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“Woah.” My eyes go wide as I glance at my reflection in the mirror in the corner of her room.
“Right?” She beams. “You’re a sexy little snack in that dress. You’re going to have your pick of hot older men. You do still like older men, right?”
“I don’t know,” I murmur, stunned at how much larger my breasts look with a bit of side boob showing near the dress’s spaghetti straps. “I think I just liked Mr. Pilots Puppies. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were twenty-five or fifty-five.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Noelle says, before pushing on in a no-nonsense tone, “But fifty-five would have been gross. Thirty-nine is perfect. He’s old enough to know what he wants, but not too old to keep up with you. If I ever break up with Ben, I’m only dating older guys. They’re just so much more dependable and predictable, you know? And I bet most of them don’t worry about running out of money to go out for a slice of pizza by the end of the month.”
I catch her gaze in the mirror. “But you don’t care. You’d rather starve with Ben than eat at a five-star restaurant with anyone else.”
Her smile stretches into a mile-wide grin. “You’re so right. He’s the sweetest and the sexiest and I love him to bits and pieces.”
“I’m happy for you guys. You give me hope that love isn’t dead, after all.”
She frowns and pishes at me with a flap of her hand. “Well, of course it isn’t. You’ll find your Ben. It’s just a matter of time. It could happen at any moment, even when you least expect it.”
She could be right, I guess, but I’m certainly not expecting anything tonight. The party will be full of Adrian’s pretentious friends, artistic people who pity my sad, business life, and models hired to stand around looking bored and fabulous.
Oh, and Adrian’s dad, who will probably be a jerk and make me feel sorry for Adrian, giving him the leverage he’ll need to force me to stay at this party far later than I’ll want to.
When Noelle’s done arranging my hair in a pretty spill of curls and I’ve allowed her to do my eyes and lips—though I refuse blush on the grounds that it makes me feel like a clown, no matter how tastefully it’s applied—I catch her elbow on the way to her bedroom door.
“Hey,” I say, when she turns back to me. “Can we have a safe word? Like, something I say if I need to leave the party before Adrian’s ready, and I don’t want to deal with a big negotiation about it?”
She nods. “Absolutely. Just say the word, and I’ll call you a car and make sure you’re in it. Ben and I are staying sober tonight. He never drinks at art world events. He wants people to take him seriously as an artist, not think of him as a kid who likes to party.”
“Smart. And thank you,” I say, approving of Ben’s maturity. Noelle’s lucky to have found him, and Adrian’s lucky to have a best friend with such a good head on his shoulders.
I start to move past Noelle when she pokes my arm. “So?”
“So what?”
“So, what’s your safe word? You never said.”
“Oh.” I laugh and shake my head. “It’s good I’m getting out. Clearly, all the corporate research is wrecking my brain.” I pull in a breath, searching for a good word. “How about…bacon, egg, and cheese,” I say, thinking fondly of the puppies and hoping they’ve found homes with people who love them. “I’ll say I’m hungry for one and you put me in a cab. Deal?”
“Deal, baby. I got you,” she says, looping her thin arm around my waist. “But don’t head out too soon. The real party doesn’t even start until midnight, and we’re going to have a blast. I feel it in my bones.”
She’s so sure of herself that I catch some of her excitement. But I have no clue just how “exciting” tonight is going to turn out to be.
eleven
GIDEON
New York City. She’s like an old girlfriend I haven’t seen in years.
I watch the skyline grow closer beneath the small commercial jet with a belly full of mixed emotions.
As a kid growing up on Long Island, I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and move to Manhattan. I wanted to be where everything was happening, all the time. As much as I loved being out on a trail or at a campsite, I loved the fevered heartbeat of the city even more.
There was always something to do or someone interesting to see.
And Columbia was there—Columbia, my father’s alma mater and one of the best real estate law programs in the country. When I was younger, the plan was to become a lawyer and help my father grow his real estate empire in the posh seaside communities of New York and New Jersey.
Then Angela got pregnant during our sophomore year of high school, and everything changed.
I still ended up going to Columbia for undergrad and law school—with the help of my parents, who moved to an apartment in the city near our student family housing to help care for Adrian while Angela and I were in class—but by the time I graduated with my law degree, my parents were barely speaking to me. My mother never forgave me for letting Angela take Adrian with her on the road while I finished up my final year of law school.
She was afraid that Angela wouldn’t bring him back, and that I’d have a hard time proving I deserved custody when I hadn’t put up a fight to keep my child with me in the city, but I didn’t believe her. I believed Angela when she said she loved me, but that she desperately needed to make her dream of being a professional dancer come true. I believed her when she insisted that Adrian would be devastated if he couldn’t see his mother for eight months, and that they’d be back before I knew it.
