by Bridie Clark
“I’m celebrating! My girl just dominated the auction!” Eloise leaned across the bar to snag one of the jumbo martini olives. Then she fell on Lucy, holding on for dear life. Max put an arm protectively over Eloise’s fragile shoulders and tried to help her stand.
“Why don’t we celebrate with some bread and coffee?” Lucy flagged down a passing waiter and made the request.
“Good idea,” said Max over Eloise’s head. “She hasn’t touched a bite.”
“I can hear you!” Eloise laughed, leaning on Max. “How can I eat when my boyfriend is doing the bump-and-grind with some Gossip Girl castoff?” She waved her pointed finger toward the dance floor, but Lucy couldn’t see Trip anywhere. Eloise accepted her fresh martini from the bartender, who shrugged at the look Lucy gave him. As she brought the glass to her lips, it tipped a little and sent a splash down the front of her beautiful strapless gown. Eloise stared at the graying stain for a moment, before swinging her head back up with a grin. “Wet couture contest!” she hooted, swallowing more gin.
Max lunged for a napkin and held it in front of her as her gown went translucent. “We need to get you home,” he said.
“Just one dance,” Eloise slurred. She took Max’s hand and dragged him toward the dance floor. Short of carrying her out of the ball cave-man-style, there didn’t seem to be much he could do.
Lucy was distracted by Wyatt’s hand touching down on her elbow, a light contact that nonetheless sent a shiver throughout her whole body. “Sorry to rush off like that. Now the night’s all ours.” He smiled, his blue-gray eyes twinkling, and grabbed two champagne flutes from a nearby table. He handed her one, grazing her hand. “So.”
She smiled softly. “So.”
“Three months went by fast, didn’t they?” He studied her face.
“If you weren’t the one living on kale and exercising five hours a day,” she laughed. But it had. She took a sip of champagne, the bubbles tickling the roof of her mouth. Wyatt slipped an arm around her waist, his hand pressing against her back. It felt overwhelming and strangely natural at the same time.
“It went by fast for me, then. Too fast.” He leaned toward her, kissing her again—it felt more deliberate, this time, but even more delicious. Could this really be happening? Lucy had never believed in fairy-tale romance—Rita and her short list had stripped away the veil from her young eyes—but she was now faced with mounting evidence that Happily Ever After could actually . . . happen. Once she made things right with Rita, her life would be perfect. “I don’t want this night to end,” she murmured, kissing him between words.
“Sorry to break up the gropefest.” Cornelia, looking rosy-cheeked, materialized next to them. The pin-thin blonde flashed them a sticky sweet smile, laying her hand on Lucy’s arm and reminding Lucy of Wyatt’s observation that a smile is sometimes the social animal’s way of baring her teeth. “You’ve had quite a night for yourself, haven’t you? It’s just too bad your mama wasn’t here to see it, Lucy Jo. I pulled every string I could think of to get her that ticket.”
So Cornelia knew. Thinking of the way she’d treated Rita, Lucy wanted to sink through the floorboards. “The two of you met?”
“Oh, yeah. Rita and I had quite the catch-up.” Cornelia cocked her head. “You can’t miss the family resemblance. The nose, the hips . . . She told me about how you worked all through high school as a waitress at the local truck stop. What a refreshing choice for the heiress of a major timber fortune. And then your job in Nola Sinclair’s factory—”
Wyatt exploded first. “Enough! I don’t know what your point is—”
Cornelia smiled. “Wyatt, darling, I think you do. Lucy here is a complete fraud. She’s your doll, all done up in the right clothes and jewelry, with the right fork in her hand. At first I couldn’t understand how you could leave me for”—she waved a hand in Lucy’s direction—“this. But I get it now. You weren’t equipped to handle a real woman. You needed to find a little toy, a chess piece you could manipulate however you wanted.”
The Grand Room was spinning, Lucy struggled to breathe—
“Now the rest of the world is going to find out your weird little secrets. Next week, Townhouse is running a cover story exposing all Lucy Jo’s lies. Mallory’s writing the final paragraphs tonight.” Lucy gasped. She had thought the editor gave her a strange look when she’d waved at her across the room during cocktails. “I thought you’d want to know before it landed on your doorstep.”
“You’ve gone too far, Cornelia,” she heard Wyatt say, but his voice sounded far away from her now. “There’s no reason to attack Lucy just because things didn’t work out with us—”
Cornelia snickered. “Don’t flatter yourself. You were always waxing on about how I should contribute more to the public good. Well, exposing this liar is my contribution.” And with that, Cornelia strutted away, leaving a whiff of acerbic perfume in her wake.
Lucy’s humiliation cut so deep that she couldn’t breathe, as though she’d been swinging from the chandeliers, fallen, and landed flat on her back. She couldn’t find her voice to speak. The ball, the museum, shrank away from her. Wyatt’s hands were on her shoulders, trying to comfort her, but Lucy couldn’t raise her eyes to meet his. Everything was lost: Wyatt’s bet, the approval of all the people she’d come to know, the career she’d worked so hard to attain. He’d be humiliated right along with her. She’d even wounded Rita. Now she’d never be able to make it up to her by offering help, a boost, a better life.
“It’ll be okay, I promise,” Wyatt said, but she knew he was lying.
“I need to get out of here.” Lucy still couldn’t bear to look at him. Tears stinging her eyes, she gathered the skirts of her gorgeous, hopeless gown around her, turned, and dashed out of the ball.
31
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
—Dorothy Parker
Max?”
“Yes, Eloise?”
She laughed at his formality, resting her spinning head against his chest. She resisted the urge to lick one of the studs on his tuxedo shirt. “I like your pecs.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m so glad you came to the ball with me. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here.”
“Drink yourself even sillier?” He smiled tenderly at her. “I’m glad, too. Now why don’t you let me take you home? We’ll pick up a pizza on the way. Sober you up a little.”
“Just a few more dances,” Eloise insisted, finding her energy again. All she hoped was that they were making Trip—last seen gyrating with his girl to “Fly Me to the Moon”—good and jealous. She wrapped her arms around Max’s neck. “Dip me!” she whispered, and Max nervously obliged. Eloise dipped, dipped, and kept dipping—forcing Max to haul her up like a fishing net full of cod.
“Eloise, I’m taking you home now,” he said after returning her to her upright and locked position, and this time she could tell he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He pressed her body tightly against his, lifting her off the ground and carrying her off the dance floor. It felt nice, and then it felt rather embarrassing.
“Hey!” she cried, pounding his chest. Was anyone watching this? He didn’t even bother stopping at their table and she had to snare her purse off the chair as they passed. How humiliating! Her date was acting like a Neanderthal! God, she hoped Trip didn’t notice. “Put me down right now, Max!” she yelled as he carried her right over to the coat check, catching the attention of the couple in front of them in line. She slapped his back for emphasis.
Max reluctantly lowered her feet to the ground, but stepped in front of her so she was out of view. Only then did Eloise notice that the top of her dress, still damp and vaguely transparent from the martini she’d spilled on herself earlier, was now resting comfortably around her hips.
“You’re sure you want to leave so early?” Parker said after Fernanda had whispered as much in his ear. He excused himself from Jack Rutherford-Shaw and followed her a f
ew steps. “I haven’t even gotten you onto the dance floor yet.”
“I’ve had my fill,” said Fernanda. Cornelia’s attack had exhausted her, but she’d expected as much when she raised her paddle. She hadn’t thought her friend would go on to lacerate Parker. He’d brushed off her hurtful comments, but she could tell they stung. And then Cornelia had filleted and broiled Lucy—she must have, anyway, by the look of the poor girl’s tear-streaked face when she ran out of the Grand Room.
Parker kissed her cheek. “Let me just say a few goodbyes. Two minutes.”
“I’ll meet you outside.”
Moments later, standing on Fifth Avenue, eyes cast up at the softly lit museum, Fernanda shivered. She held her mother’s mink coat together, one gloved hand at her throat, the other holding the swag bag from the ball, from which peeked out a bottle of Socialite, Cornelia’s perfume. She knew she’d never wear the stuff. Their friendship, so central to the past two decades of her life, was over.
She noticed her brother easing a very intoxicated Eloise Carlton down the museum steps. “Max!” she called out. He looked up. “Here, take our car. Parker and I can hop in a cab.”
Max raised both eyebrows. “You sure? That’s really nice of you.” “I can occasionally be nice.” She let out a little laugh. But it occurred to her how infrequent those occasions were, and she felt ashamed. “Really, take it. Parker won’t mind.” She waved her brother toward the waiting town car and hurried over to help him. Max opened the door for Eloise, who had gone boneless, and the two of them struggled to help her inside.
“Thank you,” he said, walking around to the other side to get in. She nodded, watching the car pull away from the curb.
But it would take more than a few little gestures for Fernanda to feel virtuous.
“Sorry to leave you waiting!” Parker jogged down the steps, a big grin plastered on that funny face of his. He pulled her into a squeeze. “Proud of my girl. You did the right thing tonight, you know that?”
“I hope you don’t mind, I gave our car away to Max. He was playing Knight in Shining Armani to Eloise Carlton.”
“Of course not.” Parker stuck up his hand for a yellow cab. With his other arm, he kept Fernanda close.
If I marry this man, she thought, watching the glittering crowd waltz the night away behind the museum’s enormous windows, there’ll be no Park Avenue. Parker, no longer the scrappy young man he’d once been, seemed to accept his changed circumstances with calm resignation. There’ll be no Christmases in St. Barts. No six-carat anything. No house accounts on Madison Avenue; no salesgirls falling over themselves the moment I enter a boutique because they know I’ve got more money than most investment banks.
“You lit up that room,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. She could see he meant it. Fernanda liked the woman he thought she was. She decided, then and there, that she wanted to become that woman.
“Parker,” she said softly, filled with a certainty unlike any she’d ever known. She grabbed both his hands and pushed thoughts of her mother’s reaction out of her head. “Parker, will you marry me?”
Around three in the morning, Lucy hitched up her gown and stepped on the escalator heading down into the bowels of Port Authority. She’d been all over the city in desperate search of Rita, who wasn’t picking up her phone—traipsing from dive bars her mother had mentioned to the studio apartment in Murray Hill, a depressing tour of the old life that Lucy herself would be heading back to. She’d murdered her feet in her stupid stilettos and gotten nowhere. Then, remembering the hurt on Rita’s face, she headed back across town, through the neon blare of Times Square, to the bus terminal.
Sure enough, there was Rita, sitting on a bench in front of the Greyhound Departures screen, flanked by a homeless man and a grumpy-looking older woman in a velour sweatsuit. Rita’s mascara had bled down her face, making her look like a cross between Alice Cooper and Marion Cunningham, and she was still wearing her sequined mini. She was drinking something out of a paper bag—Zima, if Lucy knew her mother. Despite her aging hooker appearance, there was something innocent about her, like a kid waiting for the school bus, and Lucy felt a rush of affection. And shame. How could she have allowed her ambitions to so cloud what truly mattered?
“What are you doing here?” Rita asked, looking up when Lucy ran over to her.
“About time, if you ask me!” breathed the woman in a heavy Bulgarian accent, and the man nodded. Rita had clearly briefed her new friends about her daughter’s recent behavior.
“Rita, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
“Why aren’t you at your party? Did something happen? You look upset!”
Does Rita care more about what I’m going through than what she’s going through? It sure sounded that way. “It was a disaster,” she admitted. She told her mother about Cornelia’s revenge.
“Maybe nobody will care?” Rita suggested. But Lucy wasn’t so naïve. The Townhouse piece would give her a notoriety that would be impossible to outrun. The invitations would stop coming. Nobody would hire her; nobody would want the Page Six mentions, the negative association with a known liar. Including Wyatt, Lucy thought miserably. She knew he was too much of a gentleman to ditch her in her hour of need, but once the reality set in—and he saw his own name smeared all over the press, too—he’d come to view her as an obligation, a headache, and nothing more. She nut-shelled all this for her mother.
“It’s all my fault!” Rita buried her face in her hands, choking back a sob. The homeless man patted her back like they’d known each other for years. “I can’t believe I trusted that girl. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She looked up at Lucy, tears of regret rolling down her cheeks. “I’ve ruined everything for you, just like you were afraid I would. You have every right to hate me. I am so sorry, Lucy Jo, I—I’m going back to Dayville. I won’t bother you anymore.”
“I might be heading to Dayville with you. But not tonight.” Rita’s sincerity broke Lucy’s heart. The homeless man offered up his seat, which she gratefully accepted, and then she wrapped her arms around her mother. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have been ashamed of who I am or where I come from.”
Rita, sniffling, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her bolero jacket. “No, you shouldn’t.” Her voice was gentler than Lucy ever remembered it being. “I meant what I said. Lucy Jo Ellis is the classiest person I’ve ever met. I mean, you’ve spent your entire life taking care of me, even when I”—she took a jagged, tearful breath—“didn’t deserve it. You’ve worked hard to make something of yourself. You’ve got real talent, not like those other girls who just flit around looking pretty and doing nothing all day. And you’re a good person, Lucy Jo.”
“Maybe I used to be.” The ball seemed decades away from her now. The red carpet, the auction, the kisses—had any of it really happened? Her stomach growled, bringing her back to the present. She hadn’t eaten all night—or for the past three months, it seemed. “Who wants a pretzel?” she asked the little group, and three hands shot into the air. Lucy headed over to the twenty-four-hour cart, paid the exhausted vendor, and handed off the pretzels.
“Let’s go,” she told her mother. She picked up the suitcase at her mother’s feet.
“You mean to the Carlyle? You said you have a room there?”
“Nah, let’s go home. Murray Hill.” Maybe it was shabby, maybe the floorboards tilted too much, maybe there were occasional water bugs (a sweet nickname for cockroaches) in the bathroom—but at the moment, Lucy didn’t care. She wanted to be in a place that reminded her of who she really was. Tomorrow she’d figure out what to do with the smoldering remains of her life.
“Even better.” Rita grabbed her duffle bag and slung it over her shoulder, waving goodbye to her pals. “I think you’ll love what I’ve done with the place.”
At 6 AM the following day, Trip lifted the skinny arm that had been flung over his bare chest. The redhead it belonged to didn’t stir. What the hell was her name? Trip c
ould barely remember his own. He took in his surroundings—more boudoir than bedroom, with the gothic black curtains and burgundy walls, and littered with a shocking number of Red Bull cans. Her heavy black dress lay in a heap on the floor, like the remains of a melted witch.
Trip sidled two inches toward the edge of the bed. Good. Now he just had to make it to the front door without waking the girl, and he’d be free. His head ached like a calving glacier; his mouth was the Sahara. Trip’s left foot touched the ground first, careful not to pull the black satin sheets. He didn’t know girls slept in black satin sheets. He didn’t want to know. Then his left hand. Just as he was sliding his body toward the ground, he heard her snort.