Troublemaker - Kayley Loring Page 0,3

a lecture about safe sex and self-respect.

I do a quick visual sweep of the VIP tables. There’s the CAA agent who didn’t want to sign me when I was a theatre director and now calls me every week because he wants me to cast his clients in my movies. He can kiss my Tony-nominated ass. There’s the producer who didn’t want to hire me to direct that family comedy because he thought my work was “too highbrow for a four-quadrant studio film,” and now he’s always calling my manager to get me attached to his HBO project. He can kiss my twenty-million-dollar-opening-weekend ass. And there’s the two best-looking guys in the club, huddled together, probably arguing about which one of them has a hotter wife or cuter kids.

Shanico.

Everyone was so in love with the fact that Shane and Nico were two cute guys who played best friends on You’re So Wizard! and became best friends in real life. Well, I was friends with them too. I had a prominent recurring role in Seasons One and Two as Greyson Manning’s super cool high school nemesis who—spoiler alert—turned out to be a werewolf. But I was friends with both Shane and Nico. You never read about it in Tiger Beat magazine, but I was the guy who told Nico Todd he should learn to play guitar. You’re welcome, ladies. And I was the guy who showed Shane how to use hair product to make his hair stand up. You’re welcome again, ladies. But all anyone ever talked about was Shanico. I actually tried to make Shanicolex happen for a while, but…

Whatever. I left LA as soon as I graduated high school and moved to New York for theatre school, but we stayed in touch. I’ve always had my own thing going on with each of them. Back when Nico and I were both single, we’d get into some trouble together whenever he was in New York for gigs. When Shane heard that I was going to be a dad, he called me up, said he was there for me if I ever needed to talk, and told me what I had to look forward to—endless love for the kid, sleepless nights for the foreseeable future, zero sex drive, and probably divorce. That sounds dick-ish, but he said it in a really sweet, honest way. And he was one hundred percent correct.

Now they’re both happily married with kids, and I’m depressingly divorced with a kid, and good for fucking them. They deserve it. Been a while since we’ve all seen each other out in the wild. It’s usually a work-related lunch meeting or dinner at home with the families. Shane’s wife is pregnant, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Nico’s is too one of these days. I’m so happy to see them, it’s embarrassing.

“Vega, baby!” Shane and Nico call out to me at the same time, raising their hands in the air, but they don’t stand up. They know I’ll be paying my respects to Barry first, or maybe they’re just lazy assholes. I saunter over to the balding birthday boy, who’s holding court at another table. He pauses mid-sentence to pull me down and kiss me on the top of my head.

“Happy birthday, sir.” I still call him sir—I can’t help it. “You don’t look a day over fifty.”

“Look at this ridiculously handsome guy—Mr. Big Time Director over here. This kid used to call me Professor Wiener. Little prick! Now look at him! Great to see you. Thanks for coming, Alejandro.” He’s always called me Alejandro, even though my legal name is Alexander. Disney loved to play up the fact that I’m half Spanish. He hooks his arm around my neck, raises his glass, and launches into the story about the time I had a hot mic on when I was chatting up one of the extras on set. And everyone listens and laughs like we’ve never heard it before. I order him a bottle of the club’s cheapest nine-hundred-dollar champagne (fuck you, club owner) and excuse myself to join Shane and Nico because it looks like they’re already thinking about going home.

“Gentlemen…”

Shane gets up to give me a bro hug and lets me slide in to sit between him and Nico. I say hi to everyone else at the table, pretending to ignore Nico, even when he wraps his arms around me and bites my earlobe while Shane takes pictures with his phone. Even when he puts one leg up on