Cruel Summer: Fast Girls, Hot Boys Series

summer before senior year
Vanity St. John patrolled the velvet rope of Black Sand like a child of Hitler. It was the hot club of the millisecond. She was the hot girl of the moment. A match made in flashbulb heaven.

For fistfuls of cash she didn't need and a VVIP membership she didn't want, Vanity had agreed to this two-hour promotional stunt. So here she was playing Celebrity Rope Bitch.

Three guys inched forward to beg entry.

One glance and Vanity knew. Wrong look. Wrong zip code. Wrong everything. With Gestapo precision, she waved them out of the line.

"Yo! What's up?" The leader of the loser pack had spoken.

Vanity ignored him. She was good at that. Rendering people invisible came easy. Someone in the next gaggle of hopefuls brought a hint of a smile to her glossy lips.

He loped toward her, cockier than Usher on the red carpet. "Hey, baby. I haven't seen you since that Gap thing." Jayson James was talking.

Vanity St. John was remembering. Last spring's print campaign. The male model with the California surfer vibe. The postshoot date that ended with them half-drunk but all over each other in the limousine. And the promised call that never materialized. Ooh, a guy who pulls a disappearing act after a hookup. How original.

She noticed the initials J.J. tattooed onto the underside of his left wrist. Oh, yeah. The nickname. It all came flooding back now. This was the corn-fed stud from Iowa. Discovered in Times Square during a senior trip to New York. His West Coast beach dude act was just a pathetic attempt at reinvention. It played better with bookers and advertising creative types.

J.J.'s beautiful baby blues flicked her up and down. No doubt the memory of what they did together was stripping the gears of his one-track mind. But dumb guys could only think so much. Especially a Midwest moron like him. If this one ever needed brain surgery, the doctor would have to say, "Okay, nurse, unzip his pants."