CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
Audrey opened Facebook Messenger and read the message for the tenth time.
Save a seat for me, cutie.
She threw the fabric of her dress over her knee and remembered exactly why she didn’t wear evening gowns with thigh-high slits on public transportation.
A man with a lack of teeth and an abundance of hair—literally, hair
everywhere
—leered at her from across the aisle, making lewd gestures. Was there a full moon out?
Not that she could narrow her weirdo interactions to once a month. They seemed to happen more and more often these days. Last week, a guy with an MIT sweatshirt had leaned over and asked if he could sniff her hair.
Sometimes, she really hated the T. But in addition to almost not having an apartment, another thing she didn’t have? Her own mode of transportation. Not even a bicycle.
She buried her nose in her phone, trying to control her rapidly thumping heartbeat.
Save a seat for me, cutie.
Hormonal teenage tingles erupted all over her body as she tried to concentrate on the day’s news. But it was all depressing stuff—politics, crime, natural disasters. Nothing even remotely cheery at all. Why did the news always have to be bad?
The worst news of the day:
No apartment.
Seriously, she was already pushing it, trying to pay off her student loans in her little hovel. How was she supposed to pay that kind of rent? This was bad. Bottom-of-a-chasm-bad.
As she swiped with her thumb, she nearly scrolled right past a sun-soaked, stucco villa on a scenic hillside, above a deep blue sea.
She let out an audible sigh, almost feeling the warm Mediterranean heat on her cheeks, cool sea breezes in her hair. Summer in downtown Boston was sweaty, noisy, and gross. She paused and scrolled back to the photograph, smiling wistfully.
A place like that was probably free of all the ills of the world. Politics? What’s that? Crime? Not on your life! Natural disasters? Never heard of them! And creepy, leering men probably didn’t dwell there, either. It existed away from all of that, in its own little bubble of perfection.
She had to read the headline three times before it finally cracked her cerebrum.
Own a villa in beautiful Sambuca, Sicily for only $1!
Right. There had to be some catch. Something the advertisers weren’t saying.
All it will cost you is $1 … and your living soul!
Somehow, that ridiculous headline managed to taint paradise ever so slightly.
Nevertheless, it’d done its job. She was intrigued. She clicked on the ad.
It brought up the same photograph of a lovely Italian villa, along with the words,
Have you ever wanted to live in Italy? Now is your chance, at a very affordable price. Today, you can own a piece of beautiful Sambuca, Sicily, for less money than a cup of coffee! Plant your dreams now! See you on this side of your own private Eden!
Audrey brought the photograph so close to her face, she nearly bumped the screen of her phone with her nose. She kind of did want to dive right into those blue Mediterranean waters. Charter a yacht. Go sailing with a tall, dark Italian named Antonio or Rinaldo. Something ending in an “o.”
She sighed again, imagining a walk down a cobbled street to her beautiful Italian villa. It all seemed so quaint, so simple, so … European.
She almost missed her stop at Copley. But when the doors to the T opened, she looked around her bleak surroundings and a bit of sense leaked back into her head.
There’s a reason those homes are only a dollar, Audrey. If something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
Her sensible mom’s voice filled her head, the same woman who’d never let Audrey stand at the bus stop without an umbrella if it even smelled like drizzle.
She stood up, arranging her slit modestly and, ignoring the hairy man’s catcalls, exited the car. It wouldn’t have been too hard to make it to Copley Square Hotel had she not been wearing lethal heels.
People actually walk in these?
she wondered as she got one stuck for the thousandth time. Sewer grate, crack in the sidewalk, uneven curb … as an old city, Boston had plenty of those. Her mom would’ve insisted she wear flats, but Easy Spirits would’ve totally dulled the effect she was hoping to have on Michael. Somehow, she made it to the hotel with all her limbs intact.
Inside, she tottered a bit to the registration table at the front of the ballroom.
She hadn’t seen them in ten years, so it took her a minute to recognize them. Mitzy Silverman, Westwood High’s
Most Likely to Earn a Lexus with her MLM Scheme,
with a fruity drink at one elbow and an already-drunk Dobie Something, class quarterback, staring down the front of her dress, at the other.
She giggled at something Dobie said and then scraped her eyes over Audrey. Her smile faded. “This is the Westwood High reunion, dear. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
“I know. Audrey Smart?”
She rolled her eyes. “There is no …” She stopped when Audrey leaned down and grabbed the name tag, holding it up triumphantly.
“Thanks for all your help!” she called, ripping off the backing and adhering it to her boob.
Heaving a sigh, she wondered if it wasn’t too late to make a break for the door.
The Invisible Girl. That’s me.
It made sense that few people recognized her. They’d had over a thousand people in her class, and she’d been a complete wallflower, spending most of her time volunteering at the pet clinic instead of going to school functions.
Then she thought of Michael.
Cutie.
At first, it might as well have been a room of strangers in ball gowns and budding wrinkles. Then she gradually began to recognize some of them. A mousy girl who used to share her flute stand in band had totally become a knockout. The class burn-out, who’d checked out freshman year, had turned in his flannel for a three-piece suit. Around the room, people chatted about their lives, and Audrey picked up snippets of conversation here and there.
But no one came running to her, arms out, excited to give her a hug, as appeared to be happening all over the room, little volcanoes of
Oh my god!
erupting all around. Her former classmates swerved around her, like she had the word
Plague
stamped on her forehead.
That was all right. She wasn’t there for them. Her best friend was her sister, after all, and that was all she needed. At the tables, people she sort-of-maybe-not-quite recognized proudly traded photographs of their children and suburban McMansions and exotic vacations and swapped stories of their exciting lives. Audrey fidgeted, fighting the urge to bolt.
She scanned the room for that signature thick, wayward blond mop of his, that million-dollar Ode to Orthodontia smile. His Facebook photo had been that of Snoopy, so it wasn’t much help, but she imagined a more filled-out, sexier version of the old Michael. Men always seemed to age better. Hello, Sean Connery? Really, how much could he have changed in fifteen years? She hadn’t changed
nearly
enough, she realized, as her knees actually knocked together. Thank goodness for long dresses.
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she crossed the ballroom, hearing bits of conversation here and there—a “Just got promoted to CFO!” here, a “Tuscany was enchanting, but I prefer Milan” there.
On the way, Audrey passed by a guy that she almost recognized and did a double-take. He did the same. She stopped. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been doubled over a trash can, too scared to give his valedictorian speech. Back then, he’d had bad acne, an unfortunate crew cut, and a bit of a weight problem. “Kevin?”
“Audrey?” He came up to her and gave her a kiss, then stood back to look at her. She did the same, gaping. The baby fat was gone, his skin flawless, his dark hair tumbling in a rakish way.
“Y-you look great!” she stammered, hardly able to believe it. He’d been her lab partner during her junior and senior years, and the reason she didn’t go insane. He’d also been a bit of a nerd—okay, a lot of a nerd—so much so that she’d barely even looked at him. He’d almost asked her out, in a roundabout way, but Audrey had always scurried away whenever he got that amorous look in his eye.
Now, he was gorgeous. Flat-out, Grade A eye candy. She grabbed his arm. “Oh, god, it’s so great to see—”
“And this is my wife,” he said. “Mimi.”
Audrey found herself gaping at the exotically beautiful Asian woman. She was sure she’d seen her on a magazine cover somewhere. “Oh. Um, hi. You look familiar.”
Mimi only giggled.
“Could be. She’s a former fitness model. But more recently, she’s been a physicist who worked on my team. That’s how we met.” He beamed at her, took her hand, and squeezed.
“Your team?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, my company works with the government, pioneering new technologies which will create clean energies to make a better future for the world,” he said, sounding much like a commercial announcer.
“Wow … so you’re literally … saving the world?”
He nodded. “That’s right. What about you?”
Audrey hesitated. Next to that, doctor of veterinary medicine didn’t seem all that grand. But what the heck. To some people, their pets
were
their world. She raised her chin with pride. “Well, I’m a—”
Just then, the DJ started playing “Oh What a Night,” and his wife pulled on his tuxedo. “Come on, Kevvy. Let’s go dance!”
Audrey waved at him as he was dragged away.
Finally, she made it to the bar. The bartender ignored her for the first five minutes, and then finally looked up at her. “Rum and Coke?” she asked. She didn’t normally drink, but she desperately needed to take the edge off.
“ID, please?”
She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and pointed to her name tag. When that didn’t work, she unzipped her purse and pulled out the ID. “I’m thirty-two,” she said to him, wondering when she would start to feel flattered about being mistaken for being under the age of twenty-one.
With her drink in hand, she’d just begun to take a sip through the stirrer straw when someone said, “Ashley?”
At first, she didn’t turn around, but when someone said it again, adding her last name, she looked up.
“Audrey, actually,” she said to the woman with the short dark pixie cut who smiled at her. She had a flowy scarf around her neck and had the smart, no-nonsense look of a psychoanalyst, but Audrey remembered her. “Kristin?”
She nodded, and Audrey smiled, happy to find another person to talk to so she wouldn’t be helplessly alone.
“Yes!” Kristin said. “Wow, you look great. You haven’t even changed!”
“Thanks, so do you.” It was all coming back now. They’d worked on scenery together, especially for
Death of a Salesman
. They’d both painted the living room fireplace while drooling over Michael as he rehearsed his lines on stage. Part friends, part rivals over Michael’s attention, they’d become close only because neither of them had much success in catching the actor’s eye. “You still live in the area?”
“No. Moved to New York. We’re up here for the weekend, Rob and I. My husband. I met him at NYU. He’s a physician in Brooklyn. I run my own non-profit, helping to put an end to human trafficking.”
Wow. Yet another person saving the world. It seems my high school class bred them like rabbits.
“That’s amazing.”
“God, it’s great to be back, and to see you!” she said, rubbing Audrey’s bare arm. “What about you? Are you married?”
“No! But I actually still live in the city. For now, at least. I’m a—”
“Oh my god.”
Kristin’s eyes had drifted somewhere behind Audrey, and were now bulging.
When she spun around to follow her line of view, sure that a waiter was on fire or zombies were invading or something, she saw him.
He stood in the doorway, at the top of the stairs, pausing there like royalty waiting to be announced. People stopped talking. In her head, the DJ’s Backstreet Boys’ track screeched to an ear-splitting stop. A small earthquake rippled under her feet, which would’ve sent her stumbling if she didn’t have the bar against her back.
Because there he was …
The
Michael Breckenridge.
He scanned the place, eyes falling on Audrey, zeroing in. Target acquired.
And then he started heading right for her.