The night goes on. Some of Jada’s cast mates come by and things get raucous. People are surprised that Max is in our group, but the novelty wears off and he blends in easily. I sit back, watching my friends. It’s easy to forget how we all have the same performing arts roots.
And he loves me.
And I love him. I want to tell him that, but not in front of everybody.
Around midnight everybody wants to play eighties songs on the old-fashioned jukebox, and Kelsey and Antonio are sexy dancing on the tables. The bartender does his usual scolding, then turns back to serve more beers.
Lizzie announces she’s hungry, and we hatch a plan to order ten of our official apartment pizzas. Snow has started to fall in huge, pretty flakes. We run to our place in a group, laughing and screaming, desperate to arrive before the pizzas.
A few minutes later, we’re all crowded into the elevator, rosy-cheeked and out of breath.
And he loves me.
I find his hand. Squeeze.
On the way up, I tell them about the chandeliers in Max’s elevator. He stands straight and tall, acting weary of my teasing, but I think he kind of loves it. Minutes later, we’re walking into my apartment.
People are shedding winter coats, getting places. Max strolls around the living room, eyes sparkling. “So this is where you live.”
“Don’t laugh,” I say.
“It’s…” His face changes. His eyes seem to lose their sparkle. I’ve never seen a man’s face change so fast.
So fast, I think he’s joking. I trot out my best Oliver Twist accent. “I know it’s not much, but we like it.” He doesn’t seem amused.
Then I trace the direction of his gaze.
The Bring-Max-Hilton-to-his-grovelly-knees chart.
My blood goes cold. Breath whooshes out of me. “No, Max.”
He turns to me. His voice, when it comes, sounds casual. “What do we have here?”
“Max. It’s nothing.” My heart is a panicked bird in a cage.
“Nothing.”
I hate the light way he says it. As though it doesn’t have meaning. As though it doesn’t hurt.
“It’s bullshit. Just a bullshit thing.”
“It’s just a joke thing,” Kelsey says. “A stupid joke.”
“Doesn’t look like a joke to me.” He goes to it. He slides a finger over the grid, so many boxes with X’s, each corresponding to one of his golden rules. Adorn yourself with symbols of your superiority. Do something outrageous. “I was wondering how you all knew so much about the book.”
And then he finds the Max Hilton dartboard.
“I did that.” Lizzie says. “That was all me.”
“Max,” I say. “It was a stupid thing.” I can feel his heart breaking. That’s how connected we are. His heart breaking is my heart breaking. “That was how it started, but it’s not how it ended.”
The way he looks, so calm and steely, I know he doesn’t hear me. I can see that isolated boy, going at the piano he hated like a robot.
He showed me his vulnerabilities. He showed all of us. He laid down his Max Hilton armor.
I grab his arm. He used to be warm and pliable, but now he’s a stone statue. “Stop staring at those stupid things! It was before I realized how I felt about you, before I—”
“Yet you kept them up,” he says softly, shaking me off. “Look at all the X’s.”
“Max, no! Look at me.”
“You didn’t complete a few of the rules.” This like he’s amused, eyes brighter and harder than diamonds. “Then again, you brought me to my knees, didn’t you?”
“It was a dumb thing. From when I thought you arranged the visits. Please, listen to me! I freaked out when I saw you on my roster. I was scared. Look at me, Max!”
He goes over presses his hand to the picture of the shoes, cut out from the magazine. It’s as if he needs to touch it, to see it’s real. Glitter stars around them. He snorts. That’s the only sound he makes—a derisive snort that cuts me like a knife.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say pathetically.
He turns. “Grovelly isn’t an adjective.”
With that he walks out the door, shutting it behind him.
I rush out into the hall after him. “It’s not like that, Max. You have it so wrong.”
He stabs the elevator button. “Darts? Really?”
“Let’s talk. We can work this out. History doesn’t have to repeat itself.”
“It already has,” he says.
The floor seems to tilt beneath me. This can’t be happening. “This doesn’t have to be us.”
The door squeeches open. He gets in and turns, arms outstretched, barring my way. “Word of advice. If you’re going to sell your soul for a pair of Louboutins, at least make them this year’s model.”
With that he steps back.
The sound of the elevator doors shutting is a punch to my gut.
23
Never buy her a drink. That’s a move for losers.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MIA
Max is impossible to get to in the days that follow. It goes without saying that there are no more Meow Squad deliveries to the Maximillion tower. I can’t even get in.
I text and email him, but nothing comes back.
After work, I go to where he lives and stand outside. Two women from Canada are out there taking selfies in front of his building. They ask me to take one of them together. One of them wears an “I heart Max” hat.
I do it, thinking about how kind he always is about selfies. Was.
I head to Maximillion Plaza after work one day with a bag of cheesy puffs as a peace offering, or more, a prop to hopefully make him remember the fun we had. The security guard won’t let me in.
I trudge out and sit on the bench outside the building, letting the winter sun warm my face.
“Mia.” A familiar voice. I look up, shading my eyes.
“Parker,” I say. “Did Max tell you—”
He sinks down beside me. “What the hell?”
“How is he? Is he…okay?”
“Jesus, Mia, no. What were you guys thinking? Who even does that.”
“I thought he’d called me there to mock me or something!”
“Max would never mock you.”
“I know I screwed up. So bad.” I press my palms to my eyes. “Reconnecting with Max has been everything.”
“Well, he’s pretty angry now,” Parker says. “It’s partly my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I just always thought you two belonged together. You were enemies for so long, but nobody got him going like you.”
“We do belong together,” I say.
“Bring Max Hilton to his knees chart? Darts?”
“What can I do?”
He squints out at the scaffolding over the pizza place. The green and red slice showing through in parts. “Maybe another ten years.”
“No,” I say.
24
Believe in yourself. Shoot for the stars.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MIA
Meow Squad may be barred from the building, but I still have allies there.
I take the day off from work, and just before lunchtime, I buy him an amazing lobster roll sandwich. I put cheesy puffs in the bag along with it. I include a note. A picture of a heart. Underneath I write, I’m outside the building and I won’t leave until you come down. Because I love you.
I see a woman from the seventh floor I used to deliver to; she’s heading in with a coffee. I beg her to deliver my bag to Max’s assistant. She seems a little bit bewildered, but she agrees.
I wait outside on a bus bench. After a half an hour I’m shaking—not from the cold, but from the fear that he might not come out. I don’t even peek at my phone. I’m waiting for him. I want him to see that.
Peopl
e come and sit by me, waiting for busses, and then they’re gone. Three hours into it, the same busses come by again. I wonder if the drivers recognize me. Some of the busses have Max’s face on them, ironically.
The sun goes behind the building at around four, and it gets cold. But still I sit there.
Kelsey comes at four thirty and brings me warm soup. I drink it right from the Thermos. She even puts on my hat and waits in my place while I pee at a nearby Starbucks. Not that the hat switch would fool Max, but we decide it’s like a placeholder for me.
“Guess what else I brought,” she says, when I come back. She pulls out my cross-stitch project.
“I’m not going to sit out here doing a cross stitch,” I say. “I want him to see that I’m focused on him.”
“He’s not going to come out,” she says after a while. “I saw his face. That chart. God, why did we leave it up?”
“And the darts,” I say.
“All this time he seemed like the kind of guy where everything rolls off his back,” she says. “You look at his pictures. It’s like nothing matters. But after what he confessed at The Wilder Club, it’s really the opposite, isn’t it?”
I stare up at the tower that I so impudently gave him three stars for. “He didn’t create the Max Hilton persona because nothing matters to him,” I say softly. “It’s because things matter too much.”
I tell Kelsey about Annette. His nanny who died in a crash after bringing sunshine and song into his life. Is that what he meant about history repeating itself? That sunshine comes, but it always goes?
Kelsey slides closer. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, right?”
“I’m glad you’re here.” I lay my head on her shoulder and tell her things I’ve observed about busses.
At around six, the lights in his twenty-fifth floor office blink off. We both sit up.
“Does he come out the front?” she asks.
“No, his car gets him below ground.”
“But maybe not today.” She stands. “I’m going to get a bagel over on the corner, and I’ll take a really long time. But I’ll be here.”
She goes off. I wait, hoping he sees that I’m serious. Five minutes go by. Then ten.
Nothing.
A few black town cars pass by. Those sorts of cars tend to look alike—clean and shiny with tinted windows. But I don’t think he was in any of them.
Somehow, I feel him watching me. I feel him near. Is he coming out the front door? My heart nearly jumps out of my chest when my phone dings. A text.
Kelsey: can I come back?
Me: Not yet.
I put it away. Twenty minutes after his lights went out, a black car slides past my bus stop. I can’t see Max in the window, but I feel him. The feeling of him is an ache so intense, I want to double over. I don’t know how I came to my feet, but I’m standing, watching his taillights disappear. Empty.
A bus slides up and I’m face to face with fake Max, smile full of secrets. Ferrari-and-liquor-cart Max Hilton.
Me: Let’s go.
The next day I can’t get off of work, but I pull together another great lunch—a Korean fried chicken sandwich with spicy dressing that has some of the buildings abuzz. I pair it with cheesy puffs.
The note I include is longer. I talk about the night we sang on the couch to Carousel. I just tell him what he looked like to me—how soft his eyes got. And the glint he’d get when he’d hold a note nice and long, or hit one just right. His goofy, friendly half smile that will never appear on an ad. The point where he tangled his fingers into mine and I felt like I’d never get higher. How hard it was not to just lean in and kiss him. How I wanted to stay there forever. How bad I want to tell him that I love him to his face.
In another note, I tell him more about that day in the lunch room. How I’d bought a dress for homecoming dance against the advice of all my friends, but I’d just felt like everything was magical with him, with us.
I still feel like that, I write. I won’t stop this. I won’t stop fighting for us. You said you messed up that day, but I messed up, too. Half the responsibility was mine back then. I’m going to fight for us now in a way I didn’t back then. You said I don’t give up on my dreams. You should know I won’t give up on us.
Another day is an open-faced bao—a steamed bun sandwich—filled with tender and fatty pork belly, topped with spicy relish, crushed peanuts, and Taiwanese red sugar. I tell him about the way his face looked in the dim light of his Studio Complex on New Year’s Eve. How connected I felt with him, like we’re two pieces of a puzzle.
25
Surround yourself with interesting people. Get them talking and laughing.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MAX
I open the note in the lunch she sent up.
“You want to me to leave you?” Parker asks.
“I know what it says.” I fold it back up.
“That smells amazing. Are you gonna eat it?”
I push it his way. I really should eat. It’ll be a long night with the Catwalk for a Cause happening.
He grabs it and unwraps it. “How long are you going to string this out?”
“I don’t know. How long does a person sleep with somebody, and at home she has his picture full of darts? And a wall-sized chart plotting vengeance?”
“Dude, you’re talking to a guy who had a picture of Britney Spears wearing a snake on his wall well into his twenties. And it stopped being sexy when I was fifteen. People leave shit on their walls.” He takes a bite. “Oh my god,” he mumbles.
I go to the window, look down at the bench where she sat all that day. So many times I stood looking at her.
“It feels too late.”
Parker’s in a stare-off with his sandwich, like he’s stunned at its goodness. “You sure?” He takes another bite.
“It wasn’t just the fact of the picture and the chart, though that was bad enough. It was the shock of it after what I’d told the group of them. I mean, I’d just spilled my guts, right in front of her friends. About fucking pining over her. Loving her from afar. I laid it all out on the table—things I’d never told a living soul.”
“You got blindsided, no question,” he says.
I press my hand to the window. “I couldn’t believe what I was confessing to. It was like shoving a knife in my gut and bleeding out on stage. Right there in front of Mia and four complete strangers. But in a strange way, it felt good to bare my soul to them. I wanted them to see how I felt. And then the next thing I know, my face is covered in darts. Like I’m Satan over there.”
“I would’ve felt blindsided, too. And I don’t have issues.”
“We all have issues,” I say.
“You’re not good with vulnerability. How about that?”
I give him a hard look.
Parker raises his hands. “You’re not. Have you heard a recording of the way you used to play piano? Have you read the Hilton Playbook lately?”
I pick up the note. Read it over again, then I put it in the drawer with the others.
26
Go ahead and make her compete for your approval. Remember, you are in control.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MAX
Parker and I head to the auditorium at seven. We’ve put a lot into this; I really want it to be a success. It’s not just about polishing my image. The city’s best designers have gone all out donating clothes. The models have donated their time. Maximillion employees have solicited donations from businesses and vendors for the raffle. We’ve got some surprise models lined up for turns on the catwalk—comedians and musicians, mostly.
I go back to check on the Maximillion team of models. We’re trotting out the Vicious line tonight. Of course, the designers have things under control.
I’m not surprised; I’ve built the business by putting g
ood people in place and letting them run with their ideas; checking on them is really just a formality. A way of showing them I’m right there with them. A way of trying to get my mind off of Mia, even though everything makes me think of her, right down to the snarky expression on her face that day she heard we had a fashion line called Vicious.
I head back through the front past the catering staff, thinking about her little notes. The sandwiches that she chose. I gave Parker every last one of the sandwiches. Like enjoying them might be dangerous, somehow.
I check on the team of event planners, whose base of operations is off to the side of the giant space. Everything’s running like clockwork just when I could use a disaster. The place looks great, though; a vast spread of candlelit tables beneath chandeliers and streamers. Guests in tuxedos and gowns are starting to arrive, moving through the sea of elegance like exotic fish.
Parker comes up and hands me a drink. “We gotta get over to the captain’s table—the show’s gonna start.”
It won’t start for twenty minutes, but there are lots of dressed-up people between here and there, which means photos. It’s easier to say no to photos when it’s somebody else’s event.
I make my way over, posing for pictures and saying Max Hilton things, being the carefree playboy who exists in the glittering two dimensions of screens and billboards and camera lenses.
It was almost enough for a while.
Lana comes up and hugs me. She’s with her real boyfriend, a man who’s allergic to public events. I shake his hand, thank him for making it. Everybody looks amazing.
That, too, makes me think about Mia, declaring herself more beautiful and fascinating than the models in my pictures. With enough force that you could almost think she believes it.
I knew it was true.
Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules Page 19