“It’s a small fuckin’ world. You’re going to see Alex in London. Are you ready for that?”

I ran a hand across my stubbly face, then pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead. “I… I expected that.”

Paul was watching me evenly from across the table, his hand delicately wrapped around a bright blue cocktail. In addition to being the new faces department head, Paul was one of my closest friends and one of the four original guys who had helped me get this shit off the ground.

He was also kinder to me than most others. He had that way of watching me that told me he knew exactly what I was trying to hide, every damn time.

And he’d seen the Alex shit show coming from two miles off, but I had been too damn stubborn to listen to him.

“So? Do you need me to whisk you away when you see him?”

“No, no,” I hastened to answer. That would only tell Alex that he’d gotten to me, and I wasn’t prepared to let him win.

No how, no way.

“I’ll deal with it,” I added, drawing a heavy sigh. “It’s not like he’s traumatized me.”

“Mmm.” Paul’s noise was that perfect mix of noncommittal skepticism so he didn’t draw my ire, but expressed his real thoughts on the matter.

I glared at him, then downed the rest of my cocktail. “Shots. We have to talk about next week, and London, and--”

“No shots until you tell me what’s going on.”

“What?” I frowned.

“Why you’re avoiding talking about him. And why he’s so determined to be in all the places you are. All week, at every fuckin’ show you go to, he’s there.”

“Small world, like you said.” I shrugged. “He has to be in the same places to get work.”

“He left you for Hayden Chaney, didn’t he? What’s he doing this year?”

I flinched but nodded. “Chaney’s the guy with the ugly little anchor and elephant prints… ocean safari, he called it.”

“Oh, him.”

“Chaney.” I rolled the name off my tongue. I couldn’t see it working. “He’s the guy to watch, though. Rumor has it he’s starting a modeling agency now. Doing the circuit starting this week, trying to collect big names to hire.”

“It’s working.” Paul tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And Alex’s a pretty big name to tap. Sorry.”

I shrugged it off. It was true -- there was a line somewhere between a few thousand and tens of thousands of Instagram followers where you became a really big deal online, and that usually translated to being a really big deal offline, too.

Alex wasn’t the first guy to cultivate a perfect online persona so he could become bigger than his agency.

He was just the first guy to take my heart along with him when he ditched the agency for his own endeavor.

“Anyway,” I mumbled, “we’ll deal with him when we see him. It’s not like he’s the top or bottom of my list of enemies.”

“But he’s the one you’ve tried the hardest to fuck over,” Paul told me, watching me evenly.

I flinched. I hadn’t become a household name by playing nicely. And Alex… well, I might have taken it a step too far when he left.

“What’s done is done,” I concluded, then pushed myself to my feet. “Shots.”

“Shots,” Paul agreed.

When I brought them back, we clinked them and downed the tiny glasses of amber liquid without a second thought.

Then, Paul leaned in. “Speaking of London… You’re looking forward to seeing our new guy perform, aren’t you?” He gave a conspiratorial smirk.

“Which one?” I tried to bluff, but it was no use. Paul was the guy who could always see through that.

“Oh-ho, there is something there.” He grinned. “Or you wouldn’t be avoiding the issue.”

I grumbled under my breath and leaned back, rolling my head back as the whisky burned down my throat and heated my chest up.

Like Leonel did, every time I thought about watching him shift from pose to pose for the camera like it was his first language.

“He’s exactly your type. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed, or you wouldn’t have hired him,” Paul laughed. “Shay didn’t just magically convince you that you needed an assistant after all this time.”

The heat in my cheeks was definitely from the Fireball. “Maybe,” I snorted. “But after Alex…”

Paul looked sympathetic. He reached over the table to squeeze my hand, then picked up the cocktail menu and turned it over to scan the list. “You’ll get through it.”

“I fuckin’ won’t. I told you back then, and I mean it. I’m done dating,” I told him, my voice harsher than I meant it.

Paul knew better than to look skeptical. He just nodded slightly. “Forever is a long time.”

“No more strings attached to me. It’s great.” My eyes flickered down to Paul’s wedding ring. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Oh, I know,” he assured me, a laugh bubbling in his chest. “You know I know.”

True. Paul had worked his way around just as much as me. But he’d chosen right, and I had ignored my gut instinct in favor of a pretty face.

I rubbed my face. Enough thinking about this shit. I had meetings in the morning. “One more drink for the road.”

One more drink, and maybe I’d forget about Alex’s hard-edged smile when he leaned over the desk to tell me he was out.