
will get this job done, I promise you.”

The idea of Audrey Fisher all alone interviewing Connor turns my stomach.

Connor stares at Vince. “You’re not putting anybody on this story except Electra Warmoth. This is
her
story.”

“Look here—”

“No, buddy. You look here. If you don’t let Electra finish the interview, I’ll take it to
GQ
.”

For a full minute, Vince looks ready to chew through a chain link fence. “Get me a goddamn story on my desk by five, or you can take your interview to
GQ
and shove it up their collective ass.” He storms toward the door of the conference room and drills me with his gaze. “I want it on my desk by five o’clock. No excuses!” He glares at both of us. “And get rid of that goddamn paper ball. I don’t want it in my conference room. It looks terrible.”

Chapter 13

ELECTRA

“Why are we here, Lex?” Connor asks.

We stand on the sunlit grass field behind North Valley High School. School is out for the summer. Except for the old guy throwing a ball for his dog with one of those whippy ball launchers, we’re the only people here. This was the location of our grad night seven years ago.

I sigh, “This is where everything ended for you and me. I think it might be a good place to begin.”

“I don’t.”

“The last seven years of your life are a complete mystery to me, Connor. I don’t know where you went or what you did after high school.”

“You don’t want to know,” he chuckles morbidly.

“If I’m going to get an interview out of you worthy of the cover of
Trending Magazine
, I
need
to know.”

He smirks to himself and stares at the grass, digging into it with the toe of his motorcycle boot.

Being here brings back a host of bad memories for me. Grad night did not turn out like I hoped. I was determined to enjoy myself that night. I wore my hair down for the first time ever and the new off-the-shoulder white dress I bought. Mom wanted to sew one herself, but I wanted a
new
dress. Not a homemade one. Something trendy and fresh. Fat lot of good that did. A mix of emotions tries to strangle me. It’s not just grad night I’m thinking about. It’s four years of Connor and everybody else at North Valley treating me like I was garbage. I often wonder if I would’ve been invisible and left alone if it wasn’t for Connor. But he made sure the spotlight shone on me every single day. He made me a target for
everybody
else. I’m suddenly ready to run away from this field and never come back. The only thing stopping me is my need to understand why Connor was so mean to me. “Why were you such an ass to me on grad night? I’ve never forgotten what you did, Connor.”

He looks away. “I don’t want to talk about grad night.”

“I do. I need to get past it. Past what you did to me.”

“You and me both.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“What, Connor?”

“What do you want me to say, Lex?”

“I want to know why you did it.”

He looks at me with haunted eyes for a long time.

Am I missing something?

“If I could take back what I did on grad night, I would. Every fuckin day, I wish I had a do over for grad night.”

The tone of his voice is so sad, so strained, it seems out of character for the Connor Hughes that I know. “I’m confused, Connor. What you did to me was a jerk thing to do, but it’s not like you ruined my life or anything.” I giggle nervously because I’m not entirely sure I believe my own words, but it seems like the right thing to say. “It could’ve been a lot worse.

“I’m not talking about what I did to you. I’m talking about what happened after you left. And believe me, it
was
worse. A
lot
worse.”

“Do you want me to start recording?”

“Yeah.

I fish my mp3 recorder out of my purse and press the red button. I touch my fingertips to his tattooed forearm. “What happened, Connor?”

He whispers so softly the words are nearly inaudible:

“I ruined everything…”

<<<<<<<>>>>>>>

ELECTRA

GRAD NIGHT, 2008.

To my surprise, people aren’t as terrible to me tonight as I feared. Maybe it’s the fact we all officially graduated a few hours ago and we’re putting high school behind us forever. Maybe we’re all afraid of our futures and we’re too scared to be mean to each other, like we need to band together and face the future as a team. Maybe that’s completely ridiculous.

Either way, I’ve enjoyed the carnival atmosphere since I arrived. I’ve been on most of the rides with the few people on the school newspaper I can genuinely call my friends, eaten way too much junk food, and generally enjoyed myself, much to my pleasant surprise.

“You really look good in that dress, Electra.” Janice Wang smiles at me. “You should totally wear your hair down more often.” She’s the graphic designer for our school paper and the news website.

“Thanks. Not to change the subject, but I totally have to go to the bathroom. Wanna come with?”

“Yeah, sure.” She stands up from the park-style bench where we were sharing a bag of greasy popcorn and drinking Red Bull to keep ourselves awake. It’s well past midnight.

We stroll past the Tilt-A-Whirl and head toward the blue portable toilets lined up on the far edge of the field beside the bleachers.

“Yo, Janice!” Some guy yells behind us, running out of a crowd of people lined up for the ferris wheel. It’s Steve Washington. He shoots video for the campus news channel.

Janice has a crush on him. Her eyes light up when she sees him, “Hey, Steve!”