The Virgin Society Collection

3. My Dirty Little Secret

3

MY DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Harlow

On a cool December night, I enter the museum, check my coat, and follow the sign for The Annual Silver and Gold Sweet Nothings Affair in the sculpture gardens. You’d be hard-pressed to tell it’s December since the outdoor heaters are working overtime to warm the air.

In seconds, my father spots me, heading straight for me by the fountain. He wraps his arm around me, dropping a kiss to my cheek.

“Hello, poppet, so good to see you,” he says, then after we chat briefly about the traffic, the weather, how I look— good, good, good— he says, “Excellent. Now, there are people I want you to meet.”

In no time, we chat briefly with Dominic Rivera, one of the actors on the show who loves art, then my father’s introducing me to curators, educators, and auction house executives.

It would be overwhelming if I didn’t grow up being introduced.

A woman with black braids in a stylish top knot and cat-eye glasses is a curator of expressionist art here. Her name is Amelie, and she meets my gaze with the particular intensity of someone about to cross-examine someone. Me.

“You want to work in the museum field?” she asks in a French accent.

“I’m considering it,” I say, even though that’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t need to know I’m undecided. I don’t know her.

She quizzes me about whether I consider myself an acolyte of the Marxist school of art history, the post-colonial one, or something else entirely.

“It’s hard to imagine that social and economic circumstances don’t influence the creation of art,” I say, a response that would brand me a Marxist.

Except my dirty little secret is I study art because, gasp, I like art.

The shape of it, the look of it, the way beauty makes me feel.

But I’m supposed to like the why behind it. So I drop in terms like Feminist Marxism to show I paid attention in my theory classes. My grasp of the lingo seems to light up Amelie.

“Do you speak French?” she asks me in that language.

“I do. I studied there this past semester,” I say, answering in French.

“Keep in touch then, Harlow,” she says, then gives me her email, telling me to reach out if I need anything.

“I will,” I say, smiling privately.

When Amelie catches the eye of someone she needs to chat with, I figure I’ll make a lap or ten to find Bridger. I need to work on my theory of crushes now and their rate of decay.

Instead, when I spin around to look for him, I nearly bump into a silver fox. His arm is wrapped around a woman’s waist, and he’s laughing into her silky black hair.

“Oh, excuse me,” I say quietly.

“No worries,” the woman says with a laugh, then adds, “For the record, sometimes a sculpture is just a sculpture.”

“Sometimes they are,” I say, amiably. I don’t want to make any little asides about Amelie or art history. That would be rude. I extend a hand. “Harlow Granger.”

“Ah, Ian’s daughter,” she says, knowingly.

That’s me. I used to be Felicity Dumont’s daughter, but no one thinks of my mother anymore, of the worlds she built, the romance she captured in her tales of Sweet Nothings . “Yes, I’m that Granger,” I say as brightly as I can, briefly touching the I on my necklace.

“I’m Allison Tanaka-Fontaine,” she says, and instantly I recognize her last name—her husband’s a sought-after TV writer. “I do some consulting for the museum. They wanted me here tonight,” she says, apologetically, like she has to explain her presence here. She gestures to the man with her like she’s about to introduce him, but he’s peering toward the door. “For what it’s worth, I sometimes just like to look at art too.”

I smile, feeling a strange kinship with her. “I’m the same,” I say. “I like to look and to feel.”

Her eyes twinkle. “Yes. I get that.”

Then, they weave out of the party like spies, evading capture.

A few seconds later, Bridger walks into the gardens, adjusting the cuffs on his shirt.

He always does that at parties. Like his buttons could come undone.

Oh.

Oh my god.

That shirt. He’s wearing teal. He’s wearing the color I told him to buy. My breath catches, surely from the surprise of the shirt.

Not from anything else.

But my pulse spikes too. My mouth goes dry. I should have practiced what to say to him, but then Marxism happened, and now he’s happening.

Chin up, heels on, I head to him, my stomach annoyingly cartwheeling with every click of my shoes on the concrete. Maybe it was foolish to think I could archive those feelings while I was a continent away. I kind of wish I could file them in a cabinet of the past. Because what the hell am I supposed to do with them now ? But I don’t turn around. I don’t walk away. I go to him, needing the proximity to know for certain that this is happening all over again.

When I close in on him near the Picasso sculpture, he’s scanning the place like a sniper, his gaze acquiring targets. There’s an intensity to his blue eyes that’s disarming. “Hi,” I say to his side, and it comes out too breathy. Nearly inaudible.

“Hi Bridger,” I say, trying again.

He startles, then shifts, his eyes landing on me. “Oh.” There’s a tinge of surprise in his tone. His gaze travels quickly, too quickly, along my body. “It’s been a while,” he says, recovering, arranging his voice to that even, professional tone I’ve known for five years.

“Yeah, it has been,” I say, taking a breath to steady myself when I catch a whiff of his scent. Soap, something expensive, something organic, I bet. Something that touched his body an hour ago.

Something delicious.

The scent floats through my nose, awakening…everything.

So much for time. So much for distance. So much for trying.

I’m not over him. Not at all.

“A long while,” he adds.

Does he sound wistful, or do I just want him to sound wistful? “How are you?” I ask.

“How are you ?” he counters, like he’s avoiding the question. Or maybe like he’s legit interested in how I am. A girl can hope.

“I’m good. I graduate in May. Six more months,” I say, since what’s more important than that? I’m almost out of here. Can I write it in the sky any clearer?

Bridger nods like he knew this already. “Ian did mention that,” he says.

I wince, wishing he hadn’t interjected my dad into the conversation. But I’ll just eject back out. “Paris was amazing. You’ve been, I presume?”

He nods. “I have. What made it amazing for you?”

Oh, that’s nice. A question to keep the conversation going. “It was everything I’d hoped it would be,” I say. “I had my own flat by the river. I sat in cafés drinking espresso and being broody as I read dark poetry.”

That earns me a wry smile.

“And I lived at the museums and galleries.”

“Sounds incredible. Those are terrific opportunities, dark poetry aside,” Bridger says, like a man talking to someone who’s almost his contemporary.

At least, I hope so. Or maybe I’m just reading things I want to hear into his words. Only, I don’t want to talk about me any longer. My gaze drifts to the cuffs of his shirt. “I see you have silver cufflinks,” I say. “Very subtle nod to the theme.”

His eyes dart to my necklace then back to my face. “And gold for you.”

A ribbon of warmth unfurls in me. He noticed. It’s time to cut to the chase. “I heard you’re not seeing Emma anymore,” I say.

Bridger breathes out hard, a sigh, but it’s nearly emotionless. “You heard right,” he says, and he doesn’t sound like a man who needs cheering up whatsoever. He sounds just fine.

“You seem content,” I observe.

Bridger shrugs, one strong shoulder rising up. “We didn’t have that much in common it turns out,” he says, like it’s just one of those things, no big deal.

“That’s important, isn’t it?” I ask, and I don’t feel like the girl who crashed into a cab six months ago. Or the one at the summer send-off party.

I feel like I was forged from Paris. Then I rose up from Chelsea. Once upon a time I was raised on Fifth Avenue, but I’m not the girl living in my father’s house any longer.

“Common interests? Yes. They are,” he says, emphatic, then glances around the open space, a little hamlet in the midst of the city. We’re surrounded by stone and marble, by money and erudition. “So this must be good for you, art history and all?” He asks the question like he doesn’t want to return to the party, like he’d rather talk to me.

Finally. I can read him.

I lean in closer, conspiratorially, stealing another hint of his cedar scent. “Can I confess something?”

He hums, a note of intrigue. “Sure,” he says.

I tip my forehead toward the tree near us. We move around it, past its branches, farther away from the hubbub of people. He doesn’t seem to mind getting some distance from the crowd. Perhaps this is a sign that the crush could be two-way.

No, that’s too wild a thought.

But wouldn’t that be something?

“What’s your confession?” he asks, tugging on his cuffs again. Is that a nervous habit, maybe? Or perhaps an orderly one?

“I don’t know what I want to do with my degree,” I admit.

And wow. Did a weight lift from my shoulders? I think it did. I let out a surprised breath. “I…”

“First time you said that out loud?”

“Yes,” I say, enthused, excited even to speak the words I was holding inside with the museum curator.

Everything feels lighter. “I don’t know if I want to work at a museum, or visit a museum, or run an art gallery, or just wander into art galleries. I don’t know at all,” I say, then I glance away, worrying at the corner of my lips. “And I’ve been studying. I should know, shouldn’t I?”

He shrugs casually. Gives an easy smile to match. “But should you?” It’s like point, counterpoint.

His question is open-ended. He’s asking. Really asking. So I really answer. “I feel that way a lot. I think I have some guilt over not knowing. Should I, Bridger?”

His dark eyes gleam, like he wants to share something. Wants to reveal. “Want to hear a secret?” That word on his tongue sends a charge through me.

I want to be his secret. “Tell me,” I say, desperate for more.

“I didn’t study business, or Econ, or even English lit like most people in my field,” he says, and I feel like he’s offering conversational appetizers on a platter.

I want to eat them all. “What did you study?”

“Psychology,” he says. “And I’m not a therapist. I’m just…a producer.”

“Just a producer. More like an entertainment industry force of nature,” I tease.

A sly smile. He won’t admit it in words, but that tilt of his lips says I’m right with my assessment. “But see, I’m not a psychologist. Sometimes you go into your field. Sometimes you don’t. The key is learning to think. That’s what I learned in college. And how to strategize. Know what I mean?”

“I think I know what you mean. Strategy applies to any field. Thinking does too, of course,” I add.

“Exactly,” he says, with a satisfied smile.

“Then I hope I’m learning both,” I say.

Maybe I can put them to use with him?

I hope, as we talk, that I’m being strategic with this crush that didn’t end, that phoenixed out of the ashes tonight.

Bridger’s eyes drift to the crowd. Something flashes in them. Reluctance? Annoyance? But mostly it looks like resignation. “I should talk to Jess Dudeck,” he says, definitely resigned. “I’m supposed to work on a deal for Romania. There’s a TV network there wanting to format the show,” he explains. “That’s when—” He shakes his head, a little embarrassed. “You don’t want to know what formatting is.”

“Actually, I know what formatting is. When they take the concept and adapt it for syndication in foreign countries,” I say.

A smile. Like he should have known better. “Of course. You’ve always paid attention,” he says, then his eyes drift down to his shirt, and since I’m pretty sure it’s best to leave anyone wanting more, I find the will to go. But first, I lift a finger, run it briefly along the edge of his shirt collar. “Teal is your color,” I say, then I walk away.

Floating.

Just absolutely floating on this crush that’s come slamming back into me. Only this time around, it feels like it could be more than a crush.

Maybe I need to put my strategy skills to use.

When I go to bed that night, it’s blissfully quiet in my bedroom. My roomies are out. Here in Chelsea, in my sixth-floor apartment, I never have to worry about overhearing my dad’s affairs.

It’s been a lovely week so far.

Quiet, most of the time, since my roomies are gone so often.

Almost like I’m living in the French countryside where my mom used to take me when I was younger.

I can sleep peacefully.

Except, I’m not tired at all. I’m wide awake, looking up shirts online.

When I’m done, I email Amelie, telling her it was nice to meet her, and I enjoyed our chat. I may not subscribe to the same points of view she had, but the talk was stimulating. Besides, you should thank someone who takes the time to ask about your interests, then who offers to stay in touch. A vital business skill I learned from my father.

He’s taught me a few things about strategy, I suppose.

A few days later, I’m meeting Layla and Ethan for lunch in the Village, so I make my way there early, stealing an opportunity to return to that boutique from last summer. I’m alone with Sondheim in my ears as I hunt through the men’s shirts until I find one that speaks to me.

Ruby red.

I hold it against my chest, position it just so.

I snap another shot. Maybe there’s a little more of me in it now. Just a hint of my throat, just enough skin to see the I on my necklace.

Then, I tap out a note: Next time, try this color , and I attach the photo.

He texts back a day later. One word.

Noted.

It’s a nothing reply. It’s nearly empty. But it feels like a bookmark. Like he’s tracking my ideas, marking where we left off.

Somehow that’s enough to carry me through the next few days of the winter break.

Trouble is, there’s no chance I’ll run into Bridger here in Chelsea. I won’t bump into him in the kitchen, or the dining room, or the living room like I did during that summer break.

So when my father drops the news out of the blue that he and Joan called the wedding off, and he’s taken up charcuterie, then invites me to a dinner party—all in the same email—I think strategically and say yes.