The Boyfriend Designer - Christopher Harlan Page 0,61
I never thought you’d have to see Jessica in all her glory.”
“What’s her deal, exactly? I mean, besides clearly wanting you to father all of her. . . wolf pups?” I can’t help but laugh. He does too, for the first time since I got here.
“She really is out of her god damn mind. See, this is the dark side of what I do. The women.”
“The women, huh? Sounds like a problem — right up there with global poverty and nuclear proliferation. Let’s add a pussy surplus to the list of the world’s issues.”
“I do not have a pussy surplus!”
About three seconds pass between him literally shouting that out and us cracking up. I was totally joking but he took it way too seriously. I think this whole thing is bothering him even more than he’s showing me. I need to be more serious.
“I was kidding. I’m not the jealous type.”
“Sorry. I didn’t even mean ‘the women’ like all that. I meant that even though guys get the reputation as stalkers half the time, they can’t hold a candle to obsessive female fans. My whole brand is catered to men, but I still get an army of online trolls and stalkers, like Jessica, who have more than a few screws loose.”
“From what I saw, it’s more like a box worth of screws. That chick was out of her mind. And if she was willing to act that way in public, I can only imagine what kind of stuff she’d send privately.”
“You don’t want to know.”
My Spidey Sense is tingling. “Like nudes?”
“Like pictures that Hustler and Playboy would reject for being too explicit, let’s put it that way.”
I can’t even describe all the horrible imagery in my head right now. “That’s insane. How long has this been going on?”
“Just short of a year now.”
“That’s a long time to be dealing with that much crazy.”
“You have no idea. It started with just some comments. And normally I don’t even read the comments section, but she was always at the top, and it was weird to me that women were even watching my videos, let alone commenting. Then she tried to slide into my DMs on Instagram. At first, she was just saying hi and that she enjoyed my channel. I wrote back “thanks” just to be polite, which in her crazy mind was the same as a proposal, because the next day I was getting pics like I was the CEO of Pornhub.”
“Holy shit.”
“I told her to stop. That I wasn’t interested. And that’s when she started showing up at events, at all of my appearances, she even tried to find out where I lived. At least that’s what the private investigator told me.”
“Wait, you had to hire a PI?”
“A PI, plus a couple of lawyers who specialized in stalking cases. I made all sorts of new friends because of Jessica. Cost me more than a few dollars just to keep her away from me.”
“What kind of things has she been doing? Besides sending all the porn.”
“Acting just like you saw. Showing up, yelling out that she loves me. Yelling that whole wolf bullshit. Dressed like she’s going to the craziest Halloween party ever. The only difference between the first few times she tried that and now is that I have a restraining order. I could have had her arrested the other day.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know, I feel bad. She obviously has mental health issues, I feel bad adding to her issues.”
“What makes you say that? I mean, besides the she-wolf costume and baying at the moon in front of a room full of people. Other than that, she seems mentally sound.”
“You know what?” he says, looking at me with his big green eyes. “Enough of this negative shit. I spent the last two days dealing with her and all the drama she has a talent for creating. Right now, I want to focus on you. The sane woman in my life.”
I think that’s the first time anyone’s called me sane before. I’m not sure that I like it.
“Little old me?”
He takes a sip of his wine. “What did you do today while I was on the phone with half of the local police department?”
I giggle thinking about what I shot earlier. “Oh, just made a vlog. I hired a new assistant—this girl I met at a coffee shop.”
“You hired a barista to be your editor? You sure you don’t need someone with more experience? I have a lot of