Elliot yanked her by the elbow, and she stumbled forward into his chest, and she nearly rested her head there, right on his heart, until she realized what she was doing and recoiled.
“Birdie,” he said low, quiet, right in her ear. “Let’s not do this now, make it messier. Come on. Nelson isn’t worth it.” Still, she turned and hissed at Nelson like a pissed-off feline on the way out, just so he was a little scared, a tad intimidated. In high school, Birdie Maxwell couldn’t scare a cricket off their front porch. Now at least she could make someone flinch.
A few minutes later, they were each sitting in his car rigidly, as if any sort of movement might cause them to touch, as if any sort of touching might make them combustible. Birdie tried not tothink about that night they’d spent together seven years ago. How was it seven years when she could still remember the crackle of sparks that ran through her when his fingers snaked over her thighs and up the hem of her dress? How she pressed him against the wall in her apartment foyer, how they couldn’t even wait to make it to the bedroom. How his lips had felt like salvation, how his touch had felt like coming home.
Elliot, Birdie noticed, gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were nearly dead white and didn’t dare look in her direction. Was he thinking about it too? How they braided their legs together in her king-sized bed, how he flipped her on her stomach and straddled her to dig his elbows into her sore spots just below her shoulder blades, then how his palms wound their way to her breasts?
His phone started buzzing as soon as they pulled out of the parking lot. Birdie glanced down at it, then at him, then down at it, then back to him. Elliot was still staring straight ahead as if he couldn’t hear it, which Birdie found suspicious. Ludicrous.
“A girl from one of your ports?” she said.
“No,” he replied. She watched a muscle in his neck twitch. Why were even the muscles in his neck so goddamn alluring?
His phone blared again. This time, Birdie reached for it and flipped it over.
“Francesca,” she said. “So certainly a girl. Possibly not in a port.”
Elliot’s hand shot off the wheel and grabbed the phone. “Do not answer that.”
“Okay, wow,” Birdie said. “It’s cute that you think I’m interested in speaking with one of your girlfriends.”
“She’s not my—” Elliot started, then stopped himself. “Itdoesn’t matter. Also, you don’t seriously think that I can write this article, do you?”
“Because it’s beneath you?”
“What? No, because...” He trailed off, which was just as well. What was he going to say to Birdie, that, yes, covering her love life was beneath him when there were wars being fought, diseases to cure, politicians to expose?
“Is it becauseyouwere the one who wrote it, the letter?” Birdie felt her eyes go wide as soon as the question was out of her mouth. That was the gin and tequila talking, and if she had been in any sort of coherent state, she would never have asked such a thing. This was Elliot O’Brien, childhood crush, one-night stand, and the man who hadn’t reached out to her since. Then, because she really had no self-control evidently, she added, “I mean, let’s be honest, that would actually make a whole lot of sense. You know where I live. Lived. You know my real name. Who’s to say that you, Elliot, don’t regret everything?”
Stop talking stop talking stop talking.
But she couldn’t. Seven years was a long time to stay quiet.
“Because,” she continued, “I’m pretty famous, as you may know; I’m pretty much queen of the mountain, a pretty massive deal. Maybe you realized that I’m the one who got away. I wasn’t just another notch in your very well-notched bedpost. Would you estimate that you haveevermanaged a sustained relationship, other than that with your own ego, or is a revolving door of perpetual women going to be your thing forever?”
Elliot pursed his lips together and didn’t reply, so Birdie let the booze sink in and closed her eyes and eased her head against the window. She was half-asleep when his phone bleated again, and so, too, did hers.
She flipped her cell over in her lap and saw that Imani was calling, though it was well past midnight. Imani calling well past midnight was almost never a good sign. She swiped her screen and jabbed at the speakerphone.
“Are you in some shitty bar telling people to fuck off?” her publicist asked by way of greeting.
Birdie jolted up straighter, and Elliot immediately silenced his own ringer.
“In fact, I am not,” Birdie said, and it wasn’t even a lie. “I am in a car, being escorted home by a very esteemed journalist.”
“Okay.” Imani sighed. “Wereyou in a shitty bar telling people to fuck off?”
“Not people,” Birdie said. “One person. His name is Nelson Pratt, and if I explain what a loser he is, you’ll be glad I didn’t get more graphic.”
“Biiiiirdiiiiieeeee,” her publicist howled.
“Chirp-chirp,” she replied. Goddamn, she was drunk.
“Your little spout-off is all over the internet now. We barely had a chance to dig out of your apology vid—”
“The apology video is onyou!” Birdie interrupted. “I told you it was a terrible idea! YouknowI can’t act when I don’t believe in it!”
“Respectfully, Birdie, you’ve signed on to scripts that shouldn’t have made it out of someone’s 1990s trash files, scripts that my cat could have vomited up, so I don’t buy that for a second,” Imani said.
