“You like that? Oh, yeah, I know you like that! Pull my hair, baby. Pull my hair!”

He didn’t have hair.

“Come on, baby, do it.”

I remember scratching at his head, pretending to pull, and the weirdo actually growled like it was seriously happening.

I cringed at the memory and continued to watch him tear apart my apartment, searching for his stuff, only he barely left his things behind. When he was finally done, he came to me, carrying a box of his games, and stopped uncomfortably close.

“We could have had something, Leah,” he said, despairingly. “It could have been amazing had you not fucked up your past.”

“Technically, we could never have had something,” I replied, flatly. “Pasts sort of can’t be changed, Brett.”

He sneered. “Maybe. Have a good life.”

“You too.”

He stomped out of there after that, slamming the door behind him.

For a long moment, there was that thick silence in the air. Mel and I just stared at each other, unsure of what to say, trying to digest the lunacy of the situation.

“Leave it to you to find the fucking crazies, babe,” Mel snickered, dispelling the silence.

“It’s that goddamn dating website. I don’t know why I keep falling for it.” I made my way around and collapsed on the couch next to her, idly watching the television as I spoke. “They always seem so promising.”

“Stop going for the looks.”

I nodded, agreeing. “You’re right. Maybe I’m just shallow and my knight in shining armour is some six hundred pound janitor at a maximum security prison.”

“Well, look, if you hit the clubs again, you can find some really good opportunities.”

“No,” I disagreed. “Those are usually one night stands, and I can’t stand to be that emotionally detached.”

“Better than a guy asking you to pull his hair during sex when he doesn’t even have one single fucking hair on his head.”

I considered that for a moment and nodded. “You’re right, I’ll give you that.”

“Then we’ll go out tomorrow and find someone.”

I sighed and shook my head. “Nah, can’t do tomorrow.”

“Why the hell not? It’s a Saturday. It’s bad enough we haven’t gone out on a Friday night after a week from hell.”

I looked at her and raised a brow. “It’s that time of the month, Mel.”

She paused and looked back at me. “Oh,” she said, slumping her shoulders. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t she moving too?”

“Yeah.”

“When will you be back?”

“Not until late at night. I’ve got spin class, and I’ll be fucked by the time I’m back. Go out without me and have fun.”

She looked disappointed, but she nodded anyway. I grabbed my book off the coffee table and started reading just as she flipped through the channels. We were couch potatoes. Five years of being broke had forced us to depend on the god that was the television to dull the boredom.

We were financially better lately than we’d ever been before. She was no longer a waitress, but a bartender working at a high-end bar closer to the city. The drive was a bit brutal for her, but she said the tips made it worth it. I was a low level accountant, but my pay had done wonders compared to before. With more money to play with, we commuted a lot into the city for retail therapy. Being out of the condo meant distancing ourselves from the old stir-crazy days in front of the television. We were still in Abbotsford, in a nice, quiet condominium that had all the modern conveniences, and we were comfortable.

“Holy shit,” she suddenly whispered from next to me.

I looked up from my book and at the television. I immediately tensed at the images of Carter’s face all over the screen. He was walking out of a restaurant, his head down, hand wrapped around another that belonged to his latest piece of fluff.

Honestly, how many times did I have to watch the same thing just with different chicks in different places? You’d think I’d have gotten used to this by now, but the trigger of emotions that ran rampant through my body in the seconds that followed these moments proved otherwise.

That could have been me.

The paparazzi had ambushed him like a pack of wild dogs, and they were howling questions at him, all of which went unanswered. He didn’t respond in any form to any of them, as he forced his way through the crowd. Soon after, his bodyguards stepped in to ward the evil men with cameras away.

“Jesus,” Mel muttered. “They treat him like he’s royalty.”

“Rock stars sort of are,” I returned numbly.

“Do you hear what they’re saying?”

I didn’t have to hear it. The clip cut off and a new story of Carter emerged, this time of him with some long legged model.

“Buzz has exclusive footage of bad boy Carter Matheson and Panda Alwright doing the dirty on camera. No, folks, not the dirty as in another Carter sex tape – and we can’t forget that one, can we, ladies?” Oh, my God, not this again. “No, I’m talking a fight that occurred out front of a club that resulted in Alwright throwing her suspected engagement ring at him. Seems like trouble in paradise for this bad boy.”

“Buzz?” I let out in confusion.

“That’s the program’s name. They call themselves Buzz. Like, you know, the latest buzz and they’re all over it with their team of paparazzi.”

“And what’s this chick’s name?” There was no way I’d heard it right.

“Panda Alwright.”

I grabbed the remote and muted the garbage and turned to her. With one raised brow, I stared at Mel sceptically. “Don’t fuck with me, Mel. What’s the girl’s name?”

She tried to keep a straight face but ended up bursting into a fit of giggles. “Her name is Panda Alwright.”

What was it with Carter and these horrifically named girls? First Pomposa, and now Panda?

“She’s the spawn of another famous model,” Mel went on to explain. “I guess around the time she was born, her mother had been a spokesperson for this ‘Save the Pandas’ charity foundation.”

“Oh, my fucking god,” I cursed, shaking my head. “Why do celebrities do this?”

She just shook her head, laughing into the couch cushion.