“What?” Lilly whirls on him. “No!”
“Really?” He shrugs. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hear you, she went behind your back and you hate him and he’s a stuck-up loser and all of that.”
“He is a turd,” Lilly says witheringly.
“Noted,” Nick agrees. “Total turd. But so much of being successful in this town is about knowing the right people, isn’t it? And it seems like if you want to be a screenwriter, then your cousin’s not a bad guy to, like... know.”
Lilly bites her lip. He’s got a point, obviously. And it’s not like she hasn’t thought about it; in fact, she spent the last twenty-four hours stewing, loudly, until even Junie reached the limits of her patience and told her she had to let it go. But what Lilly doesn’t know how to explain—to Nick, or to her family, or to anyone else—is that accepting help from Colin is as good as acknowledging she isn’t talented enough to make it happen. It’s like admitting she’s been kidding herself this whole time, that maybe she really will only ever get by on luck and connections. That everything everyone ever said about her is true.
“No, of course,” she says finally—hoping she sounds like the kind of person who doesn’t take any of this too seriously, who hasn’t built the entire scaffolding of her identity on a cheerful delusion. “You’re right.”
“But you’re definitely not going to do it.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely not.”
Nick laughs at that—loud and full-throated, throwing his head back. “A woman who knows her own mind,” he says. “I can appreciate that.”
They walk for a while longer without saying anything; the back of his hand brushes hers. He’s wearing what Lilly assumes are his gym clothes, a T-shirt with the sleeves cut out and a New York Rangers hat turned backward. She can only imagine what Will Darcy would say about a grown man walking around in public wearing a backward hat like an extra in a Julia Stiles vehicle from the early aughts, which is only one of a great many reasons why it’s a good thing she doesn’t care what Will Darcy thinks.
“Anyway,” Lilly says finally, “who knows. Maybe I’ll do that dating show after all, let a dozen guys beat the shit out of each other with those big foam Q-Tips for the pleasure of my company.”
“Now that I would like to see.”
“I’m sure you would.” Their shoulders bump, just casual, and she feels the contact sing all down her arm. “What about you?” she asks. “What do you want to do?”
Nick stops walking for a moment, tilting his head to the side. “Like, when I grow up?”
Lilly feels herself blanch. “I—no,” she amends quickly, feeling her face flush.Big talk, she thinks with no small amount of shame,from a woman who’s never had a proper job. “That sounded terrible. I didn’t mean—”
“A little bit you did,” he says, but he’s grinning. “I don’t know.” They’ve reached an overlook and he sits down on a large, flat boulder, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “I guess I’m so used to scraping a living together that I’ve never really hadthat much time to think about it. Like, I’m grateful to be out here where the weather is good and I meet interesting people. I don’t know that I have much of a plan other than that.”
Lilly raises her eyebrows—unsure of whether or not to take him at face value, if maybe he’s protecting his dreams from her in return. “How very Leonardo-DiCaprio-in-Titanicof you,” she teases. “And that, I meant exactly how it sounded.”
Nick laughs. “Screw you.” He reaches for her hand, pulling her down onto the rock beside him. “You want me to fight eleven other guys first?” he asks her quietly, then doesn’t bother to wait for an answer before he presses his mouth against hers.
***
When she gets back to the house she finds her family in the dining room in the middle of a séance—at least, that’s what it looks like, Cinta and Kit and Olivia all sitting sullenly in the dark. “What’s wrong?” Lilly asks, frowning out the window. There’s an unfamiliar sound and it takes her a moment to realize it’s silence, no low humming drone of the A/C. “Did we lose power?”
“Something like that.” Olivia’s voice is ominous.
“It is possible,” their mother says crisply, “that we are a tiny bit behind on the bills.”
“Did anyone call the company?” Lilly asks, three blank, cranky faces staring back at her. “Does anyone even know thenameof the company?”
In the end it’s Lilly who does it, crossing her fingers as she recites her credit card number to the bored-sounding customer service attendant. The lights flicker on, then off, then back on again. Lilly holds her breath.
Chapter Thirteen
Will
Georgia calls on Thursday—or, more accurately, Georgia calls pretty much every night, and Thursday is when Will finally answers the phone. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, instead of hello. He’s making himself a bowl of spaghetti, the water boiling cheerfully on the stovetop in the empty house in Pemberly Grove. Charlie’s doingJimmy Kimmel Live!tonight. “I’m an asshole.”
“You truly are,” she agrees amiably. Georgia is four years younger than Will; she was six when their parents died, with scabby knees and riotous dark curls that made her look like a character fromPeanuts. Now she lives in a doorman building on the Upper West Side and spends her days building custom portfolios and conferencing with Hong Kong. “Did you get my package?”
Will looks around at the half dozen unopened boxes on the counter; in the last week alone she’s also sent a three-gallon tub of pretzel nuggets, a travel humidifier, and a candle that purports to smell like freshly cut grass. “Which one?” he can’t help but ask.
“Yeah, yeah.” He can hear her rolling her eyes all the way across the country. “Sorry for giving a shit about you. I know it makes you want to barf.”
