Kaliq was sort of surprised that Brianna wanted to talk to him at all, but he was grateful because it meant he didn’t have to avoid talking to Lexie anymore. “That’s a good school.”
“Yeah, and I don’t ever have to wear a stupid Willard uniform again,” Bree added excitedly, already regretting how childish she sounded. Then she remembered something that wouldn’t make her sound childish at all. She inched a little closer to Kaliq’s ear. He smelled like freshly laundered clothes and that heart-stoppingly delicious Hermès cologne he always wore. “I have a tab of E in my bag. Someone gave it to me at the Croton School when I was visiting. I don’t even know if we can even split one tab, but…” She smiled her coyest come-hither smile.
What a flirt, what a risk-taker the new, on-her-way-to-boarding-school Bree Hargrove was!
Kaliq blinked. Brianna wasn’t just talking to him, she was flirting with him—hard. What, did she think he’d just gulp down a tab of E and hook up with her right in the middle of the Yale Club lounge, surrounded by everyone he knew, including his ex-girlfriend Porsha and his he-wasn’t-really-sure-but-he-figured-she-was-probably-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Chanel?
Had that ever stopped him before?
Kaliq had only taken Ecstasy a couple of times with Charlie, Anthony, and Jeremy, but both times he’d enjoyed himself immensely. There was nothing like that good, groovy, E feeling—until it wore off and you were tired and dehydrated and just wanted to float in a bucket of water. He was definitely feeling lower right now than he ever had in his entire life. Maybe a little E with little Brianna Hargrove—who seemed to be getting even cuter with age—was just what he needed.
Bree could see that Kaliq was tempted. Empowered by her ability to snare fine older boys with her seductive ways, she breathed lustily into his ear. “Let’s go into the bathroom and do it.”
Hello? Does she not remember what happened the last time she was alone in a bathroom with a horny older boy?
38
Porsha was in a stall in one of the Yale Club’s pristine and elegant gold-accented ladies’ rooms, wondering at the fact that she hadn’t made herself sick in over a month, when she heard the first worrying rumors.
“I heard he wasn’t even a real lord. He’s just this English guy who came over here and pretended to be this big aristocrat. I bet he doesn’t go on fox hunts or wear a top hat and tails to dinner or anything like that,” Lauren blathered from the stall next to Porsha’s.
"I heard he's been, like, betrothed to some royal English girl since he was barely two years old. I haven’t seen a picture of her, but having witnessed how quickly he snapped up on Porsh, my guess is she’s probably not much of a looker, and he’s probably not too thrilled about marrying her," Rain piped up from her stall.
“I just think it’s really shitty of him. I mean, if he’s engaged to some girl in England, that means he’s actually cheating on both of them,” Imani replied carelessly as she spritzed her hair with a sample-size bottle of hairspray for the third time that night. “I just love the way this stuff smells. Don’t you love the way it smells? I even put in on my clothes sometimes, even though I know that’s kind of gross. I mean, it’s hairspray!”
Porsha kept the pleated satin skirt of her white suit hitched up so the girls wouldn’t recognize it. Were they talking about Lord Marcus?
“I just think someone should tell her,” Lauren declared before flushing. She pushed the stall door open and began to wash her hands with the lemon peel foam hand wash provided by the Yale Club. “Don’t you?”
“Definitely,” Imani and Rain agreed.
Like they’d ever have the nerve.
Porsha waited until they’d gone before pushing open the stall door. Her stomach was roiling from all the vodka and champagne she’d drunk in the last few hours, but she wasn’t about to resort to puking and risk splattering the skirt of her exquisite suit.
What do they know about Marcus? she fumed. Their petty jealousy was so transparent, it made her even more nauseous just thinking about it. Of course he was a lord. Hadn’t they noticed his wonderful scuff-free shoes? The flawless way his hair was cut? The tailor-made seams of his shirts? Hadn’t they heard the way he called her “gorgeous” and “darling” and kissed her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world? There’d been no mention of a fiancée when Porsha had Googled him. No fucking way was he engaged—to anyone but her. She closed her eyes dreamily. Lady Porsha Rhodes—it did have a nice ring to it.
The bathroom door swung open and Alexis marched in, looking frazzled because her satin Dior hair clip had come loose while she was dancing. Alexis was always such a freak about her 24-inch weave, Porsha wondered why she didn’t just cut it all off.
“Oh. You’re in here,” Alexis observed, making it obvious that she’d just been part of Imani, Lauren, and Rain's ongoing dissection of the so-called Lord Marcus. “I guess I should be the one to tell you.” She lowered her voice to let Porsha know that what she had to tell her was extremely important. “Before you get hurt.”
Like she actually cared?
Porsha narrowed her eyes, glaring icily at Alexis's reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. “Tell me what?”
Alexis tucked a few stray Malaysian hairs behind her ears, then frowned and ripped out the hair clip, starting all over again. “That Lord Marcus guy is married,” she told her matter-of-factly, wincing with effort as she tried to get her ponytail completely smooth and lump-free.
Porsha smeared lip gloss over her lips for the seventh time in five minutes. She was so mad, she thought she just might throw up after all. “Bullshit.”
Alexis rolled her curly-lashed brown eyes and sighed as if she were already totally bored with the subject matter. “Well, almost. He’s engaged. He’s been engaged since he was, like, ten years old. You know, like Lady Diana and Prince Charles?”
Porsha spun away from the mirror, her fists clenched tightly to keep from strangling Alexis's ostrich-like neck. “And where exactly did you hear that?”
Alexis shrugged her shoulders maddeningly. “Everybody knows. It’s, like, a fact.”
Depending on your definition of the word fact.
“That’s the stupidest—” Porsha was about to try and defend Lord Marcus’s honor, but she stopped herself. They were young, they were in love—who cared what anyone thought? Even if there was some boring girl back in England that Lord Marcus was supposed to marry, she probably looked like Queen Victoria and sat on her fat ass in her castle eating crumpets all day, wondering why Lord Marcus never called.
Alexis smiled at her reflection, finally satisfied. “I just thought you should know.” She shrugged her shoulders and then cocked her overwaxed eyebrows at Porsha. “Wanna come have a cigarette with us?” she offered, as if they were all still thirteen years old and only smoked in groups.
“No.” Porsha pushed past her and out the bathroom door. She peeked into the insanely crowded lounge, but the chair where she and Lord Marcus had been sitting together was now occupied by Kaliq’s loud, stoned, skinny friend, Jeremy and some skanky French girl trying to teach him how to blow heart-shaped smoke rings. Lord Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Porsha fingered the Gucci pearl choker and teetered down the hall to the elevator.
All night she’d wanted to get Lord Marcus alone in his suite. Now was her chance.
39
Mekhi’s cigarette hand shook violently as he watched his sister disappear into the men’s room, followed by that arrogant stoner prince of the Upper East Side, Kaliq Braxton. Bree seemed to be getting bolder and more self-assured as the year progressed, while he seemed to be regressing back to the girl-less, friendless loser he’d been up until this year. She’d even wrangled her way into boarding school way after admissions for next year were closed, while he’d whittled his options down to nothing.
The music was really loud now, and Yasmine and Chanel had inspired half the room to get up and dance. Yasmine had kicked off her wedges, baring her black-polished toes and deeply arched feet
. Mekhi loved to kiss the arches of her feet. He could write sonnets about the arches of her feet. But that was back when Yasmine didn’t drink or dance or wear white or wear anything but black jeans, black knee socks, and Doc Martens. She seemed so different now—if he were to write a poem about her, he wasn’t sure where he’d begin.
Yasmine danced over to him and snaked her arms around his neck. Her cinnamon skin was slick was sweat and her eyelids were heavy from all the vodka she’d consumed. “I do love you, Mekhi. I really do,” she breathed hotly into his ear before shimmying away again, her whole body aglow. Mekhi stared after her, honestly believing that she did love him. She just didn’t need him with her—not all the time. She was too busy shedding her lumpy black cocoon and transforming into a shimmering white-winged moth.
But he’d already deferred his admission at Evergreen. What was he supposed to do now?
Lighting a Newport, he thought about barging into the men’s room to rescue Bree just for old times’ sake and because such a noble act might make him feel better, but he was sick of always being the responsible older brother. Why couldn’t someone rescue him for a change?
Okay.
“Son? Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Mekhi dropped his cigarette on the oriental carpet, nearly jumping out of his faded blue Vans in surprise. It was his dad, in his favorite sweatpants and black Mets T-shirt, looking tipsy from too much red wine.
“I guess,” Mekhi responded slowly. The music in the lounge was absurdly loud. Mekhi led Rufus outside.
Out on Vanderbilt Avenue, the air was steamy and the sidewalks glittered black. Across the street, Grand Central Station looked like a giant relic of the city’s past. A metallic blue '77 Buick Skylark—another relic from the past—was parked outside the Yale Club, looking completely out of place. Two skinny L’École girls were sitting on the curb having a fight and behind them, their gold toe-ring sandals lay discarded in a pile. Suddenly they started kissing.
“Jesus,” Rufus muttered, tugging on his matted salt-and-pepper beard, which resembled a used Brillo pad.
“What, Dad?” Mekhi whined impatiently. It was kind of embarrassing standing outside the party with his father. He felt like he was eleven years old.
Rufus tucked his hands inside the stretched-out waistband of his sweatpants and Mekhi flinched at how unattractive the gesture was.
“After you left you got a call from some raving Greek professor at Evergreen. First he was going nuts about how you were supposed to sleep in his hammock and eat grape leaves with him, but then he started waxing philosophical about how kids your age can’t differentiate between sex and love. Apparently he’s quite an expert on the subject. Anyway, I talked to him for a while, and what it came down to was, he’s going to make them hold your place open for the fall, a) because I asked him to and b) because he was supposed to be your advisor and he wants you to help him with his book and c) because we both like you, even though you’re a knucklehead.”
Mekhi resented his dad’s fond, vaguely patronizing tone. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he countered, crossing his hands over his chest and sounding younger by the minute. “You can’t.”
“That’s true,” Rufus agreed. He gestured toward the funky vintage Buick parked outside the Yale Club. “But I already got you the car. The least you could do is let me teach you how to drive it this summer and then get the hell out of here.”
Mekhi had read about epiphanies and written about epiphanies, but he’d never actually had one. He’d gotten into nearly every college he applied to. He’d had a poem published in the New Yorker. And what was he going to do next year—work at a bookstore or wait tables to keep busy while Yasmine was in class?
“I could take the summer to work things out,” he allowed, unwilling to let his father think he could be that easily persuaded. He and Yasmine could spend the summer hanging out whenever she wasn’t busy working on that movie and he wasn’t busy driving around in that…chick magnet. Who knew? Maybe there’d be other girls to love besides Yasmine—all he had to do was get his license and drive out west to find out.
Rufus reached out to clap him on the back, but Mekhi opened up his arms and gave his dad a hug. “This party was kind of lame anyway,” he confessed.
Rufus grunted and led him over to the car, which was basking in its own coolness under a streetlamp near the curb. “Then how 'bout I give you your first driving lesson?”
Aw. Don’t you just love happy endings?
40
Bree latched the door to the handicapped stall in the men’s room, unsure of whether to take off her clothes or fish the tab of E out of her purse. There was an impatient flare to Kaliq’s nostrils but she wasn’t sure which he wanted first, sex or drugs.
She unzipped her black purse. “Here it is.” She removed the tiny piece of Saran Wrap with the pill inside and carefully began to unfold it.
Kaliq peered over her shoulder. “Do you want to take it or should I?”
Bree didn’t want it, and he obviously did. “You take it.” She held out her palm and Kaliq pinched the tab between his thumb and forefinger. He opened his mouth, closed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue, pressing the tab onto it before opening his eyes and closing his mouth again. Like that, he didn’t look very cute, but Bree was still intent on hooking up with him. This was her swan song, her last chance to forge her own memories and be remembered.
Oh, she’d be remembered all right.
“Does it taste like anything?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Nope.” Kaliq smiled. The more time he spent alone with Brianna, the more he felt like his old self again. All she wanted was a little no-obligation, no-expectations, end-of-the-year fun before she took off for boarding school or wherever the hell she was going this summer, and that was his specialty. He bent down and kissed her carefully on the lips, like he was biting into something that was still too hot to eat. “But you do.”
Bree loved the idea that she was using Kaliq, and the fact that he wanted her to use him gave her even more of a thrill. He stroked her curly hair and she tilted her chin up and gazed into his stunning green eyes. “Remember when I fell so in love with you?”
Kaliq smiled again and kissed her again. He did that for a while, smiling and kissing, smiling and kissing, like he was lapping up a delicious ice cream cone.
“You’ve got skin like…like…petals,” Kaliq remarked as the E began to take effect. He rubbed the tip of his nose against her temple. “Grr.”
Bree giggled. It felt completely amazing to be this close and comfortable with Kaliq again. He was absurdly handsome and being kissed by him felt really, really, really good. But Kaliq was beginning to trip, and she didn’t want to lose her virginity to a boy who thought he was a Labrador puppy. She wouldn’t.
Well, at least she has that much integrity.
Still, this was her last crazy night out before she flew to Prague for the summer. She wasn’t quite ready for it to end.
Kaliq rubbed his chin against her carefully plucked eyebrows, and she lifted her chin to catch him in another long, hungry kiss. Her brother was always moaning about how much his life sucked. But she couldn’t have disagreed more. It wasn’t like she’d planned for life to be this thrilling. It just was. It really was.
41
“Marcus, darling?” Porsha called tentatively through the molded white wooden door to Marcus’s suite. She’d never actually called him “darling” out loud before, but it was becoming her favorite endearment. “Are you in there?”
She considered stripping down to only her Gucci pearls right there in the hallway, but the Yale Club was booked solid, and what if some bow-tie-wearing Yale professor saw her naked tonight and then she wound up having him in Intro to Law or another one of her freshman classes next year?
Well, it would certainly make the class more interesting.
“Marcus?” Porsha pressed her ear against the door, listening for him. Nothing. She tried the knob. The door was unlocked.
She pushed it open a few inches and stuck her head inside. “Marcus?” Still nothing. She pushed the door open all the way.
The drawers of the suite’s antique oak armoire had been pulled open and a damp towel lay strewn on the bed. The air was heavy with steam and the scent of Marcus’s cologne. The closet door stood open, and the suit hangers were all bare. Marcus was gone.
Whoops.
Porsha sat down heavily on the bed, feeling very much like the jilted but beautiful heroine in one of the epic films in her head that she’d temporarily stopped watching. She’d forgone her enormous Jackie O sunglasses, her signature head scarf, and her Burberry trench coat, because the heroine who was in love and part of a couple didn’t need them. Now she wanted them back.
How had this happened? Was her only purpose in life to serve as a fuck-over mat for boys like Kaliq and Lord Marcus to wipe the soles of their lying, cheating shoes on?
Her stomach churning, she stood up and rushed next door to her own suite, fully intending to make herself sick as soon as she reached the toilet. Propped up on the bureau was a large cream-colored envelope with the words My Darling P scrawled on it in Marcus’s swirly script, and a small black velvet box with the word GUCCI printed on it in gold. Porsha resisted opening the box and tore open the envelope. Inside was a note from Marcus written on a matching note card with LORD MARCUS BEATON-RHODES printed on it, along with a British Airways plane ticket.
Porsha remained standing as she devoured the note, trying to ignore the small explosions in her stomach, like soap bubbles popping.
Dearest darling Porsha,
Upper East Side #8 Page 16
