“It’s nothing like living in New York, for one,” Margaux replied, exhaling a perfect O of sweet-smelling smoke. She glanced up at the cloudy night sky and the blinking lights of tall buildings in the distance. “There’s more…space or something. There’s the desert, the blooming flowers, the hills. That’s where I live—in Hollywood Hills. My wedding’s gonna be at home.”
I know, Alexa almost said, but she held her tongue again. She had seen the photos online of a pale blue mansion perched high up in the hills, a stone’s throw from the fabled Hollywood sign. “Sounds divine,” was all Alexa said, meaning it completely.
Margaux sighed and gave Alexa a rueful smile. “Yeah. I’m not that homesick, though. Everyone out there’s kind of self-obsessed and faker than their boobs.”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s plenty of self-obsession in New York,” Alexa replied, and felt a warm glow when Margaux burst out laughing. It was bizarre, but kind of thrilling, to be bantering with a girl Alexa had so recently seen up on a flickering movie screen. “Which leads me to ask,” Alexa went on, feigning nonchalance, “what brings you to this gathering?” Imagining LA—the white sweep of beaches, the air perfumed by fresh oranges, the constant presence of movie stars—Alexa wondered why anyone would want to leave.
“Paz Ferrara designed my wedding gown,” Margaux replied, rolling her eyes. “Had to show up to pay my respects—or so my agent said.” When her Kickflip buzzed, she looked at the caller ID and grimaced, not answering. “Speak of the devil,” she groaned. “It’s only six in LA so everyone’s getting their work done now. I’ll tell you something,” Margaux went on, waving smoke away from Alexa. “I’m fed up with the wedding gar-bage. At this point I’m sick of every soul who’s involved with it, except for my fiancé, Paul, of course.” She took a long drag off her cigarette, then tilted her head toward Alexa. “Hey, you want to come?”
“Uh, where?” Alexa asked, feeling as if she’d missed something.
“To my wedding, silly!” Margaux laughed. “This Friday—it’ll be so fun.”
Alexa took a deep breath, trying to quell the giddiness building in her. She’s probably joking, Lex. Calm down. She’s insane.
“I’m serious,” Margaux insisted as if she’d heard Alexa’s thoughts, and Alexa felt her stomach do a somersault. “I know it’s not a formal invitation or anything—not that I believe in that old-fashioned shit anyway. Paul and I just made a podcast and mailed out iPods to everyone we love.” Margaux shrugged, as if this were an everyday occurrence. “But I swear on a stack of screenplays,” she went on, lifting her right hand, “I’d love to have you there. You could make a little vacay out of it. Why the hell not?” Speech over, Margaux crossed her arms over her chest and stared Alexa down—in a friendly way, of course.
“But…but it’s kind of last-minute, isn’t it?” Alexa asked when she finally found her voice. Her fingers had started to tremble, a sure sign that she was inching beyond nervous into fully freaked out. She wondered how to subtly pull her cell phone out of her clutch and start texting Holly. She knew how she’d begin the message: Promise u im not lying but—
“Sweetie-pie, nothing’s last minute in La-La Land,” Margaux chuckled, and opened her phone. “Just to confirm I’ll call Vikram—that’s my wedding planner, he’s a genius—but in the end, I’m the bridezilla, so what I say goes, right?” She shot Alexa a devilish grin.
“Right,” Alexa murmured as the full impact of what Margaux was saying began to sink in. Alexa, in the City of Angels. In a convertible, blonde hair flying as she zipped down Santa Monica Boulevard, past streams of green palm trees, toward the sapphire Pacific. Alexa, at a celebrity wedding: pastel satin sundresses rustling, pointy heels balancing on the grass, a surfer boy with sun-kissed hair offering her a dance…Warmth raced through Alexa like electricity. She felt the pull of the West Coast tempting her, seducing her.
“Hang on,” Margaux was saying, frowning down at her cell. “The only possibly sucky thing is that the Beverly Hills Hotel, the W, and the Roosevelt are all filled up with my social-climbing friends, and Paul’s, like, two hundred relatives.”
Alexa opened her mouth to say she’d be cool with sleeping on the beach—which didn’t technically count as camping—but Margaux was already pressing a button on her cell and bringing the phone to her ear. “Jonah?” Margaux asked after a minute, and Alexa suffered a mini heart attack, clutching the arm of the bench for support. The Jonah? It couldn’t be. Maybe Margaux knew others. Maybe Jonah was a popular name in LA. Then Margaux glanced at Alexa and mouthed, “My brother,” and Alexa nodded casually, her pulse pounding, as if the brother in question lived down the block or worked at the local Starbucks.
“Baby Bear!” Margaux was squealing into the phone. “I met this amazing girl in NYC. She totally has your sense of humor, and she’s blonde, which I know you love.” Margaux shot a wicked look at Alexa, who drew in a sharp breath. Jonah Eklundstrom had famously dated blonde-waif actress Charity Durst. Still, that didn’t mean anything. “Anyway,” Margaux went on. “I invited her to my big day—you don’t care if she crashes at your guesthouse, right?”
Since Margaux was facing away from her, Alexa pinched the skin of her upper arm hard, just to be sure.
“Thought so,” Margaux said, giving Alexa the thumbs-up sign. “Uh-huh, I’ll tell her about the party at The Standard, too. Down, boy. She’s hot, but I bet she’s picky.” At this, Margaux winked at Alexa, who managed to smile back shakily.
I’m going to stay with Jonah Eklundstrom.
Clasping her hands in her lap, Alexa repeated this fact to herself, like a mantra. Fantasies of a Hollywood hook-up floated through her head—what would it be like to gaze into those deep blue eyes up close, to run her hand along that warm, rough jawline?—-but Alexa knew they were just that: fantasies. She’d been burned in the past, after all. Gorgeous, famous, make-women-faint Jonah Eklundstrom probably had, like, a harem of girlfriends at his beck and call. And while Alexa knew she could compete with the sparkliest of starlets, realistically, she doubted she’d register as more than a blip on Jonah’s high-end radar.
But maybe he’d flirt with her one day when she was coming out of the guesthouse in her orange-and-gold Shoshanna bikini.
“All right, Baby Bear—don’t stay out too late tonight, ’kay? I know you have read-throughs all this week. I’ll call you when I’m back tomorrow.” Margaux clicked off, then turned to beam at Alexa. “Done, and done. Oh, and that party at The Standard downtown—it’s tomorrow night around six. My brother and I are throwing it for some industry friends. You should come, if you’ll be in town by then.”
If she’d be in town? Alexa was speechless. She had one whole, blissful week off before graduation—and she certainly no longer intended to spend it in Oakridge, getting pedicures at Suzy’s Salon.
Cheesy as it was, Alexa let herself think it: California, here I come.
After Margaux had entered Alexa’s number—-Alexa made sure to give her real one this time—into her cell, she stood up, and Alexa rose as well. “I’ll text you my brother’s address from the airport,” Margaux promised. “I’m headed to JFK now—I need to catch a midnight plane back home.” She put her cigarette out on the heel of her pump, then glanced up. “How moronic of me,” she added. “I’m Margaux.” She stuck out her left hand, her ginormous pink diamond ring catching the moonlight.
Alexa shook her head, bemused. Clearly, they’d skipped a step in the let’s-be-friends game. “Alexa,” she replied, returning Margaux’s handshake. “And I know who you are.”
“I knew you knew,” Margaux replied, her eyes sparkling. “But I appreciated your attempt to hide it.”
Their high heels clicking on the ground, the two girls made their way back to the garden door, and the sounds of the party drifted out toward them, as if from another planet. As a dizzy, elated Alexa was about to reenter the apartment, Margaux tapped her elbow.
“Hey, Alexa?” she said with a crooked grin
. “If I didn’t mention it, feel free to bring a date.”
“A date,” Alexa echoed. Her first, breathless thought was of Jonah, but she brushed off the ridiculous notion. Then Alexa had another idea. A brilliant one. She felt her face breaking into a smile. “Okay. I know exactly who to ask.”
CHAPTER TWO
Holly Would
The best part about fighting with your boyfriend, Holly Jacobson had learned, was the insanely hot apology hook-up that followed.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Tyler whispered, wrapping his arms around Holly’s waist and drawing her down onto the bed with him. Alexa’s bed, to be precise.
When their increasingly loud debate in the living room had prompted eyebrow raises from the other party guests, Holly and Tyler had snuck off to the only private place they could find: the all-white guest room that, Holly knew, doubled as Alexa’s whenever she stayed at her mom’s. But any hesitations Holly had about fighting—and fooling around—in there had melted away with one touch of Tyler’s warm lips against her skin.
“Me, too,” Holly murmured, tilting her head back as Tyler planted slow, light kisses all down her neck. To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t that sorry, and she and Tyler hadn’t even reached a real resolution. The thought of them camping with her family this week—her mother making them synchronize their watches before every hike, her younger brother, Josh, persuading Tyler to sneak slugs into Holly’s sleeping bag—still irritated Holly. But she was okay letting the issue go for now. Even though she’d developed a slightly thicker skin of late, Holly still loathed confrontations. And besides, she’d much rather be kissing Tyler.
Sitting side by side, her slender legs stretched across Tyler’s lap, Holly and Tyler kissed, their lips meeting with sweet, easy familiarity. Holly buried her fingers in Tyler’s wavy, dark-blond hair and shut her eyes, letting the pleasure of her boyfriend’s nearness and the familiarity of his clean, soapy scent course through her.
Through the wall, she could hear laughter and champagne glasses clinking, and she was grateful that she and Tyler had escaped. Though Holly considered Alexa a surrogate sister, she couldn’t quite appreciate the more glamorous aspects of her friend’s world. The simple pleasures of running track—well-worn Sauconys pounding the pavement, ratty T-shirt sticking to her back, high ponytail swishing—were what made Holly happiest.
Next to being alone with Tyler, of course.
Tyler slowly ended the kiss and drew back, his handsome face breaking into a tender smile and his amber-brown eyes brightening.
“I love you, Holly Rebecca,” he murmured, brushing her bangs back to kiss her forehead.
“Right back at you, Tyler Maxwell.” Holly grinned, swatting at his hand and then finger-combing her bangs back into place. “Even when you do that,” she added teasingly. It still amazed her how far she and Tyler had come since their first kiss on a moonlit Miami beach in their junior year. After so many ups and downs, Holly finally knew what rock-solid love felt like: a pair of arms around you, a net below you, safety, certainty, peace.
And the occasional stupid argument over vacation plans.
“That’s why I want to share stuff like family trips with you,” Tyler explained, pulling Holly in closer toward his broad chest. “It’s part of who you are. I love that, too.”
Holly swallowed hard, her earlier anger mellowing. Meghan, Holly’s second-best friend after Alexa, had recently called Holly in tears because her father and her brand-new boyfriend, Jeff, had gotten into an actual fistfight due to Jeff’s saying “goddamn” at a family dinner. Holly knew she was extremely fortunate that her parents and boyfriend got along as well as they did. Holly’s mom and dad were so fond of Tyler that Holly sometimes got the sense that, if given the chance, they’d gladly swap her for him.
“And since we’ll be going to school nearby,” Tyler went on, clearly aware that Holly was softening, “I thought it might be nice for all of us to—you know—bond or something.” He shrugged and shot her a game, yeah-I-know-I’m-a-loser grin.
Giving Tyler a playful shove, Holly tried to dispel the image of herself, Josh, her parents, and Tyler singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire. Bonding aside, that fall she and Tyler would be starting at Rutgers, which was only a twenty-minute drive from Oakridge, and the university Holly—and her parents—had always assumed she would go to. But Tyler’s deciding to join her there had been a last-minute surprise.
Holly thought back to that perilous, stomach-churning time in April, when skinny and fat envelopes from colleges had started to arrive in droves. One night, over the phone, she and Tyler had torn open each envelope in tandem, breathlessly relaying the score: Holly into Bucknell, Tyler rejected; Tyler into U. Mich, Holly rejected; Holly into UCLA, Tyler into Bowdoin; Holly into U. Conn and, finally, both of them into Rutgers. Somehow, by the time they reached Rutgers, neither could imagine going to college without the other.
“That reminds me,” Holly added, steering the subject away from their camping conundrum. “My housing request form came this morning. I haven’t looked at it yet but—”
Tyler’s face lit up. “Awesome—I got mine, too! Come over tonight and we can fill them out together. That way we’ll make sure we end up in the same dorm.”
Holly nodded, smiling. She pictured herself and Tyler as next-door neighbors on a freshman hall: tiptoeing into each other’s rooms after midnight, studying, listening to Keane’s “Everything’s Changing” on repeat, making out, making love…Holly could only hope that they’d have understanding roommates.
“You know what else I was thinking?” Tyler said, lightly nuzzling Holly’s ear. “Maybe after freshman year, we could get an apartment off-campus. I checked out some places online, and it’s kind of pricey right near the school, but we could live somewhere closer to Oakridge. There’s a townhouse on Beech Street that’s renting the top room to a couple now.”
“Um, yeah,” Holly said, a weird sinking sensation in her belly. Beech Street was right around the corner from her parents. Wasn’t the whole point of college to get some much-needed distance from home? “Let’s focus on freshman year first,” she suggested softly, smoothing down the collar of Tyler’s maroon polo shirt.
Tyler frowned slightly. “Hol, it’s totally better to plan these things out now,” he reasoned. “We’re going to get so busy once we’re in college. And since you’re going to law school afterward, and I’ll be coaching lacrosse, like we decided, our lives are going to be really hectic.”
Holly bit her lip as the future rolled toward her like a cresting wave. Was something wrong with her, that she didn’t want her life scripted out just yet? Yes, she hoped to be with Tyler forever. She’d be lying if she said daydreams of a golden wedding day hadn’t flitted through her head during some dull physics class or another. But those were vague, misty kinds of plans. And, in those daydreams, she certainly hadn’t pictured herself and Tyler living out their romantic life in drab old Oakridge.
“What?” Tyler murmured, picking up on Holly’s unease. He tipped his head so that he could get a look at Holly’s wide gray-green eyes, which always managed to betray her emotions. “Something’s bugging you.”
“Oh, Tyler,” she sighed, hoping to circumvent another quarrel. “It’s just that…” Holly glanced down at her hands. She was never as articulate as she wanted to be, and she suddenly wished Alexa were there to offer her moral support. “I feel like my parents have always mapped everything out for me—you know, with ballet lessons and math tutors and curfews and all that. And now, I guess I…I want to leave a little room for…spontaneity?” She posed this last word as a question, but knew deep down that it was exactly what she wanted. After all, she and Tyler were only eighteen. They had plenty of time to make solid plans once they’d had their share of wildness and fun.
Tyler was silent for a long moment as he stared straight ahead at the shut door. Then he cleared his throat and turned to her, looking thoughtful. “Spontaneity, huh?” he repeated. “I know something spontan
eous that we can do right…about…now.”
“Tyler!” Holly shrieked, giggling, as he pounced on her and toppled her over onto her back.
“Well, I don’t want to turn into a boring boyfriend or anything,” Tyler joked, slowly but surely inching Holly’s pleated black Mexx skirt up her thighs.
“This is crazy,” Holly protested, but she was already kissing Tyler’s jawline, which she knew got him hot and bothered.
After months and months of getting each other hot, last month Holly and Tyler had finally taken deep breaths and gone all the way. As Tyler pulled back to slip off his navy-blue blazer, Holly closed her eyes with a smile, remembering prom night. Their first time. They’d booked a room at the Oakridge Hilton, and Holly recalled the nervousness in her throat as she’d followed Tyler up the grand staircase. After a night of dancing, her light-green Betsey Johnson dress was sticking to her sweaty back and her beige sandals were squeezing her toes. Her mind had churned with questions. How would she know what to do? Were they rushing? Had they waited too long? Was prom night too cliché?
But once in their room—giggling over the actual DO NOT DISTURB sign they hung on the doorknob—-every concern had fallen away as effortlessly as their clothes. Onto the queen-sized bed they’d dropped, kissing as if they’d never tasted each other’s mouths before. Holly’s heart had been racing, but for once her thoughts hadn’t kept her from acting. And act she did, her trembling fingers helping Tyler open the newly purchased box of condoms. After that initial fumbling, everything had gone smoothly. Though it had been at once terrifying and blissful and painful and sublime, Holly welcomed every sensation. And Tyler was right there with her the whole way, his eyes locked on hers, their fingers entwined, professions of love whispered in the dark. Falling asleep in his arms later, Holly felt as if she’d grown several inches over the space of an hour—as if her limbs were literally stretching, and her mind expanding—to encompass this strange and thrilling new world she’d come upon.