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Part I
One
Emilia
“That’s it. It’s official. I’m done.”
I slam my final shot of tequila down on the bar and nod my head resolutely.
My best friend, Erin, snorts and rolls her eyes.
“Right. You keep telling yourself that, babe.”
Shooting her a sideways glare, I open my purse and pull out my lip gloss.
“See,” Erin says with a laugh, “you’re nowhere near done.”
I smack my lips together when I finish applying the gloss, then toss my blonde waves over my shoulder and give her an innocent smile.
“I meant here.”
I gesture vaguely around the dimly lit lounge that’s part and parcel of living in the Bradford—a luxury apartment building in the Upper East Side.
I fucking love it here. It costs a pretty penny, but it’s absolutely worth it.
“That’s more like it.”
Erin looks at her watch. “Because the minute Emilia Adams calls it a night at eleven p.m., then I’ll know I’ve stepped into some alternate universe.”
Yeah, so I’m the consummate party girl.
What can I say? I know how to have a good time, and as long as I’m young and free, might as well make the most of it, right?
“So where to?” I ask her, signing the slip of paper in front of me with a flourish and pushing it toward the bartender before standing to go.
I can practically feel the tequila seeping into my veins, a warm, heady rush taking over my body as I think about what kind of trouble we might get into tonight in the clubs of Manhattan.
Erin gives me a too-wide grin, not unlike the grimace emoji she’s so fond of using.
“Um, yeah, about that.”
“No way! You are not bailing on me tonigh
t.”
I’ve got a game plan. It’s early, and we can hit up quite a few of my favorite exclusive clubs if we get started now.
“I’m sorry, Em, but I have to finish up my project. I was totally planning on figuring it out last night, but 33D was going at it even later than usual, and I couldn’t get anything done.”
I laugh at her reference to her upstairs neighbor who probably holds an Olympic gold medal for the number of girls he fucks in a week.
“I know exactly what needs to get done, my friend—you.”
Erin shakes her head. “Not all of us are able to have every New Yorker with a Y chromosome dropping at our feet begging for half a second of our attention.”
I grab Erin’s hand and pull her from the barstool, giving her my most disarming smile.
“Come on, babe. You can work on it tomorrow. I’ve got big plans for us tonight.”
I’m not taking no for an answer here, and she knows it. I can already see her starting to cave. It won’t take much.
She opens her mouth, and I can already hear the yes on her lips—my powers of persuasion don’t just work on dudes, you know—but then, her jaw just hangs there, her eyes going comically wide as she stares over my head.
Knitting my brows together, I spin around to see what has my normally articulate friend more or less speechless.
And immediately feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
A bus.
A fucking bullet train.
