Chapter 2
2
“I’m sorry—you’re doing what ?!”
I yank the phone away from my ear a split second too late. The damage is done: Chloe’s unbridled enthusiasm has pierced a hole straight through my skull.
“Alix. Alix . Say it again.”
After so many years of heartbreaking almosts and outright rejections, my news still sounds unreal even to me.
“I get to ghostwrite Sebastian Green’s memoir,” I repeat slowly.
I’ve spent weeks holding this burning secret inside, wondering if it would all turn to ash if I exhaled in just the wrong way—now is the moment it finally feels real .
“Stop it,” she says in disbelief. “I cannot. Sebastian Green? What?!”
I’m not easily starstruck, which is probably a substantial part of the reason I landed the job, but Chloe’s specific brand of enthusiasm is contagious. I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror of my home away from home, grinning like the naive writer I once was.
“It’s surreal,” I say.
“It’s incredible ,” Chloe agrees. “Are you sure you can’t make it to happy hour? Drinks on me tonight—we could go somewhere special to celebrate, there’s this new rooftop bar in Williamsburg—”
“I’m not in Brooklyn right now,” I interrupt before she gets too into the idea.
“Wait—you’re not going out celebrating with Sebastian Green himself tonight, are you? Alix. If you’re going out with Sebastian Green, I will literally die of envy!”
I sit down on the buttery leather couch near one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows in this palatial suite and take in the view of the resort’s most prominent mountain. It’s absolutely stunning.
“I’m not even in New York right now,” I say. “Like, not just the city—the state. I’m in Vermont.”
“Alix?” I hear Chloe say on the other end of the line. “You cut out for a bit, did you say Vermont ?”
“They’re putting me up in an amazing penthouse so I can write without distractions,” I say.
It’s not technically a lie. I’m just keeping it vague as to who, exactly, made all the arrangements and is footing the bill.
“I need pics, like, now. How long will you be there—and when can I come visit?”
I put her on speaker, snap a quick photo of the breathtaking landscape, and hit send. The snow-covered mountain outside my window is exactly the sort of postcard-perfect vista I imagined it would be.
“I’ll be here for a month,” I say. “That’s the view from my living room.”
“ Stop it , Alix, holy—I will most definitely be crashing your vacay, and soon . Wow.”
“It’s not a vacation,” I say, though I admit that fact has been a little slow to sink in. The fancy soaps and modern bathtub, the sleek wineglasses and well-stocked bar, views from every window, multiple shaded balconies, and even a game room with a pool table: literally everything about this place screams vacation. It’s going to take some work to… well, remind myself to work .
“Why don’t you plan on coming to see me halfway through?” I suggest. I could get lost in here, it’s so enormous. “I’ll do a ton of work these next two weeks so I can take a good break. We’ll have cocoa and sit by the fire—”
“Say no more, I’ll be there. Also! Keep your eye out for any hot ski instructors who might be interested in cozying up to a petite brunette with big golden retriever energy, please.”
I laugh. “Sounds like a plan.”
“If you happen to see any hot ski instructors for yourself, don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone a little, okay? Just ask yourself, ‘What would Chloe do?’?”
“Not this again,” I say, glad she can’t see how hard I’m rolling my eyes.
“It’s been two years since Blake,” she says delicately, treading lightly over my sore spot. “This is the perfect opportunity to test the waters again.”
If Chloe has golden retriever energy, I’m the cat who hides under the bed whenever anyone new gets close.
Blake was a lion.
The only good thing about dating him was that I met Chloe; she was dating one of Blake’s Wall Street bros at the time. Of the six guys in that group—and their revolving door of significant others—my friendship with Chloe is the only relationship that survived.
“I probably won’t have a lot of time for skiing, Chlo. Or guys.”
It is the flimsiest of excuses.
“You work too hard as it is,” she counters. “Promise me you’ll make time for fun , too? You can work your way up to scouting out the guys, I’ll give you that. But you are in freaking ski heaven right now, and you will regret it if you don’t make the most of that mountain while you’re there.”
“I’ll regret it, or you’ll make me regret it?”
“Do you really want to find out?”
I laugh. “Okay. No promises on anything else, but I’ll agree to ski at least once on this trip.”
“At least once this week ,” she says. “Do it tomorrow. Get up early, knock out some words, and then take a break in the afternoon—if you love it, you’ll be glad I made you do it.”
Chloe is one of the most productive people I’ve ever met, yet she somehow manages never to seem stressed out. It’s possible I could learn a thing or two from her approach to the whole work-life balance situation.
“Only if I get enough done tomorrow,” I concede.
The mountain really does look tempting. So does the little village over near the main lodge, and the ice-skating rink.
If I’m honest, it’s been a lonely two years since Blake. Spending all my time in this gorgeous penthouse, all by myself—even if I’m technically on a tight deadline—might only amplify that loneliness. At least I have Puffin to keep me company. And Sebastian, though I’m not sure yet when he’ll be coming.
“Text me a picture tomorrow of your skis in the snow,” she says, and I can hear it in her voice: she knows she’s won. “And if you happen to run into Sebastian Green on that mountain, you’d better believe I’m going to need a picture of him, too.”
This penthouse is the coziest place I’ve ever set foot in my entire life.
I’ve settled in for my first writing session of the retreat, ready to finally make some significant progress on this project. There are a few workspaces to choose from, but for today I’m going with the sleek desk by my bedroom window. The view is calm but energizing: the hypnotic spiral of snowflakes against the majestic backdrop of Black Maple Mountain, with the resort village nestled in between.
It even smells cozy—I’ve got a steaming cup of jasmine tea on my desk, its fragrance mingling with the candle I lit (orange, cedarwood, and more jasmine).
The silence is almost overwhelming.
No garbage trucks banging around outside this building. No noisy neighbors threatening my sanity with their subwoofer that—on a semiregular basis—makes actual ripples in my water. No Lauren barging in uninvited to talk my ear off for an hour.
I fill it, instead, with Sebastian.
His voice memos are an absolute mess.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone flit from one subject to the next quite like Sebastian does. Chloe is like this sometimes, but her detours are usually more like little fireworks, distracted bursts of energy she just has to get out before returning to whatever she was talking about before.
Sebastian’s detours, though, are something else. It’s as if the entire history of his life is detached from any sort of linear timeline in his mind and, instead, is more like an intricate spiderweb.
Fascinating—but not exactly straightforward.
I’ve wondered about so many things over the years: Was his infamous rivalry with Jett Beckett actually real or convincingly staged for media attention? If it was real, was it pure and simple envy, two gorgeous guys with inflated egos who were forced to share a spotlight, or was there more to it than that?
Will he spill any secrets about the night Jett Beckett disappeared?
Will he spill any secrets about why the band disintegrated a few months later?
Will he spill any secrets that aren’t on anyone’s radar at all?
As many articles as I’ve written in a professional context, I’ve never truly had the freedom to ask the questions I wanted answers to. Theorizing and speculating are common on the gossip blogger side of things—but at the various news outlets I’ve worked for, I’ve only ever found myself in a position to objectively report the truth.
Now is my chance to dig deeper.
The titles on Sebastian’s voice memos are super vague and incomplete, judging from the few I’ve already listened to. I’m praying the rest won’t involve anything more about school talent shows, or how he took his first piano lesson at age four, or how his mother drove him all over the place throughout his childhood to try to get him in front of the right people.
All of that is fascinating in its own right, but I already have enough about his early years to fill more than an entire chapter. That’s probably already too much—people want the juicy stuff.
And so do I.
I hit play, and Sebastian’s voice echoes off the walls and the polished concrete floor. As soon as he starts speaking, I know this particular voice memo will deliver.