The Dirty Truth, page 7
“Not right now, man,” West says in a bro-to-bro kind of tone he must reserve for his fans and stans.
The smile evaporates from the poor guy’s face, and he slides his phone away as quickly as he got it out.
“Of course. Sorry,” he mutters, lifting a hand and offering an apologetic wave.
“He only takes pictures he can photoshop,” I tell the guy before he scurries off.
West shoots me a pointed look.
The guy stops in his tracks, carefully reaching for his cell. “I can use one of those Snapchat filters . . .”
“Yes, great idea. Give me your phone.” I wait for him to ready the filter before grabbing his phone, and then I motion for the two of them to stand closer. “Okay, one . . . two . . . three.”
The guy wears an ear-wide smile and flashes a peace sign while West gives his signature devil-may-care smirk.
“Here you are.” I hand the phone back. “And don’t worry, West—your skin looked flawless in that one. No Photoshop necessary.”
Not that he needs it anyway . . . he’s the epitome of human perfection in its physical form.
The guy heads off, and I shoot West a wink.
“You just made his day,” I tell him. “Do you always say no to selfies?”
“Plenty of people say no to selfies . . .”
A tepid draft of early-evening wind ruffles my hair and sends a chill through my thin pajamas—a wordless push to wrap things up and get inside.
“So?” I ask. “Did you say all the things you came here to say? Wait . . . what did you come here to say?”
His perfect nostrils flare from his perfectly straight nose, and he gifts me with weighted scrutiny.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” he asks. “Too busy giving me what for.”
“To be fair, your presence is unnerving,” I say, purposely neglecting to add that his looks are distracting. “But I think you came here to tell me you’re not superficial and I was wrong.”
“Close enough.”
We linger in some surreal sort of limbo, unmoving, eyes locked.
“Also, I’d like to remind you of the NDA you signed when you first started as well as the five-year noncompete clause in your contract.” He checks his phone and slides it away.
I’d almost forgotten about the noncompete clause, the one that prevents me from working at another magazine for a period of five years after leaving Made Man. When I first signed it, I was told it was an industry standard. Now I know it was just a manipulative tactic on West’s part to keep people from leaving. I suppose you don’t build a media empire by being Mr. Nice Guy.
Either way, I’m done with magazines.
I’ll write phone books if I have to.
Anything to keep from working for West Maxwell ever again.
CHAPTER TEN
WEST
“Who were you talking to on that bench earlier today?” I ask Scarlett when I get home. Of course I didn’t see her talking to anyone at the time, but now that I know about her little exchange with Elle, I want her to think I have eyes all over the city.
“Hey to you too, Uncle West.” She rolls her eyes, flipping through an old issue of Made Man as she reclines on the vintage leather Chesterfield in my study.
“I don’t want you talking to strangers anymore, you understand?” I loosen my tie.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stranger danger.” She fights a teasing grin.
“It’s not a laughing matter, Scarlett. The city’s full of insidious types who’d love nothing more than to make your life a living nightmare. Gangbangers. Traffickers. People ready to exploit you without a second thought. Or worse.”
As much hell as this kid gives me, I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her.
Taking care of her is the only thing anyone has ever asked me to do in this life—and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Keep her safe. Educate her. Prepare her for the real world while also ensuring she’s molded into a respectable (and self-respecting) member of society.
“Anyway, no more talking to people you don’t know.” I jerk my tie from my neck.
“That lady was really nice.” Scarlett licks a finger and flicks to the next page. There’s nothing in that magazine that could possibly be of interest to a high school freshman. “She said she just quit her job . . . that her boss was a jerk.”
Sounds about right.
An image of Elle flashes in my mind’s eye—the way she stood there on the sidewalk in her pink satin pajamas, her cardigan barely covering her nearly transparent camisole and her hair a bedheaded mess at five o’clock in the evening. While she stood there giving me what for (and then some), the woman didn’t have a care in the world. She stood up for herself and her beliefs, and whether or not I agree with her, I have to admit it was sexy as hell listening to that pretty little mess with great big opinions put me in my place in a way that hasn’t been done since a lifetime ago.
“Inspiring,” I say before moving on. “You have homework, I presume?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Eh.”
Smart-ass.
“Uncle West, can I go back to Nebraska this summer?” Her round eyes plead as she softens her tone. “Please? I miss my friends. I literally have zero friends here . . .”
“Maybe if you weren’t so busy skipping class, you’d actually have some by now. Kind of hard to get to know people when you’re never there.”
“They suck.” She pouts. “And the feeling is mutual because they all think I suck too.”
“And you know that how?”
“No one talks to me. Sometimes people stare,” she says. “And most of the time I eat lunch in the bathroom, but on the days when someone blows it out, I can’t, so on those days I just don’t eat at all, and then by the middle of the afternoon my stomach is growling super loud, and it’s so embarrassing.”
She shrinks back against the leather with a dramatic groan.
“Some people have real problems, Scarlett.” I fold my tie and shove it in my pocket. “Pretty sure my day was worse than yours.”
I’m not one to one-up a teenager, but I’m making an exception today in hopes that sharing some common ground might help her relate to me a bit more. It doesn’t matter who someone is or how much money they have; no one is immune to bad days.
“Try me.” She flicks to another page.
“I’m in the middle of an enormous merger, and my best staff writer quit without warning,” I say. “And not only that, but she made it clear on her way out that she thinks I’m the worst kind of human being.”
“Since when have you cared what anyone thinks of you?”
Her point is fair, though I can’t begin to answer the question. While the internet is littered with all varieties of opinions about me, Elle’s words cut deeper than all of them combined.
With a single article, she undermined my entire life’s work and reduced it to garbage.
If she only knew . . .
“You’re, like, emotionally bulletproof,” Scarlett says. “That’s what Grandma always used to say.”
Yes, my mother did use to say that about me. Though it was never intended to be a compliment, I learned to use it to my advantage, and it’s served me well.
“Oh my God.” My niece bolts up, the issue of Made Man carelessly wrinkled between her petite hands. “It’s her! It’s the lady from this morning.”
Flipping the magazine around, she all but shoves it in my face, and sure enough, it’s Elle’s column from February of this year . . . “The Dirty Truth about Valentine’s Day.” I feast my gaze on the professional headshot of Elle tucked in the corner of her write-up, a flawless portrait of a gorgeous brunette with glossy waves and juicy red lips tugged into a sultry, sexy grin.
Years ago, I selected her based on her writing prowess alone, and when readers began writing in about how much they loved the column and how they wanted to see the face of the woman behind it, I had Tom book her a photo shoot with full hair, makeup, and wardrobe. From then on, I instructed my team to include her photo alongside her column.
The readers went nuts—understandably so.
Not only were Elle’s articles witty, personable, and on point, but her beauty was second to none. She wasn’t so stunning that she felt plastic and out of reach for the average reader, but she was, without question, a bona fide head turner. The quintessential girl next door with an edge. Almost immediately readers wrote in asking if she was single, and I even fielded a few calls from associates all over the world wanting to know if I’d arrange a meetup for them next time they were in town.
I refused, of course, in the name of boundaries and professionalism. But deep down, I couldn’t stand the thought of someone I knew having the one thing I couldn’t.
I drag in a hard breath and clench my fist around my tie.
Elle Napier has royally screwed me over, not just professionally but personally.
With her sharp, pointed chin and piercing ocean eyes, she owns you without even trying—though I get the sense she’s not exactly aware of the kind of power she wields with a single glance.
“Wait . . .” Scarlett’s nose wrinkles. “That lady said she quit her job today . . . you said your best writer just quit. She writes for your magazine. Are you the jerk boss?”
“Smart girl.” I head for the doorway.
Scarlett cackles. “Idiot uncle.”
“I’m going to change. Why don’t you get cleaned up for dinner? We still need to finish our conversation from this morning.”
“And after that we can discuss me moving back to Whitebridge for the summer.”
Halting in my spot, I lift a hand. “Not a fucking chance.”
“Two weeks?” She clasps her hands together. “Just two weeks to see my friends?”
“I can’t even trust you alone for two hours.”
“Then come with me.” She cocks a hip and folds her arms. “You can supervise me, and you’ll know everyone I’m with at all times.”
“You can’t pay me enough to set foot in that town ever again.” It was bad enough I had to fly to Nebraska for the court hearings and proceedings in my three-year battle to gain full custody of Scarlett. Compound that with a shitty childhood and two decades of bad memories, and I’ve had a lifetime’s fill of Whitebridge.
In an instant, her eyes begin to well, her lower lip quivers, and she tips her chin down.
My chest tightens.
I can’t do tears.
And I especially can’t do them from my niece, who’s been through unimaginable circumstances in her short fourteen years.
“Scarlett . . .” I drag my palm along my five-o’clock shadow. “We’ll talk over dinner, okay?”
She dries her tears on the back of her hand, and I realize I just gave her hope. False hope. The Fyre Festival equivalent of hope, as Elle Napier would say.
“So you’ll think about it?” she asks.
“I said we’d talk.”
“So that’s a no . . .” The lilt in her voice is gone, replaced with a quaver.
I need to figure out what to do with her this summer—anything to avoid sending her back to that shithole town.
“You’re better off here than there, Scarlett. I promise,” I say. While this stage of our relationship is still shiny and new, until she learns to trust me, my words are empty. Sound and wasted air. I’m hopeful that with time she’ll learn that I did what I did for her. For now, I’m just some long-lost uncle who ripped her out of the only home she’d ever known and dropped her into a strange and unwelcoming universe. I don’t blame her for resenting me. “Now, I’m going to get changed. Meet me in the dining room in ten. I asked Bettina to make that dish you liked from the other week—those filets with the balsamic reduction.”
Scarlett lifts her hands as if she’s “raising the roof”—a sarcastic move if I’ve ever seen one.
I let it go, disappearing into my room to peel out of my work clothes and change into jeans and a T-shirt.
When I get back, Scarlett’s dining chair is vacant.
Once again, she’s nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLE
“I didn’t realize where we were . . .” Indie bites her lip and offers an apologetic wince as we approach Matt’s apartment building on Sutton Place.
An hour ago, I was standing outside having one of the strangest conversations of my life with West Maxwell. I was so worked up when I got back to my place that Indie insisted on a walk-and-talk. Only now we’ve been walking and talking for an hour, only to wind up mere yards from the place where my life almost came to a permanent end.
“It’s fine.” I nudge her along and motion for her to keep going. “I doubt he lives here anymore anyway.”
“Unless his wife kicked him out and he has no choice but to live here . . .”
“This is true.” I think about her again. Claudia is her name—a detail I only learned recently after a late-night deep dive into Matt’s real identity. Even the last name he gave me when we were together was fake—which makes sense in retrospect given that I could never find anything about him online. Early in our relationship, he told me he hated social media and that he preferred to live his life away from all that “nonsense.” Like a fool, I adored that about him. “It’s okay. I’m bound to run into him sooner or later. This city’s like a giant small town.”
“What would you even say?” Indie asks. “Have you thought about that?”
As soon as I stopped taking Matt’s calls and had my mother change my phone number, he sent me letters for weeks, detailing his marital problems and professing his love for me. He claimed he only stayed with Claudia because of the kids but that his heart would forever be mine.
I shredded each and every letter he sent after the first one without so much as opening them.
“Oh, I have fictional confrontations with him in my head all the time,” I say. “Or I used to. I’m starting not to care as much lately. I think about his wife more than I think of him now . . . can you imagine? Marrying him and having his babies, and that’s how he repays you? By spending your trust fund money on a city apartment so he can screw some younger woman?”
“So cliché.” Indie shakes her head.
“And revolting.” I grip my throat as it burns with bile. “It makes me sick that I was even a part of that equation.”
“Babe, you had no idea.”
“Yeah, but I should’ve known. Instead I was following him blindly all around town and believing every word that came out of his mouth without a second thought.”
“Love makes people do stupid things. It’s science. There’s a chemical involved or something.”
“Is it even love if you can flip it off like a switch?” I glance up at a fourth-floor window I know to be his, and my stomach drops when I find the light is on.
We’d been together a whirlwind three months when he dropped the L-word, and I was so inspired by his bravery and conviction (because in my experience, most men would rather take a dull butter knife to their genitalia than utter that word so soon) that I even wrote an article called “The Dirty Truth about Saying I Love You.”
Without naming his name, I sang his praises like a lovesick puppy.
“Feels like a lifetime since I’ve been up there.” I sigh, stopping by the doors I used to traipse through with a million-dollar smile on my face and my finest perfume wafting behind me. Ernie, the doorman, would greet me with his usual “How you doin’ tonight, Miss Napier?” And I’d stop to catch up with him for a minute or two, letting him fill me in on his baby grandson’s latest milestone. “Can’t believe it’s only been a couple of months.”
“A lot has changed since then.”
“Everything has changed.”
“Why are we stopping?” Indie eyes the front door, pointing. “You’re not going up there, are you?”
“Hell no.” I laugh at the notion. “I was just thinking about that day.”
Funny how a single moment in time will live forever in my memory as simply that day.
My mother once referred to my aneurysm as an earthquake, reminding me that sometimes you survive the damage and sometimes you don’t, but once you’ve been hit, things are never the same. You have to rebuild. And she went on to say that no earthquake is without aftershocks—little waves that affect everyone in your vicinity in some capacity.
Clips of that fateful morning play in a loop in my memory, some more vivid than others.
The blinding, searing pain in my skull.
The jangle of my keys as they hit the tile floor before I did.
His wife in the doorway with her sad, dark eyes.
The wailing of the ambulance sirens.
The darkness blanketing me.
The smell of antiseptic that filled my nostrils as I woke to an array of wires and machines spouting off my vital signs in some Manhattan hospital room.
The silver-haired doctor who told me how lucky I was to be alive—after he told me I’d died.
I asked for Matt for days before my mother finally told me the truth—at least the truth as it had been relayed to her second- or thirdhand. Apparently after I’d blacked out, his wife had called 911, and as they’d loaded me inside the back of the ambulance, she’d told a young paramedic, “The only thing I know about this woman is that she’s been fucking my husband.” And then she disappeared into the crowd of onlookers that had gathered to watch the spectacle.
I don’t blame her for leaving.
She didn’t owe me a damn thing.
A Matt-size shadow fills Matt’s apartment window, jerking me back into the present moment. Hooking my hand into Indie’s elbow, I jerk her along and get the hell out of there before he notices.
I’d hate for him to think I’m standing here missing the way we were.
Maybe I can’t rewrite the past, but today I turned the page on a new chapter.
Fingers crossed this one doesn’t end with another earthquake.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WEST
“I swear to God, Scarlett,” I say the second the cops leave. “I had the whole damn city looking for you; do you realize that?”
