She makes a sound, dismissive, a short exhale through her nose. "That's because your reference group is people who write off their yachts as business expenses, Demetrius. The bar is underground."
She shifts her weight, and then, out of some shift in atmosphere I can't quite track, looks at me sideways with something speculative in her expression.
"I still don't understand Arabella Syrenada. She's on the cover of every magazine. She's one of the most beautiful women in the world. How do you break up with a woman like that?"
I blink. Arabella Syrenada is one of the most famous supermodels in the world. She's also my ex-girlfriend and a spoiled brat.
So Madison Berwick has been following the gossip tabloids about my love life? I shouldn't feel the tiny prickle of warmth at that information, but I do anyway.
"Easily," I say. "We were never serious to begin with."
Maddie goes quiet. She is watching me with the kind of attention that means the question was never about Arabella Syrenada.
"She is beautiful," I say. "But she was also using me to get people talking about her. It worked, but this was more a business relationship than anything else. Believe me, she's not heartbroken over this."
She nods once, slowly. "Why not?"
I hold her gaze. "I haven't been serious about anyone since I was eighteen years old."
She goes very still and I'm suddenly very aware of how close we are to each other. The nightgown she wears is thin and I concentrate hard on not asking myself if she has anything underneath. I fail.
"What about you?" I ask, even though the last thing I want to hear about is her boyfriend.
"No." She shakes her head and her long, beautiful dark hair moves. "I've dated. I'm not pathetic. Just nothing that stuck."
"I'm surprised." And I mean it. "I thought by now you would have..." I let it hang, half-finished. I'm not about to tell her that I imagined her life all those years, obsessed about it late at night.
She tilts her head and just looks up at me with those big, dark eyes that once contained my entire world.
"So you thought about me."
"Not often," I say.
A beat of silence.
"Only about a dozen times a day."
Her expression flickers: not quite a smile, not quite grief, almost certainly both.
"Then why didn't you call?" Her voice is even. Not accusatory, just direct, the way Maddie has always been direct. "I waited for you to call for years and you never did."
"I'm sorry," I say and I never meant those words more. "I just couldn't."
I take another step towards her and she has to tilt her head all the way back to look up at me. This way, with her neck stretched and her face upturned, it gets hard not to stare at her full, plump lips. Lips I've dreamed of kissing over and over during all those years when Madison Berwick took up permanent residence in my skull and never once paid rent.
"I tried," I tell her and my voice is all wrong. Low and deep, more like a rumble. "More times than I can count. I picked up the phone and put it back down. That's the only answer I have."
She breathes in. Out. Her wary expression settles into something more tired and more true.
"I think." She speaks carefully, like she's building each word load-bearing. "That we should leave the past where it is. Everything that happened between us." She looks up at me, and I see the girl she was back when we were madly in love. "We're not kids anymore. We're both adults here and I was hired to look after your grandmother. So. Truce?"
"Truce," I say. "We leave the past in the past."
The word settles into the space between us, and neither of us moves.
She's close. Close enough that I can see the line of her collarbone, the exact place where the nightgown's strap crosses it. She's looking up at me and her lips have parted.
My gaze drops to her mouth. She tilts her chin up, the smallest degree, and the kitchen is very quiet and I lean down towards her because apparently my self-preservation instinct amounts to nothing against a peanut butter sandwich and a nightgown.
