Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
But that left me more confused. “Okay, but you said that woman was your friend. Graceanne?”
He’d patted my knee. “Exactly. Just a friend. So we don’t need to tell Roselyn these things again. They can send her over the, well, the edge.” A fatherly hug. An unspoken warning. “Best to just keep things that happen in the house…in the house.”
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Roselyn moved back in a month later. “She’s so much better now,” my dad had declared. Like her stint wherever she’d been had erased the memory not only of his cheating but of my big mouth.
They stayed together for another year, then my father left her. I knew what was coming when he switched from a rainforest scent to a spicy one. He always picks out a new cologne when he’s ready for a new woman.
Perhaps Roselyn had upset his delicate balance, because he soon moved on to Mariana, marrying her for a few years, then changing his cologne again when he met Joan.
I’d learned my lesson. It wasn’t my place to breathe a word. There would be no more accidental mentions of friends.
So I keep quiet now. Even when my dad wraps Joan into a warm embrace, cooing, “Love you, darling,” I just keep smiling. I could nab a statuette in Hollywood with my cheery smile.
When we slide into the back of the town car, my father takes her hand, and bile rises in my throat. I stare out the window, fingering my necklace as the limo swings south on Fifth Avenue, en route to the airport.
I count down the seconds till I’m out of the country and far, far away from him.
Though, admittedly, I’ll miss seeing the one person I liked bumping into around my father.
The man whose shirts I adore.
But missing him is ridiculous. This is just a foolish little crush. Bridger’s shirts don’t matter, our bonding over Broadway doesn’t matter, and my wicked feelings don’t matter.
I vow to get over him while I’m in Paris.
Mostly, I do just that in France. It helps that my father mentions offhand in an email that Bridger’s started seeing someone. Someone named Emma he met online.
I ignore the burn in my chest. I ignore it for all of September.
Then, I no longer have to ignore the feeling because it fades on its own. Maybe from lack of oxygen? Not seeing a man will do that to you, I suppose. I barely think of him from thousands of miles away.
Fine, André does help distract me. The French art student I meet mostly takes my mind off Bridger as we wander through museums together and visit dance clubs with our friends.
Except, maybe we’re wired to want what we don’t have since sometimes when I kiss André in my flat in the Sixth, I think of the man in the purple shirt. Sometimes when André touches me, I imagine someone else’s hands on my skin.
Maybe that’s why this brief Paris romance doesn’t last long enough for André to be my first. That, and art studies keep calling to me, leaving little time for my French lover…or Bridger.
There is too much beauty here in Paris to linger on one faraway man.
When I return to New York in December, I nearly turn down my father’s email invitation to attend a Sweet Nothings gala.
I want to RSVP instantly with a no.
And that feels fantastic. Freeing even.
Until I read on, seeing the part where Bridger’s single again.
Oh.
Well.
Maybe I should go to the party. Just to confirm this wicked little crush is out of my system after all.
I change my reply to a yes.
But when I go, Bridger’s wearing the teal shirt.
Harlow and Bridger’s love story begins in THE RSVP.
THE RSVP
1
MAYBE NOW
Harlow
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Paris, but it is good to be back in New York.
The poets and writers will have you believe that nothing aches like longing for a lover. But I’m here to say, the hole in my heart was for these two humans—Layla and Ethan.
I craved friend time so much while I was in Europe. And I want to gobble up every second with them now that I’m home again.
We’re in the spacious kitchen of Layla’s family’s Upper West Side four-story brownstone—her mom is off in Greece for most of December—and I’m holding a pretty blue box with a silver ribbon around the center. Layla turned twenty-one while I was in Paris for the fall semester of my senior year of college. Since I committed the mortal sin of missing my best friend’s birthday, I’m making it up to her as best I can.
“It’s from a store in the 6th that’s on every travel influencer’s under-the-radar list, so naturally, everyone knows about it, and it better be the best damn chocolate ever,” I say as I thrust the box at my friend. I unearthed the jewel among chocolate shops on the corner of Rue de la Huchette, near where I lived for the last three months. “It called out to me. It said please bring me home to Layla.”