Over You (20 page)

A little while later, the stars and passing planes twinkle in the indigo evening sky as Max’s town car pulls up to the curb. The benefit has been set up in tents covering a full block of the High Line, the old elevated railroad tracks now converted to a park over the fashionable Meatpacking District. Photographers snap their flashes at the red-carpeted stairs leading to the tent, and stretch limos jockey for space on the cobblestones. Max is ready. From her Fire Sapphire-ringed eyes, to her Brazen Bronze blush, her Over You Look is in place. It is the epicenter of glamour, but all Max can think about is getting her Star Pink lips back beneath Ben’s.

Her driver opens her car door, and she gathers up the hem of her billowing gown to jog past a few limos to where Zach and Phoebe are unloading surveillance equipment from their gypsy cab.

“How we doing in here?” She opens the back door to see Bridget hunched behind the passenger seat, still sniffing, her eyes even more red and puffy than they were thirty minutes ago when her cab pulled up just as they were leaving Brooklyn.

“She keeps going on about a Carrie Riverdale and Angie Hendricks,” Zach calls around from the trunk.

“Carrie Riverdale and Angie Hendricks,” Phoebe corrects as she applies her red lip gloss. “The girl stopped making sense somewhere around Chinatown.”

“Why?” Bridget beseeches, clutching Max’s arm—tugging her torso into the car.

“What?” Max asks, steadying herself on the seat, looking past Bridget and out the window to where the flow of celebrities is slowing to a trickle. Photographers are starting to pack up their gear as the event begins in earnest. She’s got to get in there.

“Why can’t I go back to Taylor?” Bridget pleads. “What if he really means it, and he really learned his lesson? What if I’m tossing aside an awesome guy who actually really loves me for Carrie Hendricks to scoop up?”

“No,” Max answers firmly. “Nonononono.”

Bridget releases Max and frantically grabs for the door handle. “I have to go find him! I have to!”

Max reaches over her and hits the lock. “Zach, keep her with you,” she calls to where he’s miking Phoebe on the sidewalk. Max turns back to Bridget, moving into
Scared Straight!
mode. “Bridget Stetson, if you go back to him I am done. You are on your own. I’m cutting you out of this program and out of my life.” Max pulls back out of the car and slams the door.

“Wow,” Phoebe says, lowering her gold compact mirror.

“I’m going in.” Max tugs off her coat.

“Chill, girl, we haven’t even miked you yet!” Zach unzips the first duffel.

“I don’t need a mike. I don’t need him to be tapanaded. I don’t even need him to see me chatting with the CEO of Condé Nast. Scratch it all. He’s just going to give me a big nothing look, and I’m going to give my nothing look back, and I’m going to walk once around the room like I belong there. Then I’m getting out and getting on with my life.” Max is flushed with excitement at the prospect of her upcoming date that will follow this chore.

“At least let me dab the oil under your nose.”

“Don’t need it. I just have to not exit that tent in goose shit, and I’m a new girl.”

In the glowing tent the lush smell of winter lilies greets Max’s senses. It’s so breathtaking that, were she there for any other reason, she would have teared up from the sheer saturation of sophisticated glitz. Huge chandeliers cast a scattered light that twinkles off the sterling silver decorations and clinking champagne flutes. On a stage at the far end of the tent Rihanna, in a hot, red Dior gown, croons a cool rendition of “White Christmas.” Max steps behind a towering Christmas tree adorned with white orchids to pull open her clutch and check her phone. 8:40. Perfect. She’ll find Hugo and his girlfriend, have a big, fat nothing exchange, wander, wander, wander, be the epitome of cool, calm, and collected—and we out.

She throws her shoulders back, takes a glass from a passing silver tray, and follows the chattering flow of jewel-toned velvet around the periphery of the dance floor. Blond guy—not him. Blond guy—not him. Blond guy—nope,
definitely
not him. Blond guy—insanely expensive custom-fitting tux. She scans for the gold family crest ring. Too far away to see it. She quickens her step as he strolls around one of the cocktail tables. Totally him! Him at three o’clock!

He sees her. He is all of ten feet away. Where is the girlfriend? She flattens her expression, turns her face to him, braced down to her plum-painted toes.

“Max?”

WHAT?

“Hugo,” she says nonchalantly as she freezes for a second to regroup from the fact that he’s not only acknowledging her but—sweet Jesus—lighting up.

“Hi.” He crosses the final few feet until he’s in front of her, smiling, his hands in his pockets like he just went out for an evening stroll and happened to be wearing a tux. “It’s you.” He grins. Why the talking?! And where is the girlfriend?! The
Post
promised her a girlfriend!

Turn away,
she tells herself.
Turn and keep walking
. She does. But then he quickens his pace, his hands tugging from his pockets, to walk at her side. Not just talking to, but following her? WTF? This guy doesn’t change his pace for anyone!

“I
thought
I saw you the other night,” he says.

“Did you?”
Keep walking—but to where? The ladies’ room. Go to the ladies’ room!

“At that Cabin place. But then I wasn’t sure it was you. How are you?”

“Oh, busy, you know. I’m actually looking for the—” Someone pushes in front of her, and he puts a bracing hand on her bare arm to prevent a collision. And there’s that damn heat that no amount of yacht-club rapping can extinguish.
Forget the ladies’ room. Just get the hell out
.

“It feels kind of fated to see your name on the program tonight because I’ve been thinking about you,” he says, lowering his face so his breath tingles her ear, his cologne fills her nose.

“You have.” Max orients to the exit, and he steps closer.
Why did I turn down the oil?

“I found my busted Harry Potter glasses the other day. I wanted to call you.”

But you didn’t,
Max reminds herself. Max spots a waiter exiting through a side door. She’s close to escape. “You know, it’s great to see you and all, but I’m actually just stopping in before my date—”

Hugo grabs her arm as they both burst through the door and into an alley between the tent and the wrought-iron railing. “Do you think you could wait for a minute?”

“Okay, yes, you have exactly one.” She tugs her arm back, daring to look up into his blue eyes, sparkling as they do when she’s amusing him. “And that was it. Go back inside to your girlfriend, Hugo.”

“My what?”

“Your date.”

“Banishing me to an evening of dancing with my aunt? Heartless.”

“I saw—I thought you had a girlfriend. Someone blond and boring.”

“No such luck.” He smiles. “That dress suits you. The peacock feathers.” He eyes her, and she steps backward. “Always with that something extra, Max.”

Max feels the cold metal of the railing make contact with the thin layer of silk. She’s reached the edge. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees people walking on the sidewalk below.

Hugo places a hand on the railing to the left of her waist. He is looking at her like he used to, hungrily. The mantras of the last month plummet off the tip of her tongue and into a ravine of hormones. She’s here because—because—“You dumped me, Hugo.”

“I didn’t.” His other hand takes the railing on the right side of her. He’s so close. “I didn’t break up with you at all. When did I break up with you, tell me?”

“On the green. During a game, you—”

“
You
freaked out.” He stares into her eyes. “And then you
seriously
freaked out and then you left. I think, technically, you left me.”

“Because you were going out with Elizabeth Pendergast.”

He moves his face closer. “Our parents have a vision. One of the things I always loved about you, Max, is that you got the obligations I have to my family are bullshit. And now you’re shivering. Just … Let me.” He presses his mouth to hers.

And he is Kryptonite incarnate.

Her body softens against his like a chiffon scarf fluttering to the ground. He grabs her ass, pressing her harder against him. The last year, the pain, the hurt, the humiliation, the exhaustion of working so hard to convince herself and everyone else she was over him, melts away in their entwined desire.

At the very same time, Ben approaches the corner where Max told him to meet her. He can’t figure out why Bridget Stetson is standing there screaming at two people. “What the hell?!” she shouts. “She won’t let me take Taylor back, but she can hook up with her ex?!”

Ben has no idea what’s going on. As he gets closer he recognizes the guy Bridget’s losing it at—the one he thought was Max’s boyfriend.

“Well?!” Bridget screams. “Tell me!”

Zach doesn’t look like he has any answers—he looks like he’s going to hurl. Why does Zach know Bridget? And that girl next to Zach—she’s the one who mushed that olive shit all over Taylor at the club. What’s she doing here? Why is she crying?

“Bridget, what’s going on?” Ben asks, and in response Bridget flings an accusatory finger at the railing above them … where Max is kissing some other guy.

“I love you,” Hugo murmurs as his mouth moves down to Max’s jaw, then her neck, finding that spot he always could, the one that lit up her spine. Consumed, she drops her head to the side—gasping when she takes in the street below them. “Shit, shit, shit,” she cries, pushing Hugo away. “No!” she calls down. “It’s not what you—” But she falters. It is exactly what they think.

Zach and Phoebe stare up at her with their hands over their mouths. Bridget’s face is darkened with disgust, her eyes narrowed to slits. And there, standing in his father’s tux, looking unquestionably like his heart has been broken, is Ben.

“Ben!” she calls.

He turns and starts to walk hurriedly away.

“Oh God.” She runs back through the door into the tent, pushing through the crowd and servers and the tables, trying to get to the exit, Hugo right behind her. “Stop following me!” She blows past the girl holding out the parting goodie bags and lifts her dress to run down the carpeted stairs, her heel catching on a snag in the carpet. She stumbles to the asphalt in the departing taillights of the gypsy cab whisking Zach, Phoebe, and Bridget onto the West Side Highway. Max watches as Ben’s figure breaks into a jog and disappears down the street in the opposite direction. Max drops her head, her shoulders shaking as the tears come.

The next thing she feels is the hot shock of Hugo’s hand gently lacing into hers. She looks up as he crouches beside her, amazed her ragged emotional outburst hasn’t scared him off. He lifts her to stand.

“You ended it.” She struggles as tears snake down her cheeks. “And I made a new life for myself. Those are my friends. That was, what happened up there just now, that was a mistake.”

“My mistake”—he cups her cheeks in his palms and searches her eyes for understanding—“was letting you go. Give me one night to make it up to you, Max. Please? My car is waiting. It’s warm in there. A few hours with me isn’t going to change whatever I just walked into, is it? Do you really want to wonder forever if we could have gotten this back?”

L
ife is perfect,
Max thinks as she rolls over in bed to watch the first rays of sunlight stream through the curtains the next morning. No crushing elephant, no leaf mold allergy, no giant boulder, which, with all her might and skill, she had shrunk to a pebble. But still. No one wants to walk around with a pebble in their shoe, much less their heart. It’s kind of a binary system: pebble, no pebble.
And right now there is no pebble,
Max thinks as Hugo rolls over and wraps himself around her in his sleep—

Then, for a flash, Max feels something so much worse. Like a bird raking its claws across her heart. She sees Zach’s stunned face. Bridget’s disgust. Phoebe’s tears. Ben’s shock.

No. She is not thinking about that now. She is thinking about how great Hugo feels, the softness of his Egyptian cotton sheets, the height of his apartment ceilings, the scope of his penthouse view.
A view,
Max thinks,
I’ve been missing a view
.

Hugo stretches awake and kisses her. “Hey, beautiful,” he says. “I’m glad you stayed.”

“Well, it was such a great dress, I’d hate to do my walk of shame in the wee hours when no one could appreciate it.”

“I’ve missed you.” He laughs, pulling her closer. She can’t believe she’s here. In his bed, in his arms, in his
life
. She feels so awake. She can’t believe how much energy trying to pretend she didn’t miss him had been sucking out of her. He kisses her forehead. “Mmm, and how your hair smells,” he says.

“Thank you—”

“I’m starving.” He sits and picks up his phone. “You starving?”

“Yes,” she says, realizing, now that he’s suggested it, she is.

“Hey, it’s Tillman across the street. Yeah. I’ll take two western omelets, whites only, whole wheat toast, no potatoes, and two coffees. Thanks.”

Not what she would have ordered
at all
, but fine. She spots his shirt from the night before and scoops it from the floor.