I looked over to see Antoine King holding a beer.
“Hey, mind if I join you?” he asked. I scootched over to make enough room for the monstrous man to sit down next to me.
“Not at all. You deserve that,” I told him, nodding to his beer.
“Thanks,” Antoine laughed. “I think so too. That was hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“If it makes you feel any better, if it wasn’t for that gust of wind you would have romped it in. Kiegan had no chance, you were so much faster than him.”
“Yeah. Oh well, finishing is half the battle.”
“Did it hurt when you landed in the water?”
“Definitely. I’m going to be sore for a few days.”
I shook my head. “I could never do that. I mean, even if I had the physical strength to even try, I could never dare do something that could result in me falling over a hundred feet into the water.”
“It’s all about training your mind. You can’t let fear control you. Kiegan says you’re his new personal assistant.”
“Yeah. Tina.”
“Antoine. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too. So why did you decide to go on the show?”
“I figured there’d be a good chance a bunch of pro scouts would be watching. Even if it’s just a couple, if I made a good impression for one or two of them, well that’s enough, isn’t it?”
“It’s risky though, isn’t it? I mean, you fell down, so wouldn’t that hurt your chances?”
Antoine shrugged. “Probably. But maybe not. After all, I looked pretty damn good up until that point. A lot of pro scouts are watching my games anyway, this is just to try and get in front of a couple eyeballs that might have passed me up until now. If they see how well I was doing until I fell, maybe they’ll have a look at some of my games.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds like a good plan.”
“Hey, what do you say we get out of here and find somewhere a bit more… quiet… to continue our chat?” Antoine asked. I froze. I hadn’t worried about guys in ages, I hadn’t been on a date since God-knows-when. And while Antoine was nice, I didn’t want to go on one tonight. Even if it was my twentieth birthday.
“Sorry, you seem really nice, I’m just purposely single right now,” I told him with a small smile. I felt bad. I wasn’t used to turning guys down. I mean sure, the odd one or two would flirt with me when I worked at the grocery store back in Seattle, and I’d even had a one night stand with one of them, but I didn’t feel right about it now.
It’s not because you’re attracted to your brother. It’s not, I repeated to myself, over and over. But I knew it was a lie. A part of me was holding out, hoping that Kiegan would notice me that way. Even though I knew it was impossible. Even though I knew Victoria’s Secret models were more his type than I was.
“Oh. Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding,” Antoine told me. “Kiegan just told me that you were super into me, and I should go and ask you out.”
The rage I’d been shoving down suddenly came bubbling over. All I could see was red as I realized that this day, on my twentieth birthday, my brother was still being a total douche.
Well guess what, asshole. I’m not a teenager anymore, and I’m not taking any more of your shit.
“Oh he did, did he? Well I apologize Antoine, but Kiegan lied to you to make an idiot out of me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tell him exactly where he can shove his advice.”
I stormed off without waiting for a reply, but if I wasn’t mistaken I did see the tiniest hint of a smile form in the corner of Antoine’s mouth.
This wasn’t the worst thing Kiegan had done to me since I started working for him; not by far. But this one was absolutely the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I was going to give him a piece of my mind.
Chapter THirteen
I stormed over to the editing table where four or five laptops were set up. Kiegan was discussing something about one of the scenes with Josh.
“Hey, asshole,” I yelled out. Kiegan turned around.
“Me?” he asked, looking as innocent as a puppy caught rolling in something it shouldn’t have and pretending it wasn’t doing anything.
“Obviously, you. Everyone else here is perfectly likeable.”
“Ok, let’s go talk over here,” Kiegan motioned, trying to take my arm, but I wrenched it away. Still, I followed Kiegan into the administration building by the helipad. We went down a hallway where we were alone, the into what was obviously some sort of pilot’s change room.
“How fucking dare you?”
“What did I do?” Kiegan asked, spreading his arms in question.
“You told Antoine I wanted him. He came over thinking I was into him, and I had to shoot him down,” I shot at Kiegan. I was yelling, and I didn’t care.