The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth (22 page)

A cold feeling of horror trickled through me—I couldn’t imagine how Carly felt.

“I want the reservation I paid for! I even chose the seat closest to the first-class closet so I could keep an eye on my mom’s dress!”

Gillian reached into her handbag and pulled out the slender Marc Jacobs wallet where her Platinum Visa and Gold AmEx lived. “Carly, don’t panic. I’ll buy the—”

“Carly?”

All four of us whirled at the male voice. Brett, dressed in jeans, an open button-down over a T-shirt, and a rumpled suit jacket, rammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his rower’s shoulders in a pose I recognized.

“What are you doing here?” Carly looked as though his appearance was the last thing she could deal with right now. “I don’t have time to talk. My flight just got—”

“I know. I cancelled it.”

We must have looked like characters in a comedy. All four of our mouths dropped open.

“You rat!”

“What—did you hack the airline server?”

“Brett, that is going too far, even for you.”

Carly just burst into tears.

Brett ignored the rest of us and only had eyes for her. “I’m in your family e-mail group, remember? You cc’d me by mistake when you made the reservation, so I had the confirmation number. Because the deal is, we need to talk, and you’re leaving, so my dad lent me the company jet. It’s going through preflight as we speak.”

Again with the dropped jaws. Maybe we were in a movie. Any minute now the director would step out from behind a pillar and say, “Great shot, talent. You really nailed the goggle-eyed shock, there.”

Carly hiccupped and I handed the garment bag to Gillian. I fished a tissue out of my bag and gave it to her.

“I don’t understand,” she said thickly.

“I’m flying to Albuquerque with you. I’ll spend the whole trip groveling if you want. But after that, I hope you’ll forgive me for being such a butthead and let me escort you to your mom’s wedding.”

Carly scrubbed at her face. “You cancelled my flight. You scared me to death!”

“I’m sorry. But I couldn’t let you fly away without having the chance to make it right.” He spoke as if the rest of us—the airport bustle, the requests for people to go to the white courtesy phone—didn’t exist. As if he and Carly were the only two people standing there on the concourse. “You’re so good at doing the right thing. I guess I need some coaching.”

“You sure do.” But she was softening.

In his pocket, his phone pinged. “That’s the pilot. They’re ready for us. We still need to go through security, but there’s a separate boarding area for private planes.”

Without a word, Shani rolled the suitcase over and tilted the pull handle smartly into his hand. Carly held out her arm, and Gillian gently laid the dress over it. “Good luck,” Gillian said. “Send pictures.”

Shani kissed her on the cheek, and I gave her a hug, careful not to bump the bag. As the two of them walked away to join the security line, I swallowed my surprise—and the lump in my throat. Doing the right thing wasn’t easy sometimes. But it was sure easier when you had a little help from your friends.

And it was kind of nice to know that my tank hadn’t died in vain.

F
ALLOUT WEEK BEING
almost over, I figured it was safe to call Fallout Boy and have it out with him. After all, I’d solved the Derrik problem without hurting his feelings too badly, and from the rapturous text messages all of us had been getting from Carly since she and Brett landed in New Mexico the previous night, things were looking up on that front, too.

There was nothing I could do about Jeremy and Gillian, and I could only open up the di Amato Landscape Design and Restoration Web site in Italy to gaze at Pietro di Amato’s headshot so many times.

Yes, curiosity had gotten the better of me, and there he was, right at the top of the Google search. The man, as Vanessa had hinted, was jaw-dropping, breath-stopping gorgeous. Poster-worthy. In fact, someone should really make a fifty-foot banner and hang it from the roof of the Uffizi Gallery, because he totally deserved to be commemorated along with the less perfect creations like, oh, Michelangelo’s
David
.

But I digress.

Because under his headshot was an e-mail link to contact him, and I can’t tell you how many times my cursor hovered over it—clicked it, even, to bring up a mail screen that I immediately deleted. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. It was not my place to tell the man he had five-ninths of a son over here in California. Maybe he was the uninvolved father to Vanessa’s anti-Madonna and had no interest in the baby at all.

But still my cursor hovered.

Calling Kaz was a relief. At least I could act on that. Gillian and Shani were out at the field watching the soccer game—which seemed to be going well for our team, judging from the distant happy shouts that floated through our dorm room window every few minutes. I had time and privacy, both valuable commodities when you were having a heart-to-heart with your BGF.

“I can’t believe you guys don’t have classes Friday afternoons,” Kaz greeted me. He never said hello like a normal person. With him and me, it was more like an ongoing conversation anyway, interrupted at intervals by classes and other obligations. At least, that was the way it used to be. Now the silences of real life seemed to be longer, and our conversations over text, mail, and phone shorter.

That needed to be fixed, stat.

“A perk of my privileged upbringing,” I said in a smug Beverly Hills voice.

“Or your shortened attention span.”

“True enough,” I admitted. “Are you home or at the beach?”

“Home, getting ready to go to the beach. Danyel might remember to pick me up, if he’s not yakking with Shani.”

“She and Gillian are watching the soccer game, so he’ll have to compete with Derrik Vaughan and his hot teammates.”

“Athletes. Pah.”

“Derrik’s nice. He asked me to Cotillion.”

Silence, while I pictured Kaz’s head spinning on his neck. Heh.

“And you’re not out there watching him because…”

“Because Ashley Polk wants him. And I told her I’d stay out of the way of true love because she’s my friend.”

“That was noble of you.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t mess with your friends.”

“Especially if they have connections with the video geeks.” He paused while I blinked in surprise. “You told me about your big project. Or maybe it was Gillian.”

“You make me sound like I have ulterior motives, you rat. But it doesn’t help that she’s the queen of the media lab and she can help me, Shani, and Vanessa tape the entire production process for our Public Speaking class. If I go to Cotillion with Derrik, none of that will happen, the three of us will fail Public Speaking, and Ashley will dismember me and feed my pieces to the seagulls at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“Wow.” He was silent for a moment. “Asking a girl to prom was never this scary in junior high.”

“Oh, I think it was. It was just a different level of scary. Why, who did you ask?”

“Katie Fedorov. You remember, that girl who used to be your best friend? She said no and I came and cried on your shoulder. You told me to stop being such a weenie and lent me your sister’s skateboard for a week.”

“Ah, yes,” I said, remembering. “That’s when you broke your arm. I don’t think your mom ever forgave me.”

“Since she’s not around anymore, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

I kicked myself for bringing her up. Kaz hated talking about his mother, who had left him and his dad that summer to marry her wealth management advisor.

“So while we’re talking about asking people out, how about you give me the real reason you won’t come to Cotillion with me? We never got a chance to hash it out when you were here last weekend.”

“Due to my clever time management skills.”

“You dropped a bomb on me and then avoided talking about it on
purpose?
” I held the phone out and stared at it. Did I have a wrong number? Who was this person?

“Would you relax?” I heard his tinny voice say, and put the phone back to my ear. “Can’t a guy just say what he’s got to say and leave it at that, without having to present a paper about it to a committee?”

“I am not a committee. And when I get turned down, it’s nice to have an explanation so I don’t feel like a bag of trash that just got tossed in the Dumpster.”

“Did you give Derrik the Soccer Player an explanation?”

“Of course. The same one I just told you, only I left out Ashley’s name. She’ll make sure he figures that one out on his own.”

He heaved a sigh. A nontheatrical one. One that meant he was clearing the decks for bad news.
Danger, danger…

“Okay. You want an explanation. Here it is. The only reason you asked me to Cotillion is because I’m convenient. Available. Currently unclaimed and unlikely to turn you down.”

“That’s not true. I asked you because you’re my best friend and I want to share the big events in my life with my friends.”

“Right. You told me that last weekend. But, see, what if I want more than that?”

“What does that mean?”

“What if I want to go as your date? Your guy. With the whole romance thing going on.”

“You?”
The second I said it, I wished I could grab it back. Insulting much? “I mean, we don’t have that kind of relationship.” What had I thought earlier? Oh, yeah. “We operate on a different level.”

“Obviously you don’t think I operate on the boyfriend level. With you.” The life leached out of his voice.

“No, no. I mean, Gillian thinks you’re hot and she’s right. You are.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What
do
you mean, then? I don’t
need
a boyfriend, Kaz.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean. You don’t need another Prada bag, either. Or another iPhone. Or any other accessory.”

The breath whooshed out of me. “You lost me. Can we go back to hello and take it from the top?”

“You see a boyfriend as an appendage. An accessory. Something you like to have around to take out on special occasions, but that’s not totally necessary for every day. I want more than that. I want to be necessary.”

“You
are
necessary. I think of things to tell you all the time. I want to see you whenever I can. How much more necessary can you be?” Then an idea occurred to me—one that had to be said. The elephant in the living room that he was too sensitive to bring up. “Kaz, is this about sex?”

“Oh, good grief.” He sounded utterly defeated. “Good-bye, Lissa. Have a good weekend.”

Click.

My best friend had just hung up on me.