The Virgin Society Collection

1. Maybe Now

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 .”

Layla hugs the box to her chest. “Good thing you listened to it.”

Ethan clears his throat, side-barring to Layla. “Better make sure she snagged the good stuff before you say that,” he teases.

“Please. I always get the good stuff,” I say. Then, since I missed Ethan turning twenty-one too, I snag a gift bag for him from the counter.

With grabby hands, he digs into the tissue paper, extracts a skinny silver tie, then cracks up. “It’s what every aspiring rocker wants.”

“See? I always take care of my loves,” I say as he loops the tie around his neck and knots it loosely.

“And I got this for us to celebrate,” Layla says, then brandishes a bottle of champagne from the kitchen counter. In a swirl of black cashmere and blonde hair, Layla yanks open a drawer and grabs a cloth napkin. Ethan tugs on a cupboard door and snags some glasses. It’s a familiar choreography, the way we know each other’s homes. We’ve known them since we met in first grade way back when.

Layla hands the napkin to Ethan, who covers the cage on the bottle with it, then pops the cork with panache. He hands the bottle to Layla and she pours two glasses, then arches a brow my way over the third. But I decline, opting for a boring LaCroix I grab from her Sub-Zero instead.

I’ll be twenty-one soon enough but legality’s not the point.

I pour the bubbly water, then the three of us toast. “To a great winter break,” Layla says, the liquid glistening under the light of the chandelier that illuminates the kitchen island.

“To countless holiday parties with lots of gorgeous people,” Ethan puts in.

“Hear hear,” Layla says.

I lift mine higher. “And I’ll drink to saying no to all the parties my father invites me to. It’s the start of a new era.”

We all toast to that.

Even though I’m home, I don’t go home . The last time I ran into one of my father’s lovers in the middle of the night, I learned it’s better to have my own place.

So after I catch up with my friends, I head downtown to Chelsea to the apartment I rented and will share with two English majors for my final semester.

This way, it’ll be easier for Dad to conduct his affairs.

I mean, cheating on his fiancée has to be simpler when he doesn’t need to either enlist me to help cover it up or kick me out of the house when his lady of the month arrives.

Still, I’m intrigued by his email that arrives as I’m unlocking the door.

Do I want to attend The Annual Silver and Gold Sweet Nothings Affair?

It’s the holiday party for his world-famous television show that’s become the toast of the globe. The show my father built on the backs of the bestselling novels he inherited from my mother when she died.

No, thanks. I won’t be going. I don’t need to lean in to his ego.

But, he adds, the fete will be held at The Museum of Modern Art . In the sculpture gardens.

I’m tempted. I’m definitely tempted. I never could resist a museum. Art is such an elixir.

As I walk down the hallway to my apartment, I read on.

There will be people there that you should meet , Dad adds.

Fair point. I should meet people in the art business. That’s true. I need to think about what I’ll do in six months when I graduate.

Then, at the bottom of his email, he finishes with Bridger will be there. You can cheer him up since his girlfriend broke up with him.

I nearly drop my keys in my hurry to type “yes.”

Shutting the door, I set a hand on my chest, trying to calm my speeding heart. There’s so much in this email. So much possibility.

My father’s business partner is single.

His handsome, intriguing, doesn’t-fit-into-the-crowd, only-ten-years-older-than-I-am business partner.

My once-upon-a-time, wicked little crush.

The man who carried me to an ambulance when a cab hit my bicycle last summer. The man who checked in on me the next day at my home. The man whose shirts I complimented after my send-off-to-Paris party.

The incredibly off-limits, sexy-as-sin, inscrutable man who runs a multimillion-dollar company along with my father.

Bridger had a girlfriend while I was in Paris.

Now he’s single.

And he’ll be at the Sweet Nothings party.

I’d thought I was over my one-way crush. Surely, I am. I can’t harbor feelings for this long just because he’s handsome. Or because I pictured him once or twice when I was with someone else.

Then again, why the hell is my heart jittery? My pulse spiking? And what is this fizzy feeling racing through my body?

Maybe I’m not over him. Maybe the crush is zooming back to me on its return trip.

I’m a few months older.

A lot wiser.

And I’m a woman who wants to know what’s become of a once great and powerful crush.

So much for saying no to my father’s invites.

I RSVP instantly.

In the morning, as I head to the campus for a meeting with my faculty advisor, I pass a shop in the West Village and do a double take.

The store is the one I went to a few months ago with Layla and Ethan before I left for Paris. As they shopped, I stole away to the men’s section, found a shirt that reminded me of Bridger, and sent him a photo.

My breath catches again just thinking of that.

I open my phone, click on my texts, and return to that last thread with him. There’s the shot of me holding up a teal button-down, the caption reading: This color would look good on you.

He replied with a simple: Thanks for the fashion tip.

That was all he said. But still, I run a finger over the text, and I hit the like button for the first time on his reply.

The next evening, I get dressed in my apartment in Chelsea, feeling a little wound up as I zip up a simple dark red dress. Soon, I’ll know if time has doused my desires, or if this bouncy feeling is infatuation all over again.

I touch up my mascara and dust on some blush, I adjust the gold necklace I always wear, with its letter-shaped pendant— I for the French word, intrépidité .

A gift from my mother.

My contribution to the gold theme tonight.

I step into a pair of short boots and grab a coat, then I leave, the elevator whisking me downstairs, where I head out into the New York night. It occurs to me that I’m going to a party Bridger will attend, and for the first time, I’m leaving from someplace other than the home I once shared with my father.

That thought wraps around me like sweet smoke wafting through the air, a little tantalizing.

I catch a Lyft uptown, slicking on lip gloss when I reach Fifty-Third.

Well, he does need cheering up, and perhaps I’m finally the woman to do it.