by Shen, L. J.
Unknown: Seven inches.
Maddie: Har. Har.
Maddie: Where do you want to live when you’re “settled down”?
Unknown: I will never “settle down.”
Maddie: Humor me, jerk.
Unknown: Fine. I’ll stay in Manhattan. You?
I pushed the door to my apartment open. Daisy jumped on my legs excitedly, nuzzling her wet tennis ball into my hand. I glanced at the overhead clock above my fridge. Almost eleven. Chase was going to be here to take her out in seven hours. The thought of him in my apartment made my head swim. I added him to my contacts, purely for logistical purposes. I’d delete him again on Saturday morning, post our fake-engagement dinner.
Maddie: I don’t know. Maybe Brooklyn. What did you have for breakfast?
Chase: I think her name was Tiffany.
Maddie: Dear God, you’re stabbable to a fault.
Chase: Relax. A protein pack.
Chase: Do NOT make a jizz joke.
Maddie: Favorite channel?
Chase: Is that a real question? Is there a right answer other than HBO?
Maddie: Best way to start the day?
Chase: You sitting on my face.
Maddie: Thank you.
Chase: For the riveting visual?
Maddie: For reminding me why we broke up.
Chase: Any-fucking-time.
Maddie:
I shouldn’t have gone to bed with a smile on my face, yet I did.
Chase Black was the devil. A sinister, cold creature that somehow managed to scorch his way into my veins. But whatever he was . . . being next to him made me feel alive.
On Tuesday, I woke up to zero sticky notes from Chase. Considering I’d specifically asked him not to touch my things, I should have felt a lot more cheerful than I did when I glanced at the shelf of my fridge, offended by its stark emptiness.
Not that it mattered. No Post-it Notes from Chase meant I didn’t have to clean up all his mess when I got back to my apartment. It gave me a good chance to bake something and bring it to Ethan’s office. (This was not retaliation against Chase for not leaving me any notes. No sirree. Just me trying to be nice to Ethan.)
Wednesday, however, was a game changer. Two days away from the festive engagement dinner, I found a slew of black sticky notes stuck to my fridge. Not the same color as my turquoise ones with the leopard print that I kept on my counter to make supermarket lists. Bastard had brought his own notes. That was why he hadn’t written anything on Tuesday. He’d probably asked his assistant to provide him with the stationery he required to continue our written beef. There was no way his Royal Highness had descended down from Olympus himself and visited Office Depot. The pen he’d used was gold. He had a lot to say, so he’d spread it over a few notes, sticking them one below the other in succession.
M,
What are you wearing Friday night? We need to coordinate, although I doubt I own anything purple and green with patterned smiling pigs. Or sequined, feathery hats with pom-poms and bow ties.
Or anything else completely grotesque, for that matter.
PS:
Daisy seems to be obsessed with the same squirrel. I am afraid they will create a subspecies. Squog. Squirrel dogs.
PPS:
Bull. Shit. What was Pediatric Boy’s emergency? Testosterone transplant?
—C
Frantic, I scrambled to the trash can to retrieve the last notes we’d written to each other to see what he was referring to in the second PS. The trash can was full to the brim. I looked down at it, aghast, before flipping it over, squeezing my eyes shut while breathing through my mouth.
Garbage rained down on the floor. I sifted through it as Daisy sniffed around banana peels and string cheese wrappers, tail wagging, until I found our last notes. I smoothed them on the floor, reading them over. Chase had taunted me that Ethan was still a virgin. I’d told him we’d had crazy sex the night he’d dropped me off from the Hamptons. Obviously, he wasn’t buying it.
I scowled at Daisy, who was licking the inside of a chicken-salad can, making slurping sounds.
“No one can know about this, Daisy. No one.”
She replied with half a bark. I picked up my pen and wrote, pressing it against the paper so hard the words dented the rest of the pages.
C,
Haven’t thought about my attire for the evening. But now that you’re asking, why, yes, I will go for the sequined purple dress with the green jacket (velvet) paired with brown heels. No smiling pigs, but I think I have something with Michael Scott on it.
PS:
Ethan is more of a man than you’d never be. He is honest and loyal and NICE.
PPS:
Yes, the squirrel’s name is Frank. Let them be. They’re dysfunctional but good together.
PPPS:
I’m suspiciously low on orange juice. Please do not help yourself to anything while fulfilling your side of the Daisy bargain.
—M
On Thursday, there was radio silence. I did not analyze the lack of notes while riding the train on my way to work. I didn’t care. Truly, I didn’t. But if I had given it some thought (which, again, I hadn’t), the natural assumption would be that Chase had forgotten to bring his black notes or golden pen or both.
Which meant that continuing this conversation wasn’t something he thought about regularly.
Which, again, was completely okay with me.
The day slogged by painfully slowly. I texted with Ethan back and forth. We weren’t able to see each other for the rest of the week because he was training for a half marathon—the same charity marathon Katie had told me in the Hamptons she was going to do—and had to wake up super early. Sven said I was surprisingly useless that day. I wanted to believe it was because I wasn’t going to be seeing Ethan, but realistically speaking, it was Chase that made my mind drift away from work. When Sven was out of sight, Nina helpfully added I was turning into one of my plants. “A burst of color and inefficiency.” She click-click-clicked her mouth, her eyes glued to her Apple monitor. I had to take the sketch I was currently working on home to finish since it was due the next day.
Then, on Friday, another note waited for me on the fridge:
M,
Daisy doesn’t like her food. I brought her something new. The guy at the store said it’s the dog equivalent of caviar. Left it on the counter.
She also tried to hump Frank this morning. Are you projecting on the poor dog?
PS:
I cannot believe we pay you to design clothes. You do know not every fashion statement needs to be screamed?
PPS:
Re: orange juice. I admit I did help myself to some, but only because I was thirsty and you only drink tap around here. Very poor hospitality to point it out. How unbecoming for a southern girl.
I picked up my phone and texted him a response. Normally, I was firmly against any communication with him, but my body was simmering with unrestrained rage. How dare he?
Maddie: I’m from Pennsylvania, NOT the South, Satan McDevil.
Chase: Pennsylvania = South. South of New York. Know your geography, Goldbloom. Knowledge is power.
Maddie: WHY ARE YOU SO INFURIATING???
Chase: All caps. This pent-up sexual frustration is going to kill you one day.
Maddie: Good! Being dead would beat spending time with you today.
Chase: If you’re trying to get my feelings hurt, it’s working.
Maddie: Really?
Chase: No.
Maddie: You know, when I saw you on my stairway, I thought you were going to apologize as a part of your postrecovery steps for your sex addiction treatment.
Chase: If I were a sex addict, I’d hardly treat it.
Maddie: Remind me why I’m helping you again?
Chase: Because you are a good person.
Maddie: And why are you accepting?
Chase: Because I’m not.
Chase: Don’t forget the banana bread.
Chase: H
ave you slept with him yet?
Chase: That’s a no. Thought so. See you in the evening.
I resisted the urge to hurl my phone against the wall. I had a feeling if I adopted the habit of smashing things every time Chase pissed me off, nothing in my apartment would stay intact, walls included. Instead, I stomped to the counter, grabbed Daisy’s new bag of food, and poured a cup into her bowl. She wolfed it down so fast she nearly took my hand in the process.
I told myself it’d all be over in less than twenty-four hours.
I told myself I didn’t care.
Most of all, I thought Chase might be a little right. Maybe I did need sex to calm me down. It had been six months, after all. I texted Ethan.
Maddie: Let’s meet at my place on Saturday after your marathon. Unless you think you’ll be too exhausted?
Ethan: *half marathon.
Seriously? That was what he took from my message? My phone glowed to life with a second message a few seconds later.
Ethan: And I will adequately perform, even post–half marathon. It’s a date. x
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHASE
“So lay it on me. How’s my old man doing?” I sidestepped a kid on a scooter as I walked with Grant to Madison’s apartment. Grant Gerwig had been my best friend ever since I was four. Currently, he was a Colin Firth–looking, prestigious oncologist with a private clinic in the Upper East Side. He was one of those assholes you read about who accidentally found the cure to an incurable disease at a bar eating stale peanuts while waiting for their Tinder date. The kind of smart that made you wonder if there was a secret meaning to life that he wasn’t telling you about. We jogged every morning together and made it a point to have a weekend drink, no matter our schedules, if we were both in town. When we’d found out about Dad, I’d physically dragged Ronan Black to Grant’s clinic for a second opinion, despite him muttering that he clearly remembered having to help Grant “take care of business” when my best friend had had an accident while watching a horror flick with me when we were five. “I just don’t like the idea of getting my medical verdicts from people I knew before they were fully potty trained.”
Anyway, both young Grant and the old doctor Dad had gone to initially were on the same page. The cancer was too advanced, too incurable. Still, I felt slightly less helpless having Dad treated by my best friend.
“You know I’m not at liberty to discuss it.” Grant stuffed a fist into his khaki pants, using his free hand to redirect a kid on a scooter so he didn’t collide with a tree. The kid’s mother thanked him as she raced down the street after her son.
Mad’s bohemian, colorful street suffered from the greatest problem of our nation, New York’s number one enemy: the stop-and-take-a-picture-in-the-middle-of-the-fucking-road tourist. There were people everywhere. Taking selfies with a vintage candy shop in the background, waiting in line to a gay bar, browsing secondhand books on stands outside an independent bookshop. The slimness of life didn’t touch this street. It was vivid and alive and bursting with color.
It made me resentful that the sunken-cheeked kid with the nylon backpack and the ANTI SOCIAL SOCIAL CLUB hoodie, the middle-aged dog walker with the sundress, and even the goddamn four dogs she was trying to shepherd were going to outlive my father. The man who’d created Black & Co. Who provided thousands of jobs and was responsible for a third of the textile business in New York. Who’d contributed to the US economy and attended my rowing tournaments religiously and helped Jul turn his summer town house in Nantucket into an eco-friendly monster that basically lived off the grid with his bare hands and sat through Katie’s high school theater shows and God fucking dammit, life was unfair.
“Chase?” Grant peered into my eyes. He was heading for a date. We’d figured we’d grab a quick beer beforehand. “Did you listen to what I said? Patient-doctor confidentiality and so forth.”
I grunted, kicking a soggy garbage bag sitting at the curb. I was already annoyed with the prospect of sharing Dad with Julian, Amber, and Madison tonight. I’d visited him every day for the past week, even though we worked together in the same office. He seemed to be getting progressively worse, and some of the other employees were starting to talk.
“He’s in a lot of pain.” The words came out like I was in a lot of pain too.
“Tell him to give me a call. There’s a lot we can do about it.”
“He’s a stubborn bastard,” I countered.
“Doesn’t run in the family, obviously.” Grant smiled wryly.
We both stopped in front of the same brownstone. He raised an eyebrow. So did I.
“Well, I guess I will see you tomorrow for golf?” he asked.
“That’s the plan.” I took the steps up. So did Grant. We stopped again. Stared at each other.
“Yes?” I asked impatiently. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Had Madison decided to date every doctor in New York?
The entrance door swung open, and Layla, Madison’s even-crazier friend with the funky green hair, burst out like a stripper from a cake.
“Grant! You’re here!” She flung her arms over his neck. It was a highly unorthodox way to greet a man you weren’t planning to get into bed with in the next few hours, unless . . .
Unless he started dating her weeks ago and didn’t want to tell me because I was being a miserable piece of shit trying to come to terms with Dad’s situation.
“Layla,” I said curtly.
“Prince of Darkness,” she answered in the exact same manner. “I’m praying for my best friend’s sake that you’ll be nice this evening.”
“Even God can’t interfere with my nefarious behavior, but thanks for the royal title. I see you’re dating my best friend,” I drawled.
“Sleeping with him,” she amended. “Yes.”
Grant flashed me an apologetic smile. “You weren’t exactly in the right headspace to talk about this, and as Layla said, she laid down the rules pretty strictly. This is casual and should not affect your or Maddie’s lives.”
Not in the mood to touch this BS with a ten-foot pole, I rolled my eyes, ambling through the door. When Madison and I had broken up, Grant was another person who’d pinned the downfall on me. While I’d forbidden him to keep in touch with her, I didn’t put it past Madison to have played matchmaker to him and Layla. Another trait I absolutely despised about Martyr Maddie—she was always in everyone’s business and forever tried to hook people up with dates, furniture they needed, and social activities.
I especially hated that she’d paired these two together, because Grant actually wanted the whole white-picket-fence-and-sane-wife dream, and the first time I’d met Layla, she’d launched into a forty-minute speech about why monogamy was unnatural. Daisy and Frank would make a more sensible pairing than those two.
I knocked on Madison’s door, hearing Daisy barking excitedly. Mad opened, and I became weak in the knees and hard everywhere else, because what the fuck?
Madison wore a little black dress, snug in all the right places—completely pattern-free—paired with black velvet heels and a turquoise neckpiece. Something between a necklace and a studded collar. Her short brown hair was extra messy in a just-got-fucked purposeful way, her lips were scarlet, and her olive eyes were winged with a dramatic black femme fatale liner. My cock stood for a round of applause, throwing imaginary roses at her feet. The rest of me wondered what had inspired me to do anything else with her back when we were dating other than sleep with her until there was nothing left of her.
“You look great.” I narrowed my eyes into slits, the compliment coming out as an accusation.
She grabbed her purse and keys, frowning at me. “Didn’t you say you wanted to coordinate clothes? I remembered you are very fond of black. Black glossy door, black furniture, black satin sheets . . .” She began to count all the black things in my apartment.
“You forgot the black blinders. Would you like to pay my bedroom another visit?” I offered her a wolfish smirk.
That’s not the only thing that’s hard right now, sweetheart.
I had a violent urge to touch her. Push a stray lock of her hair behind her ear, kiss her cheek in greeting, or perch her on my lap, spread her ass cheeks, and eat her from behind. Before I had the chance to do that (I was going for brushing lint off her sleeve, although orally devouring her was my personal preference), someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind.
The day had been entirely full of unpleasant surprises, but Pediatric Dudebro in his dress shirt, stupid tie, and running tights was the cherry on the shit cake. He grinned at Madison, giving her two thumbs up for the outfit.
“Maddie! I came to get a good-luck kiss before the half marathon.” He was running in place on her threshold beside me, both of us outside her door. I didn’t care how nice this man was. He was oozing douchebagness in radioactive quantities.
“Hi.” He turned to beam at me, offering me his hand. I shook it, making sure I pressed hard enough to almost crush his bones. The only reason I didn’t go for full destruction was because his patients were minors and I had enough reasons to suspect I was the first name on karma’s shit list. If he were a plastic surgeon, catering to bored housewives and vain men, his hand would be marshmallow right about now.
“Chase Black.”
“Ethan Goodman.”
“Ethan is . . .” Mad trailed off, allowing herself a moment to think about what he was to her. We both looked at her expectantly. A slow smile spread across my face. They hadn’t had that conversation yet. They weren’t anywhere near as serious as she wanted me to think they were. Mad cleared her throat. “We’re seeing each other.”
Ethan nodded in confirmation, pleased with her bullshit explanation. If I were introduced as anything other than boyfri . . .
Finish that thought, idiot. My brain pointed a gun at my temple from the inside. I fucking dare you.
“Nice tie. Is that from Brioni’s newest collection?” I jutted my chin in its direction, dead-ass serious. He wore a PAW Patrol tie. Specifically, with Chase on it, wearing his firefighter helmet. I only knew the dog’s name because Booger Face used to call me Doggy Chase for a while, and I’d been worried and disturbed about her knowing my favorite sexual position.