Adulation by Elisa Lorello Page A

that list,” I added, “and take him off my Forty for Forty list.”
    “Not a chance,” said Georgie, his fork aimed at me this time. “He stays. He may have been a jackass tonight, but you’ll get the last laugh.”
    “By sleeping with a jackass?” I said. Theo burst out laughing again, covering her mouth full of cheesecake.
    “I have to side with Sunny on this,” said Theo. “He’s a great writer and all, but I think he’s a little too high and mighty for his own good. He was talking   at   the audience tonight, not   to   them.”
    “That’s because he’d done like a gazillion interviews in three days and has probably been asked the same five questions each time,” I remarked.   Shit shit shit, stop defending him!
    “Whatever,” said Theo. “Truth be told, I think you can do much better than him.”
    “I think so too,” I lied.
    I looked at Georgie, hoping he would see right through me and call me out on my lie, but he didn’t.
    “Put Shane Sands on the list,” Theo suggested.
    “No way,” said Georgie, a hint of jealousy in his voice. “The list stays as it is.”
    “Whatever,” I said, echoing Theo.
    The last bite of cheesecake waited to be claimed, but none of us did. I stared at it, momentarily lost in a thought that I dared not speak. Thing is, when he’d taken my hand, it hit me at that moment: This was a guy I could date. Moreover, this was a guy with whom I could just   be .
    How awful was that? To think that of a guy I’d only met for five minutes, who lived in another universe, and then call him a failure   to his face?

    Georgie, Theo, and I took the train back to Huntington the next morning, the three of us sleeping all theway. When I got back to my apartment, I took a shower—it was a shame to lose the fabulous hairstyle. Worse still, because Luc had turned the chair away from the mirror when he was working his magic, andbecause I’d been so busy ogling myself afterward, I’d forgotten to ask him  to show me how to style itmyself. It was too short to put in a ponytail now, so I blew it dry and tried to push it all back with ahairbrush. The result was a windblown fluff. I imagined Luc looking at me, disappointed (hell, probably insulted ), like watching someone graffiti all over your oil painting.
    Having been on an Internet fast for the last forty-eight hours, I turned on my laptop and logged infirst to my e-mail in-box, which was clogged with notifications from Facebook by people who tagged mein a video, its tagline “jackass.”
    “What the...?” I started as I clicked on the video that showed me, my face obscured, calling Danny Masters a jackass and a failure.
    Oh. My. God.
    My cell phone rang.
    “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked Georgie without even saying hello or needing to checkthe caller ID.
    “Where in Zeus’s name did it come from?” he asked.
    “How would I know? And how does everyone know it’s me? You can’t even see me. Hell,   I
    wouldn’t have known it was me.”
    “You have a very distinct way of saying jackass ,” said Georgie. “You put a lot of emphasis on the
    jack   and then slightly linger on the   ass , and you have that hardcore Long Island accent that separates the

    sound of jack   from the sound of ass .”
    “You’re a fucking linguist now?”
    “I rest my case.”
    “My accent is not hardcore.”
    “Besides, you posted your last status update from the theater, remember? And who else do they
    know who works at a bookstore and is a Danny Masters fan? They put two and two together.”
    I groaned.
    My phone beeped, alerting me to Theo. I let it go to voice mail.
    “Is there any way to take it down?” I asked.
    “Take what down?”
    “The video.”
    “Why?”
    “What do you mean,   why ?”
    “You’re famous, Sunny Delight! Look how many hits it’s gotten already. Just think what would happen if you came forward; you’ll probably get your own reality show in a few months, and you’d