by Linde, K. A.
He cracked a smile as we made our way to the bakery. I handed the order form to the baker, and he moved into the back room to collect the cake. I impatiently tapped my foot. I hated to admit it, but Penn’s words made me anxious. Me joining the inner circle of the Upper East Side had negative consequences for Katherine. And I had to stay one or two steps ahead of her if I didn’t want it to backfire on me.
“Oh my god, Natalie, is that you?” an alarmingly fake-tanned woman with a coifed Southern hairdo said. She beamed at me as if I should recognize her. “It is you. Wow! It’s been years. You remember me from high school? Mary Beth Wilson. Well, Buchanan then.” She held up her left hand and showed off the diamond ring. “Five years is right around the corner.”
“Wow, Mary Beth,” I said softly.
I had forgotten all about her. She’d been one of those cheerleader types who didn’t spare me a glance in high school. She didn’t make my life miserable or anything. She simply hadn’t cared about anyone else outside of her circle. And I’d only ever really had Amy.
“Good to see you.”
Mary Beth’s eyes flicked to Penn and back. “And this is your…husband?”
“Boyfriend,” Penn clarified, holding his hand out. “Penn Kensington. Nice to meet you.”
“Well, hello,” Mary Beth said, all flustered as she shook his hand. “You picked a good one, Natalie.”
“Uh, thank you.”
“What have you been up to these days? Busy-bee-ing? Carleton and I have two kids. A girl and a boy, Marianne and Jesse. It’s exhausting, but I love the mom life.”
“That’s great. I moved to New York,” I told her with a shrug. “No kids. Just been writing books and…stuff.” I didn’t know exactly how to explain what else I did.
“Don’t be modest, Natalie,” Penn said. “You wrote a New York Times bestselling novel and live on the Upper West Side.”
“Wow,” Mary Beth said, her eyes bulging. “Congratulations! I will have to tell Carleton about this. You know I still run the alumni club. Maybe we could post a feature in the alumni paper about your book!”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll reach out! I’ll find you on Crew. We can connect.”
“Miss Bishop, your cake,” the man said behind the counter.
I heaved a sigh of relief and grasped the cake out of his hands. “Well, we have to go. Bye, Mary Beth. Great seeing you.”
Then I hustled Penn the hell out of there. I could barely focus as I steered us back to my dad’s car. I passed Penn the cake as I unlocked the car, dropping the keys once before getting it right. Then I sank into the driver’s seat and covered my face.
Penn took his seat. “Well, that was interesting.”
“So fucking embarrassing.”
“Why? To talk about your achievements?”
“I mean, people can know what I do with my life, but, god, it’s so, like, small town. Running into someone I knew in high school. And by knew, I mean, we never spoke more than three words the four years I was there. Now suddenly, I’m with you, and she’s interested in talking to me.”
“What do I have to do with it?”
I snorted. “Everything. She was checking you out.”
“So?”
“I’m sure she was wondering what you were doing with me.”
“And you care…why?”
I rolled my shoulders back and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just awkward. No one cared who I was in high school. Why would she want to write an article about me?”
“Maybe everyone was so self-absorbed in high school that they didn’t think of anything but themselves. You don’t know her or what her motives are. And you aren’t the person you were then. She should want to write about your accomplishments.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “God, no matter where you go, high school follows you, doesn’t it?”
He frowned and glanced down. “Yeah, it does.”
I tilted my head back. “Was I a total spaz?”
“I find it endearing if it helps anything.”
“Well, let’s try to get through this engagement party and not mention anything that just happened in there. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Chapter 22
Natalie
Luckily, the party was in full swing when we showed back up with the cake. I had to endure a nice little lecture from my dad about “stealing” his car. But it was worth it for the drive. Even if I was still off-kilter because of Mary Beth Wilson, née Buchanan. And I still couldn’t figure out why it had freaked me out so much. I could deal with the likes of Katherine Van Pelt, but get all worked up over Mary Beth? Pathetic.
“You saw Mary Beth?” Amy said, bending at the waist and laughing hysterically. “How did that go?”
“Awful. I was a spaz, and she was checking out Penn the whole time.”
“Of course she was. He’s the hottest guy in, like, existence. Not my type, but you know, for people like her, he’s the cream of the crop.”
“Awkward.”
“Def,” Amy agreed.
“Am I a total weirdo for getting all worked up over some person I hardly even recognized?”
“Nah. It happens. You’re in a different place in your life. It brought you back to reality to see someone like her. It’ll pass.”
I took another sip of the Coke I’d snagged from the cooler.
“Penn looks like he’s having a really good time,” Amy said with loaded sarcasm. “I’ve never seen him dressed down. Does he normally wear jeans and a T-shirt?”
“No,” I admitted. “He’s so far out of his comfort zone, it might as well be another planet.”
“At least he didn’t freak out on Mary Beth.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m never living that down.”
“Nope. Anyway, Penn can charm, like, anyone. Half of the party probably wants to bang him, and the other half is uncertain about their masculinity around him.” Amy tapped her finger to her lips. “Actually, I’d wager more than half want to bang him.”
“You’re the best friend a girl could ask for,” I said with a nudge of my shoulder.
“Duh.” Amy groaned. “Don’t look now. A troop of Melanie’s little college friends is approaching.”
I took another sip of my Coke and wished I’d grabbed a beer even though I didn’t really like it. I only recognized one of the girls, Marina. Her family owned a boating company, and her brother, Daron, was my age.
“Hey, Natalie,” Marina said with a wide-grinned smile.
She was like girl next door met town sweetheart. I was certain my sister corrupted her on a regular basis.
“Good to see you, Marina.”
“This is Tatum,” she said, gesturing to a brunette with a pixie cut and then a curly-haired ginger, “and Christy.”
“Are you really living in New York?” Christy asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I moved there last year.”
“That is so cool,” Tatum said in a monotone drawl that could have been sarcasm. I wasn’t sure.
“Thanks.”
“Is it true that your boyfriend is the son of the mayor of New York City?” Christy asked.
I startled. “Um…yeah. Penn’s mom is the mayor. How did you know?”
“Oh, it’s all over the Charleston High Crew page,” Marina said.
She pulled her phone out and showed it to me. I took it and saw with deep, deep regret that none other than Mary Beth had posted all about me in the alumni group that I hadn’t known existed.
“Shit,” Amy said, barely containing a laugh. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Was she good at much in school other than gossip?” I asked Amy as I passed the phone back to Marina.
A few other girls had congregated around me. A crowd was forming. Great.
“Are you really a socialite?” Christy asked. “Like, you have designers dress you and you go to, like, Fashion Week events and charity functions?”
I opened m
y mouth and then closed it.
“Yeah, I found her Influencer page,” another girl said. “She has sixty thousand followers.”
“Jesus, did it increase that much over the week?” I asked.
Christy looked at me with hero worship in her eyes. “How do you do it? You were, like, a nobody in high school, and now, you’re somebody.”
“Wow, thanks,” I muttered sarcastically. “Amy? Some help?”
“Nope. You got this one,” she said with a snicker.
“Well, when I was working in the Hamptons, I met a group of people who lived on the Upper East Side. We became…friends. And they assimilated me into their group. I started dating Penn. And now…I guess this is part of my life.”
A way, way dumbed-down version of reality. But as much as I could feed these gossip-hungry girls. I hadn’t expected Mary Beth to tell the entire world of Charleston what I was up to. Or that it would permeate through our town so fast. Or that anyone would even care.
“Melanie told me you were living an awesome life in New York, but it’s different, really knowing,” Marina explained. “You’re like a celebrity with a celebrity boyfriend.”
I glanced up at Penn in the distance, hoping he would see the sea of girls desperate to know more about my life. But he was with a few of the other guys, drinking beer—which I’d never seen him do—and joking around. No saving for me.
“I’m not a celebrity,” I said. “Just…I live a different life than I did here.”
They kept chattering, bouncing more questions off of me, and searching through my page right in front of me. I realized then why this bothered me. Why Mary Beth had bothered me. Why it all felt so wrong.
I’d thought I was coming home to escape. Letting my world in New York slide off my shoulders. That I could slip back into my Natalie Bishop shoes here in Charleston. Be the loner girl who’d only had one friend and no one knew. The girl who liked to live in libraries and write stories and swim a lot.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I’d brought the Upper East Side with me. It was a second skin now. And I couldn’t just take it off and be me. The two sides of me were so perfectly overlapped that there was only one me anymore.
I understood now, when I hadn’t fully grasped it from Penn before, that I couldn’t escape the Upper East Side. He’d said he wanted to escape, but he couldn’t. I’d thought that it would be so easy. But it had followed me here of all places. To the grocery store and my sister’s engagement party and a crowd of preening college freshmen.
If I couldn’t escape it here after only such a short period of time, how could Penn hope to leave it behind when he’d been in it his whole life?
“All right, ladies, let’s give Natalie a breath of air,” Michael said over the questions from Melanie’s friends.
I didn’t realize that the crowd had grown and grown as word spread, that half the party was hanging around me. Melanie was standing next to Marina, filling her in on all of my amazing adventures at Fashion Week.
“Back it up. Natalie needs some of her own space now.” He flicked his hands to push all of her friends out of my face.
And I thought it was nice. Maybe the nicest thing that Michael had ever done for me.
Then he faced me, and I saw rage on his features.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
I straightened at his words. At the anger in them. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You think this whole party is about you?”
“No,” I spat.
“Then fucking act like it, Natalie. God, this is about me and Melanie. It’s our day. You don’t have to come in and try to take over the spotlight just because you’re some whore to a guy with money.”
My jaw tightened. “You should rethink what you’re about to say.”
“I don’t have to rethink anything,” he snarled.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Because I told Melanie that I wouldn’t.”
“I’m sure that you’re the attention whore. It’s what you’ve always been. You think you’re so cool, being the loner, but you’re just desperate for people to see you. And I see you. I see you for what you really are—nothing.”
I wouldn’t stand here and let him talk to me like that. If the Upper East Side had to follow me around, then I’d use the Upper East Side for what it was really good for.
“Michael, I watched you break my sister’s heart so that you could take her best friend to homecoming. I watched her cry all weekend while you fucked her best friend,” I said, stepping toward him. “I saw how she took you back, and I see the shell of a woman she is now when she’s around you. I see the abuse and harassment and debasement. So, you can stand there and tell me that I’m nothing, but those words are wasted on me. I’m not going to cry and grovel to you because your daddy has money while you’re a worthless piece of shit.” I blinked at him, giving him the same look I’d seen Katherine give to people she believed were beneath her. “But if you hurt my sister or try to talk to me like this again, then I’ll make sure that your life is a living hell. I will ruin you. Wreck you. I will make you wish that you’d never been born. And don’t doubt that I can do exactly that. You have no idea the resources at my disposal.”
I waited. Staring him down like the flea that he was. Waiting for him to snarl back at me like I was the bad person.
But he backed up a step. Losing ground to me as he took in my words. As he saw the dead certainty in my expression.
“You can leave now,” I said, waving my hand at him.
He gritted his teeth and then stormed off as if he were about to go find Melanie. But I couldn’t even seem to care.
My eyes found Penn’s across the backyard. He looked concerned as if he’d seen what had just happened and disapproved. But he hadn’t been able to hear what was said. And I couldn’t face what I’d had to do to that prick…even if he deserved it.
I just walked out the side exit around to the front of the house. My hands shook when I took a seat on the front steps.
Amy appeared a few minutes later. I’d been expecting Penn.
“Hey there, bestie,” she said. “I told Penn to let me take this one.”
I released a giant breath. “I hate him.”
“Yeah, Michael is a real dick. But whoa, Nat, I didn’t even know you had that in you to tell him off like that. I’ve never seen you fight dirty. Even to people who deserve it.”
“I know,” I whispered. “Am I becoming like them?”
“Like the people who hurt you?”
I nodded. Fear trickling into my voice. “Like Katherine and Lewis and Penn and all the other people in New York.”
“Maybe they’re bringing out the fighter in you. Michael had it coming after all.”
“He did,” I agreed easily. “But did I have to make him crawl like a worm?”
“Personally, I enjoyed it.” She sank into the seat next to me and nudged me with her shoulder. “Just remember that you have something none of those Upper East Siders were born with.”
“What’s that?”
“A moral code. You know when right is right and wrong is wrong. You’ll know if you go overboard. You can pull yourself back. And anyway, I think Penn likes you too much to see you become a bad person.”
I sighed. I didn’t know how to say that I’d thrown out my moral code after Katherine and Lewis ruined my life. She knew what I’d planned for them, but she didn’t know what lengths I planned to go. What I’d do to make them pay. Maybe…maybe I didn’t even know. Maybe I’d find out and pull back, just like Amy had said. Maybe, in the end, it wouldn’t be worth it.
But as I stared that future in the face, I couldn’t imagine stopping. And I didn’t know what scared me more.
Chapter 23
Natalie
The rest of the party had gone off without a hitch. Melanie had been preoccupied with her friends, and Penn had been suspiciously quiet. So, I never got to talk to either of them about what had happened
.
I awoke the next morning with a sinking pit in my stomach. I needed to talk to Melanie. Sure, Michael had had it coming for being a dick. But I had promised Mel that I wouldn’t say anything. The last thing I wanted was for her to be mad at me since I was sure Michael wouldn’t give the full story.
After throwing on a pair of sweats and an old Grimke University T-shirt I’d found in one of my drawers, I headed down the stairs, hoping to find Mel alone. She was lying out on the couch with the blankets pulled up to her chin. Her normally perfectly straight brown hair was pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head. She didn’t have on a lick of makeup. And she was the prettiest I’d ever seen her.
“Nat,” she grumbled. “You’re up early.”
“So are you.”
She yawned dramatically. “Dad left for work at the crack of dawn, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. Mom made me some tea before heading to the shop.”
“Did she read for you out of it, too?” I asked, sinking into the armchair.
“Thankfully, no.”
“Lucky.”
She yawned again. “Are you up for good? Maybe I could snag your room.”
“Sure. I just wanted to talk to you a minute about last night.”
Melanie’s smile brightened. “Oh, good! I wanted to talk to you, too. I wanted to thank you for being so nice to Michael. I know how you feel about him, and it meant a lot to see you two get along.”
“It…did?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah. You were the highlight of the party. Such a hit with all of my friends. I mean, honestly, how do you even have sixty thousand connections?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
“Well, it’s so cool! And everyone agrees.”
“And Michael didn’t say anything else to you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“About what?”
“What he thought of the party?”
“Sure. He said he had a great time. I know he was so glad that you and Penn could make it.”
I stared at my sister. Was I in some alternate universe? I’d been sure that Michael would run straight to Melanie and whine about how I’d treated him. It was almost too good to be true that Melanie hadn’t even noticed our confrontation. That she had been so caught up in her friends that she missed the whole thing.
