Meg Cabot - Queen Of Babble - In The Big City

“How much time are we talking about?” Chaz had wanted to know. “I mean, to grieve and heal? Two hours? Three?”

“I don’t know,” I’d said. It had kind of been hard to concentrate, considering the fact that he still had his arms around me, and I could feel those studs of his grandfather’s pressing through the silk of my dress. That wasn’t all I felt pressing through it, either. “At least a month.”

He had kissed me again after that, as we swayed back and forth to the music.

And I don’t think it was just the champagne that made me feel as if it were raining gold stars all around us, instead of white balloons.

“Well, at least a week,” I’d said, when he’d finally let me up to breathe.

“Deal,” he’d said. Then he’d sighed. “But it’s going to be a long week. What have you got on under there, anyway?” His hands were at the waistband of my panties, which he could feel beneath my dress.

“Oh, those are my control-top Spanx,” I’d said, deciding in that moment that in this and all future relationships, I was going to be ruthlessly, even brutally honest—even to my own disadvantage—such as by admitting to a guy that I wear control-top panties. Not just panties, either, but basically bicycle pants.

“Spanx,” Chaz had murmured against my lips. “Sounds kinky. I can’t wait to see you in them.”

“Well,” I’d said, welcoming yet another opportunity to be brutally honest. “I can tell you right now it’s not going to be as exciting as you might expect.”

“That’s what you think,” Chaz had said. “I just want to let you know that when I look into my future, I see nothing but you.” Then he’d whispered,“And you’re not even wearing Spanx.”

And then he’d dipped me, so that suddenly I was giggling up at the ceiling, from which the last of the balloons were still falling, in fat, lazy arcs.

The rest of the night was a blur of more kissing, and more champagne, and more dancing, then more kissing, until finally, staggering out of the Plaza just as fingers of pink light were beginning to stretch across the sky above the East River, we tumbled into a waiting cab, and then somehow, into my bed.

Only nothing had happened. Obviously nothing had happened because (a) we’re both fully clothed, and (b) I wouldn’t have let anything happen, no matter how much champagne I might have had.

Because this time, I’m going to do everything the right way, instead of the Lizzie way.

And it’s going to work, too. Because I’m cunning.

I’m lying there thinking about how cunning I am—also about how untidy a sleeper Chaz is, considering the fact that his face is all smushed against one of my pillows, and that, even though he isn’t a drooler, like I am, he’s definitely a snorer—when I realize that the pounding sound I’d thought was actually my hangover is coming from the door.

Someone is knocking on the outer door to the building—which actually has an intercom, but it’s broken (Madame Henri swore to me it would be fixed by the end of next week).

Who could be pounding on the door at—oh God—ten in the morning on New Year’s Day?

I roll out of bed, then climb unsteadily to my feet. The room sways… but then I realize it’s only the slanting floors that make me feel as if I’m about to fall. Well, the floors and my severe hangover.

Clinging to the wall, I make my way to the door of my apartment and unlock it. In the narrow—and chilly—stairway to the ground floor, the pounding is louder than ever.

“Coming,” I call, wondering if it could be a UPS delivery for the shop. Madame Henri had warned me that by taking occupancy of the apartment on the top floor of the brownstone, I’d be responsible for signing for all after-hours deliveries.

But does UPS even deliver on New Year’s Day? It can’t possibly. Even Brown must give its workers the day off.

At the bottom of the stairs, I struggle with all of the various locks, until finally I can pull the door open—though I’ve kept the security chain on, just in case the person outside is a serial killer and/or religious fanatic.

Through the three-inch crack between the door and frame, I see the last person in the world I ever expected.

Luke.

“Lizzie,” he says. He looks tired. Also annoyed. “Finally. I’ve been knocking for hours practically. Look. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

Panicked, I slam the door shut.

Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s Luke. He’s back from France. He’s back from France, and he came to see me. Why did he come to see me? Didn’t he get my brief but cordial note in which I gave him my new address so he’d know where to forward my mail, but instructed him not to contact me there?

“Lizzie.” He’s pounding on the door again. “Come on. Don’t do this. I flew all night to get here to say this to you. Don’t shut me out.”

Oh God. Luke’s at my door. Luke’s at my door…

… and his best friend is asleep in my bed upstairs!

“Lizzie? Are you going to open the door? Are you still there?”

Oh God. What am I going to do? I can’t let him in. I can’t let him see Chaz. Not that Chaz and I did anything wrong. But who would even believe that? Not Luke. Oh, God. What do I do?

“I’m… I’m still here,” I open the door to say. I’ve thrown back the chain, but I don’t move to let Luke step inside—even though it’s freezing, standing there on the stoop in my evening gown, with the bitter cold seeping in around. “But you can’t come in.”

Luke looks at me with those sad dark eyes. “Lizzie,” he says, apparently not even registering the fact that I’ve obviously slept in my clothes. And not just any clothes, either, but my Jacques Fath evening gown that I’ve been saving for years for an event fancy enough to wear it to. Not that he would know that. Because I never told him.

“I’ve been a total ass,” Luke goes on, his gaze never straying from mine. “I’ll admit, when you brought up… well, the marriage thing last week, you really threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting it. I really did think we were just hanging out, you know. Having fun. But you made me think. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, as a matter of fact, though I tried. I really tried.”

I stand there blinking at him, shivering. This is what he flew all the way back to America—apparently spending his New Year’s Eve on a plane—to say? That I ruined his holiday, even though he tried not to think about me?

“I even talked to my mother about it,” he says, the winter sunlight bringing out the bluish highlights in his ink-dark hair. “She’s not having an affair, by the way. That guy she met the day after Thanksgiving? That’s her plastic surgeon. He does her Botox. But that’s beside the point.”

I swallow. “Oh,” I say. And realize, belatedly, that that’s why Bibi’s eyes hadn’t crinkled when she’d smiled at me while issuing her invitation to join them in France for the holidays: she’d just had Botox injected into them.

Still, this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t, in fact, change the part about how Luke chose to spend the holidays with his parents instead of going with me to the Midwest to meet mine.

I remind myself of this because I’m trying very hard to keep my heart steeled against him. Because, of course, the hurt is still fresh. Like I’d said to Chaz, we’re both still grieving.

But seeing Luke, looking so tired and vulnerable, on my doorstep isn’t helping.

“Mom is the one who told me what an idiot I was being,” Luke goes on. “I mean, even though she was kind of pissed about the whole thing where you thought she was having an affair. She was trying to keep the Botox from my dad.”

I’m finally able to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth long enough to say, “Dishonesty in a relationship is never a good thing.” As I know, only too well.