Revenge Wears Prada (29 page)

Andy shook her head.

“Me neither! I never met anyone like this, only men who wanted to be the first to tell you how talented or gorgeous or rich or powerful they were. And I have to say, I was over it. I created a profile where I was completely honest about my personality, very forthcoming, and didn’t include a picture or any mention of
acting. I didn’t think anyone would ever e-mail me back without a picture, but they did. You’d be surprised. Clint was one of the first men I started corresponding with, and we hit it off immediately. Sometimes we’d e-mail ten, twelve times a day. We started talking on the phone after two weeks. We got to know each other in, like, the most organic way you could ever imagine, because appearance or money or status had nothing to do with it.”

“I can certainly see the appeal,” Andy said, not untruthfully.

“He fell in love with the real me, not some media creation of me.”

“How’d you meet for the first time?” Again, Andrea reminded herself not to appear too eager. She had no idea why Olive was confiding details to her that she hadn’t shared with anyone else, but she was desperate to keep them coming.

“Let’s see, it was probably about five or six weeks of talking every day. By then he knew I lived in L.A. and was an aspiring actress, and he offered to come out to visit me, but I couldn’t risk getting chased by photographers the whole time. Not to mention that my house might have been a little intimidating. So I went to Louisville.”

Olive said this like a native,
Loo-ah-ville.

“You went to Louisville?” Andy tried, but it came out sounding more like
Looey-ville
.

“I went to Louisville. Flew commercial, connected in Denver, the whole nine. I didn’t let him pick me up at the airport in case there were paparazzi waiting. He came to my hotel.”

“Isn’t there a really lovely, famous old hotel in Louisville that they’ve recently—”

“Oh, I stayed at the Marriott.” Olive laughed. “No penthouse, no presidential suite or private butler, no special treatment. Just a pseudonym and a regular old room at the Marriott.”

“And?”

“And it was fantastic! I mean, don’t get me wrong, the bathroom
was kind of gross, but our first meeting was amazing. I had him come up to the room so I wouldn’t get recognized in the lobby, and he joked on the phone about how forward I was being, but when he knocked on the door, I just knew that everything was going to be okay.”

Andy sipped her water.

“And was it?”

Olive all but squealed. “It was more than okay, it was perfect! Of course he knew who I was the moment he saw me”—somehow, and Andy wasn’t sure how, Olive managed not to sound obnoxious saying this—“but I just explained that I was still the person he’d e-mailed with and talked to for all those weeks. He was surprised, or I guess pretty shocked—he had nightmares I’d be a four-hundred-pound man or something—but we opened a bottle of wine and kept talking about all the things we had before—places we wanted to visit, our dogs, his relationship with his sister and mine with my brother. We just, like, totally opened up to each other, as real people. I knew right then I would marry him.”

“Really? Right then? That’s amazing.”

Olive leaned forward conspiratorially. “Well, not right then, but definitely a couple hours later after we had the best sex you could ever imagine.” Olive nodded, as though agreeing with herself. “Yes, that’s when I knew.”

“Mmm,” Andy murmured, looking at her notes. She prayed her phone was recording everything clearly, because there was no way anyone was going to believe this. Andy checked Olive’s half-full margarita and wondered if she’d been drinking earlier, but Olive appeared sober. Andy’s phone rang. She clicked off the ringer and apologized.

“Get it!” Olive implored. “I’ve been yakking my head off all this time. Let someone else have a chance.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Answer it!”

Andy looked at Olive, who had turned on her full-wattage
Hollywood smile, and knew she had to obey her. She pressed “talk” and said hello, but the caller had already hung up.

“Must have just missed them,” Andy said, and turned back on the recording feature.

“So are you married? Knocked up by accident? Single girl using a sperm donor? I was this close to doing the sperm-donor thing myself.”

Andy smiled, her mind immediately going to her grandmother. “No, just plain old married. Although yes, I guess you could say I was knocked up by accident.”

“What, were you like totally not using anything but still telling everyone you weren’t trying? That’s my favorite. I’m always like, sweetheart, if you’re not playing defense, you’re playing offense. Not not-trying is
trying,
you know?”

“Up until a few months ago I would’ve agreed with you.” Andy laughed.

The attendant appeared and asked if they’d like another drink.

“I know a lot of people think seven months isn’t long enough to
really
know someone, but with us it is. It feels like we’ve known each other since birth. I can’t explain it, really. There’s just this connection, and it has nothing to do with my job or his. You know?”

“I do,” Andy said, although she didn’t. Andy was in the camp that said making a lifelong commitment to another person after knowing them seven months was insane.

This time it was Olive’s phone that rang. “Hello? Oh, hi, sweetie.” She continued to nod and murmur and at one point giggled like a teenager. “Don’t be naughty, Clint! I’m here with a reporter. No, you can’t. It’s a girls’ day! Okay. Love you too.”

Olive clicked her phone closed and turned to Andy. “Sorry, love, what were you saying?” Her phone buzzed again, and this time Olive reached to read a text message. “It looks like the other girls are finishing up. Did you get everything you needed? You’re
welcome to come meet everyone if you want . . .” Olive offered this sweetly, but Andy could tell the actress would prefer she didn’t take her up on it.

“Um, okay. I, uh, I was just hoping to go over some of the wedding details. I won’t be at the wedding because of maternity leave, but my colleague Emily will be there.”

Olive pouted. “I want you to come.”

It was all Andy could do not to swoon. “I’d love to, trust me. Santa Barbara is just gorgeous, but I don’t think I can leave the baby. Maybe you could give me some advance details on the dress, the flowers, how you chose the food, the decorations, that sort of thing?”

“Oh, you can just talk to my stylist about that stuff. She picked everything.”

“Everything? She picked your dress?”

Olive nodded and stood up. “The dress, the food, the flowers, the music we’ll walk to, the whole thing. She knows me so well. I told her to choose whatever she liked best.”

In years of covering weddings, Andy had never heard anything like it. Olive Chase didn’t want any input into the biggest day of her life? Really?

Andy’s expression must have registered the disbelief she felt, because Olive laughed. “I found the
guy
! After more than twenty years of being single and jerked around and cheated on and alone, I found my soul mate. Pardon my French, but you think I give a shit about the
flowers
?”

Andy stood up too, less gracefully than Olive, and smiled. She could’ve just written it off to the difference between a bride who was thirty-nine and one who was twenty-five, but part of her believed it was because Olive Chase, famous for her fantastic boobs and ability to cry on command, had figured something out the rest of them hadn’t.

“Fair enough,” Andy said, although she wanted to say so much more.

“Okay, well, thanks for the drink and the chat. I’d better go find my girls. It was really great meeting you.” Olive stood and smiled.

“Thanks,” Andy said, giving Olive, who had already turned to walk away, a half wave. “Good luck with everything.”

Olive was already digging her cell phone out of her bag and laughing happily into it. Andy sank back into her chair and exhaled. She had gossipy ammunition on the world’s most famous celebrity, and all she could think about were Olive’s parting words.
I found my soul mate . . . you think I give a shit about the
flowers?

Andy stretched her legs and stared out onto the tops of the neighboring buildings. She sipped her water with lime and inhaled deeply, hoping the attendant would leave her alone for a few more minutes. She wanted to steal a bit more time before racing out into the frantic city, to the baby planning tasks and the work phone calls and Emily’s relentless panic, to sit and reflect on everything Olive had just said. If she let herself, Andy would think back to her own wedding, how obsessed she’d been with every last detail, how much attention and time and effort she’d invested into making sure everything was perfect. How she’d gone steadfastly through three years of dating and engagement to Max, because he was handsome and successful and charming and it was easy and her family and friends approved and because of course she loved him, too. She was in lockstep—doing what she was supposed to do. And with a guy as close to perfect as she could imagine: rich, handsome, kind, wanting kids. But had she missed something along the way? Did this marriage have a feeling of inevitability? She loved Max, of course she did, but was he really her
soul mate
? Did she love Max as much as Olive loved Clint?

She sighed and set down her drink. Why did she insist on torturing herself like this? Max was perfect—as a husband, and a soon-to-be-father, and yes, as a soul mate. It was natural to feel
anxious and unsettled right before giving birth, right? All pregnant women felt this way. Andy glanced around to make sure she was alone, and then she dialed Max’s number. He didn’t pick up, but the sound of his recorded voice reassured her.

“Hi, baby,” she said, her voice a low whisper. “I just wanted to say hi. I’ll be home in a little and I can’t wait to see you. I love you.” Andy clicked off the phone and smiled. She rubbed her belly. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Ohmigod, she’s gorgeous! Come here, sweetheart, your auntie Lily’s been wanting to meet you for so long. Wow, don’t you look
just
like your daddy!”

“Yeah, it’s almost uncanny, isn’t it?” Andy said. She held the baby out to Lily. “Lily, please meet Clementine Rose. Clem, this is your aunt Lily.”

“Look at her eyes! Are they green? And all that black hair! What lucky baby is born with so much hair? It’s like staring at a very cute, tiny little feminine version of Max.”

“I know,” Andy said, watching her daughter study her oldest friend. “Supposedly she looks like Max’s father, too. Rose is for Robert. It’s like I was merely a vessel for producing Harrison clones.”

Lily laughed.

She missed Lily more than ever since she’d had Clementine. She’d made a few casual acquaintances in the new-moms support group she’d joined a month before, but more often than not,
Andy was lonely. Unaccustomed to endless stretches of unscheduled maternity-leave time, she staggered from chore to chore in a sleep-deprived haze, each day bleeding into the next with a near-identical mix of breastfeeding, pumping, diaper changing, bathing, dressing, rocking, singing, strolling, cooking, and cleaning. Activities Andy used to wedge into small snippets of stolen time in her hectic day—laundry, grocery shopping, a trip to the post office or drugstore—now ate up hours, sometimes entire days, since Clementine and her nonstop demands always took precedence. She loved spending time with her daughter, and while she wouldn’t have given up those moments spooning in bed together, or eating a sandwich on the High Line in the middle of a warm summer day while Clem had a bottle, or slow-dancing together to Chicago’s
Greatest Hits
in the privacy of their living room, the daily drudgery was harder than she’d ever imagined.

Mrs. Harrison was aghast that Andy refused to hire a baby nurse—there had never been a Harrison baby in history without her own dedicated hired caretaker—but Andy held her ground. “Your mother would hire me a wet nurse if I’d let her,” she’d said to Max after one particularly unpleasant visit from her mother-in-law, but he had only laughed. Andy’s own mother came in once a week to keep them company and help with the baby, and Andy lived for those days, but otherwise there wasn’t a lot of outside interaction. Jill was back in Texas. Emily always remembered to ask after Clementine when she called, but Andy certainly knew, and understood, that she was not calling for an update on how many times Clem pooped that morning or whether she’d enjoyed tummy time. Emily wanted one thing—to restart the Elias-Clark conversations. Miranda and Stanley were circling like sharks; Emily was literally counting down the days of Andy’s maternity leave. The only person who would and could talk endlessly about four-in-the-morning feeds and the pros and cons of pacifier use was Lily, and she was thousands of miles away, busy with one child and expecting another.

Andy could see Lily watching her as she gingerly sat down on the couch. It was one in the afternoon, but Andy was still wearing a pair of Max’s sweatpants, furry slipper-socks that resembled indoor Uggs, and a pullover hooded sweatshirt so voluminously huge that it must have, at some point, belonged to a linebacker.

“Still not feeling normal down there?” Lily asked, sympathy in her voice.

“Not even close.” Andy nodded toward the lemonade she’d placed in front of Lily.

Lily smiled and sipped. “They say you forget it all, and I never believed that was possible, but I swear I can’t remember a thing. Except the pain from the stitches afterward. That I remember.”

“I’m still not sure I can forgive you for not preparing me better. You’re supposed to be my best friend. You’ve been through this before. And you didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Of course I didn’t! It’s the code of women everywhere, and it must be followed. It’s even more important than not sleeping with your friends’ exes.”

“It’s bullshit is what it is. I will tell anyone who wants to know all the gory details. Women deserve to know what to expect. This whole secret society of birthing mothers is ridiculous.”