THE LIFE
Maggie
WITHIN MINUTES OF WALKING THROUGH the door, I was dressed in as much elastic and jersey as possible. My insane hair was tied in a little ponytail on top of my head, and I scowled at myself in the bathroom mirror as I slathered on an avocado mask.
If I was going to spend Saturday night alone, I was going to do it right.
I’d gotten all dressed up and paraded down to Habits to see Cooper, just like he’d asked, and then Astrid showed up all, Ooh, look at me, I’m so pretty and tall and know a million designers. Not that it mattered. Because it didn’t. Cooper wasn’t mine, and he wasn’t even dating Astrid.
Technically.
He said.
I wrinkled my green nose at my reflection as I washed my hands. I looked like the Wicked Witch of the West. Green was appropriate because I wasn’t fooling anybody. I was jealous as hell.
I took a swig of my bourbon — because you know the first thing I did was make a drink — and headed into the living room with a makeup bag full of nail polish.
Doin’ it right, y’all. Doin’ it right.
I flopped down on the couch and turned on the TV, scrolling through the movies saved on the DVR until I landed on my favorite movie. Mean Girls always made me feel better. I sighed and dug through the bag, lining up the tiny glass containers in a row.
I was so annoyed, I was even annoying myself. I didn’t know what I expected going down there. I mean, he’d just left here, and I was sure he had some fancy plans. He probably didn’t even want to hang out with me. In fact, he was probably on his way to some club where he could hang out with socialites and actresses who were charming and beautiful and — dammit, I was jealous all over again. As if I’d ever stopped.
I picked up a hot pink nail polish and sighed. Passion fucking Pink it is.
The movie was already going, and I felt a little better when Regina George made her appearance. I was like Cady, and Cooper was like Aaron Samuels. And Astrid was Regina, obviously. Except she wasn’t anything like Regina. In fact, Astrid really was a decent human.
I sighed again and shook the polish, my brain as noisy as the clinking of the little metal ball inside.
They weren’t seeing each other, and I knew it. I really did trust Cooper. Mostly. It was easier when I was with him, but when we were apart? Well, then I just drove straight off into Crazytown, thinking about the image of him. The one plastered all over US Weekly and Just Jared. The one featured in my brother’s favorite tales of debauchery.
Again, not that it mattered. Because we weren’t a real thing. It was just for fun, a fling, a diversion, that was all. I was not ready to date. I needed it to be easy and simple. That was the theory, at least. I just wasn’t sure what easy or simple was.
I’d been with Jimmy for seven years, since I was sixteen, so I’d never really had the opportunity to date, to play the field. I had no idea what I was doing once I’d left Jackson. Really, I’d had no idea what I was doing, ever. Catching your fiancé having sex with your ‘best friend’ on your wedding day was proof of that.
So now was the time for me to cut loose. New life in New York, full of oat sowing and being young and stupid. That was the plan. Cooper was a little close to home, but that was why I had the rules. And everything would be just fine. Pretty soon, I’d have Passion Pink toes and skin smooth as a baby’s sweet little ass, which was nearly the same thing as being unstoppable.
Cooper
I nodded to the doorman as I stepped into The Compass. It was built in the 20s, a beautiful deco building perched on 5th Avenue. The gleaming foyer was welcoming, warmly lit with gold and cream walls. I walked across the gold compass inlaid in the elevator well and hit the call button.
I’d grown up in this building and had walked the edge of the compass rose a hundred times as a kid as I waited for the elevator with my mom. The gold doors opened in front of me, closing once I waved my key fob over the sensor pad.
My phone buzzed in my pocket with a text.
Simone: Hey, stud. Where can I find you tonight?
I smiled to myself and slipped my phone back in my pocket.
What? If I responded, she’d never give up. In fact, I had dozens of unanswered texts stacked up in my messages.
I told Maggie I’d be monogamous, and I meant it.
When the doors opened again, it was to my private foyer. I walked across the black-and-gold starburst to the black door, unlocking it to step into my quiet apartment.
‘Apartment’ was maybe an understatement, but calling it my penthouse just smacked of douchery.
It had been my parents’ ‘starter home’ — a three-thousand-square-foot penthouse overlooking Central Park. I’d inherited it and had it gutted when I redecorated, but I kept the flooring. Losing it would have been tragic, even though it was a little old fashioned. They were the original parquet floors from 1928, with intricate patterns through the entire apartment. My interior designer brought in dark leathers and deep colors to match, though all the design was clean, bringing it up to date without having to do anything destructive. The woman had talent.
She was a great designer, too.
I headed into my room and kicked off my shoes, reaching behind me to pull off my shirt as I made my way into my closet. The long space was lined with suits and coats, pants and tailored shirts, a few tuxedos. I had more shoes than I was comfortable admitting, and I walked past them all to the built-in drawers, digging around for a T-shirt and jersey pants. And when I was sufficiently comfortable, I headed back into my room, flopped onto my king-sized bed with a sigh, and grabbed the remote to my seventy-inch TV.
Cooper Moore — liver of The Life.
The Habits crew thought I was out living it up with the rich and famous. The rich and famous crew thought I was out just living it up. The truth was that I watched a metric fuckton of Netflix.
Don’t get me wrong. I partied enough. I slept a lot. I went sailing. I read books. Okay, I read comics, but I read a lot of comics. I mean, what else is there to do? I can only survive so many brunches. I’d done the whole party all night, out until dawn, sleep all day life. Drinking, drugs, girls. Summers boozing my way through Europe with my childhood friend Ash and the rest of the elites we grew up with. I can’t say it isn’t fun — it’s definitely fun. But it’s empty. Like trying to exist strictly solely on a diet of candy and Mountain Dew.
Don’t look at me like that. Try eating nothing but candy for one entire day and tell me how you feel.
For a long time, it was enough. In fact, I honestly hadn’t thought all that much about my satisfaction with The Life until recently. Until Maggie, if I were being honest.
I didn’t know how it happened, exactly. Maggie was just West’s little sister, and for much of our friendship, she was just a kid in my eyes. The first time I’d met her was on the day we moved into our dorm, and she was just a sixteen-year-old, big-eyed, brace-faced kid, compared to my very adult eighteen. We weren’t even living in the same universe. I saw her a couple times every year after that, but West was always around. We were never alone, never really hung out. Not even when I went to Jackson with West for Christmas, or when she came to New York to visit.
Plus, she always had a boyfriend. Not that it would have stopped me, if I’d really decided to go after her. But I had more respect for her than that. More respect for West.
But the night of her would-be wedding, everything changed. I saw her for the first time.