Page 123 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
It didn’t take anywhere near eight hours for the entertainment news to begin reporting what would soon become the hottest story of the year.
By midnight, the internet had exploded with eye-witness accounts of the lead singer of Bad Habit’s epic rejection. One particularly nasty piece, titled “Life Imitates Art,” a reference to how I’d left Nico at the altar in the video for “Soul Deep,” crucified Nico for his ruthlessness in not only finding a new girlfriend, but also proposing to her so soon after Avery Kane’s unfortunate death. I’d anticipated this kind of thing, which was one of my main reasons for wanting to keep our engagement quiet for as long as possible.
What I hadn’t expected was the tsunami of hate that would be directed my way.
I was a ruthless gold digger. I was a conniving slut. I was the reason Nico and Avery broke up. I was the reason she overdosed. A whole galaxy of conspiracy theories arose in which I had not only plotted to oust Avery from her role in the video, but I had plotted to push her to the edge by flaunting my relationship with Nico in her face. A few of my more rabid detractors went so far as to outright blame me for her death.
Apparently I was also plotting to break up the band. In some corners, that was considered worse.
I read every story. I obsessed over every detail. In the days that followed, I hunted through papers and magazines and stalked online bloggers, hungry for news, for any mention of Nico and how he was doing in the aftermath of the atomic bomb I’d dropped on his head.
Unfortunately for me, there was plenty of news to be had.
“I don’t know why you keep doing this to yourself,” snapped Grace, snatching the copy of US Weekly magazine from my hands. The cover picture showed Nico and a busty brunette staggering through the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills at two o’clock in the morning. His arm was slung over her shoulder; his head was bent as he said something into her ear. Her skirt was so short it was almost a belt.
Not even a week and I’d been replaced. I was so depressed I couldn’t even muster the energy to feel sorry for myself.
I snatched the magazine back, returning to the page I’d been reading. “It’s called self-flagellation,” I muttered. “I’ve heard it’s good for the soul.”
Grace huffed, “There’s nothing wrong with your soul, Kat. It’s your brain that’s the problem!”
I’d been staying with her again, hiding in the cocoon of her controlled-access building since the prior weekend. Chloe was hysterical with worry, mainly because she was convinced I was headed for a trip to the hospital due to the sheer amount of liquid that had been exiting my body through my eyes, but Grace was her usual tough-as-nails self, ordering me to eat when it was time, ordering me to sleep, ordering me to take a shower. It was good she was around, because if not for her influence, I wouldn’t have done any of those things.
I would have simply existed on a steady toxic diet of tabloids, watching the love of my life fuck his way through every brunette in town.
To say I was surprised by that unexpected development would be akin to saying the dinosaurs were surprised when that giant meteor first touched down.
I wasn’t surprised. I was fucking annihilated.
“This is ridiculous, Kat. None of this even makes sense. If you were so convinced you were done with him, if you were so over it that you had to break up with the poor guy like that, why the hell are you acting like this?” Grace’s narrowed gray eyes drilled into me.
“It’s complicated. And by the way, that ‘poor guy’ has had his dick inside at least two dozen women in the past week! I think he’s doing just fine.” In an attempt to escape her relentless stare, I tossed aside the magazine and burrowed deeper into the safety of her couch. The snuggie I was wrapped in was no match for her burning gaze, because I felt its heat right through the Barbie-puke-pink fabric.
“If the tabloids are to be believed. And considering their track record with UFOs, mutant human-alien hybrids, and Oprah Winfrey secretly being a government-controlled robot, they’re not.”
She had a point. It counted for exactly zero on the “Make Kat Feel Better” scale.
I said, “You’ll never convince me Quentin Tarantino isn’t a mutant human-alien hybrid. Have you seen his forehead?”
Grace sighed.
“And why are you sticking up for Nico anyway? I know you never liked him!”
A stony silence. I looked up to find Grace staring down at me, scary as an axe murderer. Her tone was as severe as her expression. “You know I’m not stupid, right?”
“Um. Yes?”
“Good. Because you’re acting as if I’m too dull to figure out something else is going on here that you’re not willing to talk about.”
I opened my mouth to protest. Grace put up a hand and said, “Shush.”
I shushed.
“I won’t push you to tell me what it is, but I want you to know that I know you have a ridiculous tendency toward unquestioning self-sacrifice. You’d be first in a line of Hindu widows to throw herself on her husband’s burning funeral pyre. You’d be the only virgin in tribal history to willingly jump into the volcano to appease the gods. You’re that soldier who would fall on a grenade to save his buddies.”
I was touched. “Thanks, Gracie.”
“It’s not a compliment, for God’s sake! What I’m saying is that you have no sense of self-preservation! You’re too worried about saving everybody else! How about if, just once, you thought about what you wanted first?”
