“Did you sleep last night?”

“Barely.”

“Are you mad at Taylor?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

Jeremy leaned against the pool table and lit up a cigarette as Jason racked the balls for a game. “Do you have any right to be?”

Jason glared at Jeremy for this. But after a moment, his expression softened.

“Probably not,” he acknowledged.

Jeremy nodded, rubbing his four-day stubble like a detective on the case.

“Yep, I’ve seen these symptoms before . . .” he mused. “I believe it’s called ‘jealousy.’ Something common men unlike yourself experience from time to time.”

“Yeah, well, it sucks,” Jason replied pissily. He aimed his stick at the cue ball and took a shot. He whiffed, missed the ball entirely, and hit the pool table face-first.

Jeremy barely stifled his smile. Ahhh . . . if only the paparazzi could capture moments like this.

“So I guess this means you and Taylor are friends now,” he said.

Jason scoffed emphatically while rubbing his nose. “Please—I’m never just ‘the friend.’ ”

“Scott Casey might beg to differ with you on that.”

Jason pointed at him. “You say his name again, and I swear I’ll get you fired off that vampire flick of yours.”

Jeremy was highly offended by this.

“Hey—let’s get something straight. It’s a vampire/alien/ zombie/warlock hybrid flick.”

Nineteen

AND JUST LIKE that, everything had changed.

On an impulse after losing three straight games of pool at Reilly’s Tavern, Jason had declared to Jeremy that they were going out for the evening. But now, as he sat in one of the booths at Hyde, he found that his heart just wasn’t into the whole West Hollywood nightclub scene that night.

Because everything had changed.

The bar was packed. Underneath the candles that hung from the club’s copper ceiling, Jeremy and the other guys they had come with—friends from Around—argued over which Ben Affleck/Michael Bay collaboration ranked higher in the biggest cinematic disasters of all time, Pearl Harbor or Armageddon .

Jason heard Jeremy’s irate shout over the music, obviously voting for the latter.

“Come on—that scene with the animal crackers? Are you kidding me with that shit? I almost gagged up my Jujyfruits.”

Now normally, Jason would have been tempted to enter this fray, especially since he not only enjoyed any opportunity to contradict Jeremy, but also because he personally thought that Pearl Harbor should be placed on the American Medical Association’s list of potential causes of eye cancer.

But tonight, he found he couldn’t quite muster up the enthusiasm. Tonight, there was no fight left in him.

She was going out with someone else.

Scott Casey.

Jason couldn’t imagine how the situation could possibly get any worse.

As he took a long sip of his drink, finishing off his fifth Stolichnaya Elit on the rocks that evening, he wondered how, exactly, things had gone so far awry. For the first time in over ten years, he didn’t know what to do.

Yes, call Us Weekly. Call Page Six, the Enquirer, and everyone else.

Jason Andrews had woman problems.

“Should I order us another drink?”

The question came from Jason’s right, from the ravishing blonde with fantastically long legs that sat next to him.

Hey—he was in a bar and he was Jason Andrews. Of course there was a ravishing blonde with fantastically long legs sitting next to him.

Jason turned his attention to the girl. He was a wee bit buzzed from the vodka and more than a wee bit melancholy.

“Do you have goals, Shyla?” He sighed. “Tell me what a woman like you wants to do with her life.”

“Shay-na,” the blonde corrected him.

Jason leaned his head back against the booth and closed his eyes. Suddenly, this entire conversation made his head hurt.

He opened his eyes to find Shayna sitting in his lap, leaning over him. From what Jason could tell, the woman already had two pretty nice assets working for her in life, and the push-up bra she wore shoved them straight into his face.

She whispered seductively in his ear.

“My goal is to blow you in your car tonight when you drive me home to f**k me.”

Jason sighed tiredly. It was always the same thing. Jason, I want to blow you. Jason, let’s go back to my trailer and f**k like wild dogs. Jason, I’ll bring my girlfriend next time, she’s in Cirque du Soleil and can do things to her body you wouldn’t believe. Blah, blah, blah.

With Shayna’s two ample assets presented right at eye level, Jason tried to muster some interest in her suggestion. But try as he might, it was a different pair of assets—a pair of lively green eyes to be exact—that he couldn’t get out of his mind.

So he shook his head.

“Sorry—it’s a guy’s night out tonight.” With that, he scooped the blonde off his lap, stood up, and turned to Jeremy. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jeremy glanced over at Jason and nodded. He disliked the L.A. club scene even more than the L.A. party scene, so it didn’t take a whole heck of a lot to convince him to leave. Besides, the guys they had came with were total friggin’ morons—one of them had just argued that Armageddon had strong “situational character development.”

Shayna, on the other hand, was not quite ready to call it an evening. She reached for Jason’s hand.