Lauren Weisberger - Revenge Wears Prada - The Devil Returns

‘Okay, so get dressed. ’ As if to punctuate her command, the girls heard a doorbell ring downstairs. ‘First guest! I’m running down. Be adorable and ask all about the men’s work and the women’s charities. Don’t explicitly talk about the magazine unless someone asks, since this isn’t really a work dinner.’

‘Not really a work dinner? Aren’t we going to be hitting everyone up for money?’

Emily sighed exasperatedly. ‘Yes, but not until later. Before then we pretend we’re all just socializing and having fun. It’s most important now that they see we’re smart, responsible women with a great idea. The majority are Miles’s friends from Princeton. Tons of hedge fund guys who just love investing in media projects. I’m telling you, Andy, smile a lot, show interest in them, be your usual adorable self – wear that dress – and we’ll be set.’

‘Smile, show interest, be adorable. Got it.’ Andy pulled the towel off her head and began to comb out her hair.

‘Remember, I’ve seated you between Farooq Hamid, whose fund was recently ranked among the fifty most lucrative investments this year, and Max Harrison of Harrison Media Holdings, who’s now acting as their CEO.’

‘Didn’t his father just die? Like, in the last few months?’ Andy could remember the televised funeral and the two days’ worth of newspaper articles, eulogies, and tributes paid to the man who had built one of the greatest media empires ever before making a series of terrible investment decisions right before the 2008 recession – Madoff, oil fields in politically unstable countries – and sending the company into a financial tailspin. No one knew how deep the damage ran.

‘Yes. Now Max is in charge and, by all accounts, doing a very good job so far. And the only thing Max likes more than investing in start-up media projects is investing in start-up media projects that are run by attractive women.’

‘Oh, Em, are you calling me attractive? Seriously, I’m blushing.’

Emily snorted. ‘I was actually talking about me … Look, can you be downstairs in five minutes? I need you!’ Emily said as she walked out the door.

‘I love you too!’ Andy called after her, already digging out her strapless bra.

The dinner was surprisingly relaxed, far more so than Emily’s hysteria beforehand had indicated. The tent set up in the Everetts’ backyard overlooked the water, its open sides letting in the salty sea breeze, and a trillion miniature votive lanterns gave the whole night a feeling of understated elegance. The menu was a clambake, and it was spectacular: two-and-a-half-pound pre-cracked lobsters; clams in lemon butter; mussels steamed in white wine; garlic rosemary bliss potatoes; corn on the cob sprinkled with cotija cheese; baskets of warm, buttery rolls; and a seemingly endless supply of ice-cold beer with limes, glasses of crisp Pinot Grigio, and the saltiest, most delicious margaritas Andy had ever tasted.

After everyone had stuffed themselves with homemade apple pie and ice cream, they shuffled toward the bonfire one of the servers had set up at the edge of the lawn, complete with a s’mores spread, mugs of marshmallowy hot chocolate, and summer-weight blankets knit from a heavenly soft bamboo-cashmere hybrid. The drinking and laughing continued; soon, a few joints began circulating around the group. Andy noticed that only she and Max Harrison refused, each passing it along when one came to them. When he excused himself and headed toward the house, Andy couldn’t help but follow him.

‘Oh, hey,’ she said, suddenly feeling shy when she ran into him on the sprawling deck off the living room. ‘I was, uh, just looking for the ladies’ room,’ she lied.

‘Andrea, right?’ he asked, even though they’d just sat next to each other for three hours during dinner. Max had been involved in a conversation with the woman to his left, someone’s Russian-model wife who didn’t appear to understand English per se, but who had giggled and batted her eyes enough to keep Max engaged. Andy had chatted with – or rather listened to – Farooq as he bragged about everything from the yacht he’d commissioned in Greece earlier that year to his most recent profile in The Wall Street Journal .

‘Please, call me Andy.’

‘Andy, then.’ Max reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights, and held them toward Andy, and even though she hadn’t had a cigarette in years, she plucked one without a second thought.

He lit them both wordlessly, first hers and then his, and when they’d both exhaled long streams of smoke, he said, ‘This is quite a party. You girls did a tremendous job.’

Andy couldn’t help but smile. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But it was mostly Emily.’

‘How come you don’t smoke? The good stuff, I mean?’

Andy peered at him.

‘I noticed you and I were the only ones who weren’t … partaking.’

Granted, they were only talking about smoking a joint, but Andy was flattered he’d noticed anything at all about her. Andy knew about Max – as one of Miles’s best friends from boarding school, and as a name in the society pages and media blogs. But just to be sure, Emily had briefed Andy on Max’s playboy past, his penchant for pretty, dumb girls by the dozen, and his inability to commit to someone ‘real’ despite being a whip-smart, good guy who was ceaselessly devoted to his friends and family. Emily and Miles predicted Max would be single until his forties, at which point his overbearing mother would place enough pressure on him to produce a grandchild, and he would marry a knockout twenty-three-year-old who would gaze at him worshipfully and never question anything he said or did. Andy knew all of this – she had listened carefully and done some research of her own that seemed to confirm everything Emily said – but for a reason she couldn’t quite pinpoint, the assessment felt off.

‘No story, really. I smoked in college with everyone else, but I never really liked it. I would sort of slink off to my room and stare at myself in the mirror and take a running inventory of all the poor decisions I’d made and all the ways I was deficient as a person.’

Max smiled. ‘Sounds like a blast.’

‘I just sort of figured, life is hard enough, you know? I don’t need my supposed recreational drug use making me unhappy.’

‘Very fair point.’ He took a drag off his cigarette.

‘And you?’

Max appeared to think about this for a minute, almost as though he were debating which version of the story to tell her. Andy watched his strong Harrison jaw clench, his dark brows knit. He looked so much like the newspaper pictures of his father. When his eyes met hers, he smiled again, only this time it was tinged with sadness. ‘My father died recently. The public explanation was liver cancer, but it was really cirrhosis. He was a lifelong alcoholic. Extraordinarily functional for a large part of it – if you can call being drunk every night of your life functional – but then the last few years, with the financial crisis and some tough business fallout, not as much. I drank pretty heavily myself starting in college. Five years out it was getting out of control. So I went cold turkey. No drinking, no drugs, nothing but these cancer sticks, which I just can’t seem to kick …’

Now that he mentioned it, Andy had noticed that Max only drank sparkling water during dinner. She hadn’t thought much about it, but now that she knew the story, part of her wanted to reach out and hug him.

She must have gotten lost in her own thoughts because Max said, ‘As you can imagine, I’m a really great time at parties lately.’

Andy laughed. ‘I’ve been known to disappear without saying good-bye just so I can go home and watch movies in my sweatpants. Drinking or not, you’re probably a better time than I.’