Chapter 110: The Wheels of Fate Begin to Turn

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That evening, Nolan left Penny’s apartment and went straight to the meeting point Leo had given him.

“This is the party?” he asked.

He had to raise his voice to be heard. They were on the second floor of a club, with the dance floor below them moving in heat, lights, and bass.

“There will be a party,” Leo said, finishing his drink. “Just not tonight.”

He looked at Nolan with the expression of someone trying to make himself say something humiliating.

“Oh, I cannot do this. I really cannot do this.”

Nolan leaned back against the rail. “Whatever is bothering you, say it. Does it involve me?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.” Leo ran a hand through his hair. “My mom and I went home last night, and she seemed…”

He stopped, jaw tight.

“This is weird. It is insane. She wanted me to invite you over. To our house. Can you believe that?”

From the look on his face, Leo and Irmelin had argued about it.

“That is not funny,” Leo said, though Nolan had not laughed.

“So you brought me here for that?”

Nolan realized the great social opportunity he had imagined might still be a few days away. Fate’s wheels, apparently, needed time to warm up.

He had no idea why older women kept paying attention to him. Face, body, athlete’s aura, all of the above. It was flattering in an abstract way and inconvenient in a practical one.

“We need a solution,” Leo said. “I cannot go home and hear her bring up your name every ten minutes.”

“Then I meet her once,” Nolan said. “Close the distance. Make it boring. I have no interest in your mother, Leo. Trust me. You are not getting a new father.”

Leo’s expression eased by an inch.

“Fine. Bring your girlfriend. Bring anyone. I do not care. This just has to end.”

Nolan poured him another drink and told him to talk sooner next time.

For all his fame and future chaos, Leo loved his mother fiercely. Nolan knew that much. Leo took her to ceremonies, brought her on trips, and protected her in the small anxious ways a son protected the person who had raised him.

That could be useful.

But Nolan genuinely had no interest in Irmelin. If she had looked like her son, perhaps the calculation would have been different. She did not, so it was not.

“In general,” Nolan said, “older women are not really my thing. That is where you and I differ. Your future sounds more like models.”

“Models?” Leo frowned. “I never said I liked models. Where did you hear that?”

Nolan paused.

In the future he remembered, Leo and models were practically a tabloid category of their own. Yet the boy in front of him sounded sincerely confused.

Maybe the future had not happened yet.

Or maybe something would happen to shape the taste later.

They drifted into easier conversation. Nolan asked when The Basketball Diaries would start filming. Leo asked about the next opponent in Hawaii.

Then a thin young woman passed near their table, hair twisted into a bun, trousers low on her hips, a narrow tube top leaving her shoulders bare.

Leo turned at once.

“Hey, Kate!”

Nolan’s mind ran through famous Kates in half a second.

Cate Blanchett? Kate Winslet? Kate Beckinsale?

The woman turned.

No. Model.

Her face had the severe, angular quality fashion people loved to call interesting: high cheekbones, wide mouth, sharp nose, not conventionally pretty in the easy Los Angeles way but impossible to mistake for ordinary.

She crossed over when she saw Leo.

“When did you get back?” he asked, greeting her with a quick hug and cheek kiss.

“Yesterday.”

“How is Johnny?”

“Do not mention him.”

That answered plenty.

She looked Nolan up and down. “Your friend?”

“A friend of my agent’s friend,” Leo said, then gave up on the family tree. “Lisa asked him to let me shadow the team. I have a school movie coming up, and he is basically the producer of his football team. Everyone listens to him.”

“Wow.” Kate leaned an elbow on Leo’s shoulder, exaggerating the word. “Are you two here with girls?”

“We came to talk,” Leo said. “That is done. What about you?”

“I am here with friends. Our table is short two men.”

She looked back at Nolan.

Leo hesitated. “Do not scare him. He is still in high school.”

Nolan cut in before the label could become a problem. “Eighteen. Senior year.”

Kate laughed. “And I am twenty, so everyone at this table is old enough to make bad choices. Are you coming or not?”

That made the invitation cleaner than Nolan had expected.

“Give us a minute,” Kate said, heading toward the restroom first.

Nolan watched her go. “Who is she?”

Leo stared at him. “You do not know Kate Moss?”

That name clicked.

British. Discovered at an airport as a teenager. Calvin Klein campaigns. A fashion-world favorite. And, if memory served, tangled up with Johnny Depp around this exact time.

“She is the new darling of fashion,” Leo said. “Before her, everyone thought models had to be tall, glossy, impossible. Kate is different. She looks…”

“Expensive and hungry?”

Leo considered that. “Fashionable.”

Nolan had never understood the industry’s devotion to the waif look. He preferred women who looked alive, not like an art director had starved the frame for mood.

Then again, another model would appear later and change the entire conversation. Somewhere in Brazil, a girl who would one day reset the scale was still living an ordinary life.

Kate came back and led them to a quieter booth.

Her two model friends had the same severe fashion look, which disappointed Nolan before he reminded himself that the night had not promised miracles.

His athlete status did draw attention, especially from Kate.

“You are the first real athlete I have sat with in ages,” she said, cigarette held like a practiced accessory. “Male models are all shape and no use.”

“Careful,” Nolan said. “Some of them may have feelings.”

“Do you?”

“Only when useful.”

The conversation kept returning to his body, football, and what kind of damage an athlete could do by accident. Kate drifted closer each time she asked a question.

“Are all quarterbacks built like you?”

“No.”

“So what are you?”

“A problem.”

She smiled. “Can I handle a problem?”

“You may be overestimating yourself.”

“I am excellent at that.”

Leo started sending Nolan looks from the edge of the booth. When Nolan ignored him, Leo stood and dragged him away under the excuse of finding the restroom.

“We do not know if she has actually broken up with Johnny,” Leo said in a low voice.

Nolan thought about it, then handed the decision back.

“If you were me, what would you do?”

Leo blinked. “What kind of question is that?”

“Think before you answer. If you shake your head, we leave now.”

For a long moment, Leo actually considered it.

Then he exhaled.

“Forget Johnny.”

Nolan smiled. “There he is.”

“You know me that well?”

“Well enough. Especially your taste.”

They returned to the booth.

After that, the night played out like a football game with the score already decided. Kate drank enough for everyone to notice, flirted harder, and then announced that she wanted to go home. She was tipsy and theatrical, not incapacitated; she could walk, argue, and give directions to her building. Everyone looked to Nolan for the chore because he had stayed sober from the beginning.

On purpose.

Her apartment was expensive and chaotic, the kind of place that proved glamour did not include housekeeping.

Nolan set her on the couch and turned toward the door.

The first stop on Leo’s future model tour had been less impressive than advertised. Still, the idea had potential.

It was not that Nolan was too noble to take advantage.

He simply had not wanted her that much.

“Wait.”

He stopped at the door and looked back.

Kate was sitting upright. Her cheeks were flushed, but her eyes were clear enough to make the earlier performance look more strategic than helpless.

“You are the first man who was willing to leave,” she said. “Should I be offended?”

“You should be grateful.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No. I am careful.”

“I am sober enough to choose,” Kate said. “And I am choosing.”

Nolan did not move at once. “Protection stays on.”

“Fine.”

“If you say stop, I stop.”

“Then listen when I say something worth hearing.”

That was clear enough.

What followed stayed between the two of them, messy and physical and far less glamorous than the magazines wanted people to believe.

Halfway through, Kate stiffened.

“Stop. I cannot move right.”

Nolan stopped immediately.

Sweat had broken across her forehead, and the pain on her face was no performance.

He checked her as carefully as the situation allowed.

“You may have pulled something.”

Kate stared at him in disbelief.

Nolan looked around the wrecked apartment and sighed.

The wheels of fate had begun to turn.

Apparently, they had rolled straight over his Saturday night.

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