26
T here was nothing MC didn’t hate about New Year’s Eve.
The resolutions. The staying up late. The realization that the holidays had come to an end.
Champagne made her stomach hurt, and she looked bad in hats and glasses, so there was no way for her to celebrate, except by trying to make out with someone at midnight, which she’d only tried once, at a house party the year after college.
It hadn’t gone well. Not wanting to be presumptuous by planting a kiss on the girl’s lips, she’d leaned in and kissed her neck instead.
The girl had looked at MC like she’d been attacked by a real-life vampire.
It’d been a torrential downpour that night.
Stumbling home, MC had proceeded to trip while trying to avoid an overflowing sewer grate, leaving her with a sprained ankle that’d taken three weeks to heal.
In a sense, her latest plans were an improvement.
She’d had it all figured out since returning to the city a week ago, on that terrible Christmas Day.
She would spend the night lying on her futon, as she’d been doing nonstop for the past six days, and alternate between staring at the ceiling and rewatching X-Men .
The Matrix reminded her too much of Nora.
Unfortunately, X-Men depressed her, too, confronting her with the obvious fact that her longtime crush on sweet, caring Rogue was yet another facet of her Gabby fixation. Now Dr. Jean Grey seemed like the real catch. A powerful, guarded, volatile Nora Pike.
“MC?” Laura said, her voice coming through the thin paneling of her bedroom door. “Are you alive in there?”
MC coughed and sat up. “I am?” She looked at her phone. It was only eight p.m. “I am,” she added, more firmly.
“Your weird friend is here.”
MC sat up, clutching her comforter to her chest. Part of wedding herself to the futon had been about avoiding an all-too-common run-in with Joe on the street. Except now he’d come to her. Which she’d been expecting, but still. “Okay... I’ll be out in a second.”
“Hey,” Laura said, sounding annoyed, “she said she’d—”
Joe burst through the door in a wave of expensive cologne. The cold still clung to his shearling-lined biker jacket, little flakes of snow dusting his perfectly defined curls.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he said, squatting down and putting one butt cheek on the edge of MC’s futon. “I need you to stop hating me.”
“Is he okay to be in here?” Laura asked, crossing her arms in the doorway. She was wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt.
“Yeah,” MC said, “all good. Thanks, Laura.”
Laura shook her head, then walked back down the hall. Joe got up and closed the door.
He said, “It smells like Cool Ranch in here. And not in the good way.”
“So?”
“So, you should be out bathing in an infinity pool of free IPA.”
“Where is there an infinity pool of free IPA?”
“In the land of literary stardom you are currently scorning.”
“Oh. I’m waiting for the theoretical stardom to pass, actually.”
“MC,” he groaned, “why?”
“Because I got it by sending an army of gay-hating trolls to Nora Pike’s doorstep.”
“Even if that was happening, which it’s not, it wouldn’t be your fault.”
“Of course it would!”
“Well, let me reassure you that, while some autograph-signing has occurred at the Green Hills Public Library this week—despite shortened holiday hours—there are no violent threats being made.”
“How could you possibly know?”
“I called the police department and asked.”
“Are you serious?”
He batted his lashes, looking every inch the confident media princeling he was a year ago—no trace of the haggard, furtive air that’d emerged around him in summer and become full-blown in fall. “I don’t want any member of the rainbow brigade getting hurt.”
“Well, it’s only been a week. Who knows what’s coming.”
“Probably not much. Because if you hadn’t blocked your beloved, I could’ve told you that the main interest to come out of this piece isn’t actually S. K. Smith herself, but the real-life romance you delivered to the GND fandom.”
MC blinked. “That was not my intention.”
“Well, people are taking it and running.”
Appalling. “Has Nora responded?”
“Not a word.”
“Her publisher?”
“Also silent. As exposés go, this is really the best-case scenario. I can see why they’re not interfering.”
“Or Nora had a mental breakdown and is too fragile to deal with anything more than an email right now.”
He took out his phone, typed, then handed it to her.
MC saw a picture of a folding table in front of the Green Hills library, with a line of people on one side. Nora was on the other, Sharpie in hand. It was a story from the Green Hills Register . The headline was SMASH-HIT LOCAL AUTHOR DOES SIGNING AT PUBLIC LIbrARY .
MC rubbed her chin. “I guess she’s rolling with the punches.”
“These aren’t punches. Girl Next Door is up at number three again on the bestseller list, thank you very much.” Joe took out a pack of cigarettes.
“Can you do that in the kitchen?”
He already had one in his mouth. “I’ll open the window.”
“It’s really hard to open this one, because of the bars.”
“I’m an expert.” He pried at the knob on the gate, but it was stuck. “So, if there was a fire in here, we’d just die?”
“Pretty much.”
He inched up the bottom of the window with his fingertips, allowing a sliver of air to flow in, then lit up. “Come to my friend’s New Year’s Eve party,” he said, blowing a puff of smoke out the crack. “I want you to see that this article has measurably improved all of our lives.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I know the spotlight is nerve-racking for you, but you might actually enjoy it if you leaned into it a little.”
She shook her head, trying to ignore the sudden flare of anger she felt toward him—for barging in on her, for guilting her into writing the article in the first place, for showing zero remorse about the consequences. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she muttered.
“Which part?”
“The part where I exposed her, Joe. And, technically, myself.”
“You did your best to protect her.”
“Apparently my best isn’t close to good enough. The sleuths put it together the day it came out .” She gritted her teeth. “I thought I was being so careful.”
“Nora probably thought she was being careful when she wrote it. And look how obvious the parallels ended up being.”
“To us. Because we lived it. This... it just doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re forgetting that the fandom’s been on the case for almost a year now. Plus, you’ve written for Jawbreaker before. Someone probably recognized your style, realized how close these fake names were to the real ones, and just slotted everything else in from there.”
“I guess.”
“I understand why you took this hard at first, but I’m genuinely surprised by how down you still seem.” He ashed his cigarette. “Did you sleep with her or something?”
MC took a breath, unable to admit to it.
Not that she needed to.
Joe sighed. “Did it happen more than once?”
MC shook her head. “She iced me out after the first time.”
“I guess the guilty conscience had to step in at some point.” He cleared his throat. “You didn’t, like, fall in love with her, though. Did you?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Hm.” He shrugged, then opened her closet. “Take a shower. I’m picking out an outfit for you.”
“Joe, I’m really not in the mood.”
“You’re beating yourself up for something Nora had a major part in, and if I can help you pause the excessive self-recrimination, even for an hour, it’s worth it.”
She wanted to tell him to leave, maybe not come back for a while. But she suspected she was being unfair. Trying to project her guilt onto him so she didn’t have to live with it alone.
“What if I have a bad time?” she whined.
“Then you can come back to the Cool Ranch and I will leave you alone until you’re ready to be aired out in spring. Promise.”
She sighed.
She dragged herself to the shower.
As it turned out, the party wasn’t far from her apartment.
And it felt good to get cleaned up, to be around people.
She was still anxious about having to acknowledge her article.
She wanted to forget she’d written it, get back to the way her friendship with Joe had been just a few months ago, when she was free to sit on the sidelines, enjoying everyone else’s drama.
But she told herself it was just a matter of time.
All stories got old. Especially in New York.
They walked into a big, chilly Brooklyn loft with massive glass windows and exposed plumbing. The crowd was spilling out the door and into the stairwell, a cloud of perfume and smoke hanging in the air. Joe said hi to people MC mostly didn’t recognize and didn’t bother trying to meet.
“Are those my little minions?” said a smooth voice.
MC stared as Seth Flanagan walked up to them in joggers and a T-shirt, every inch the Silicon Valley tech guy.
He flashed a chemically whitened smile. “Happy New Year to all of us.”
“May it be better than the vast majority of the last one,” Joe muttered. But MC could see a twinkle in her friend’s eyes. She had no idea how he could be at ease with someone who’d been so close to firing him. “Nice to end on a high note, at least.”
“Isn’t it?” Seth grabbed a can of seltzer from a table shaped like a lima bean and cracked it open. “Of course, I have to take a tiny bit of credit.”
“For what?” MC asked.
“Dropping in that detail about your class year.”
MC blinked, then stared at Joe.
“Class year?” she managed to say.
The color had drained from her best friend’s face.
“Didn’t you read the final version?” Seth said.
“No.” The hairs on the back of MC’s neck were standing on end. “I didn’t.” She’d been too anxious, desperate after her month in that fugue state to just cede control to Joe so she could finally start getting back to something like normal.
“We wanted to situate the readers in the timeline,” Seth explained. “And throw a little bone out there for the superfans to gnaw on.” He took a slurp of seltzer, then licked the top of the can. “Subtlety isn’t my strong suit, but every now and then...” He smiled.
MC’s mouth was dry. But she forced herself to speak. “Did you get our class year off Joe’s résumé or something?”
“What? No. I just asked him.”
Joe shrugged, trying to smile, like he’d had no idea that what he shared with Seth would’ve completely compromised MC’s only condition for saving his life.
But before any of them could say anything further, a short, self-possessed woman in a purple tracksuit appeared.
“I was hoping you assholes would be here,” she said. There was a touch of silver in her closely cropped hair. “That was some article.”
Seth tilted his chin. “The words you’re looking for, Lauren, are thank you .”
“For the bump in sales? We could’ve gotten that from a feature in the Times . I think I’d rather throw my drink in your faces.”
“Minions,” Seth said, “this is Lauren Horowitz, S. K. Smith’s charming editor.”
“I’m not your minion,” MC said quietly, even if that was exactly what she’d been.
Seth raised an eyebrow. She ignored him and turned to Lauren Horowitz.
“And I’m really sorry for the stress I’ve caused.
” Lauren Horowitz frowned. “I have to go now.” She started to leave, then paused and added, “Happy New Year.”
As she made her way toward the door, Joe caught her elbow.
“Can we talk?” he said.
“I’d rather not.”
“Come on, MC, please?”
“Make it quick. And preferably somewhere I can actually breathe.”
She stomped out of the party and up the stairs, to the smaller knots of revelers on the icy rooftop. She put her hands in her coat to hide that they were shaking.
“How could you?” she said, embarrassed to feel tears pressing against her eyes.
Joe sighed and put his whiskey on the ledge. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not a lie. Entirely.” She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know whether it would be a big deal or not, okay? All I knew was that Seth’s approval was contingent on a few very minor details being added. To situate the reader, like he said. And the deadline was so close.”
He lit a cigarette, hiding his face in the shadow of his cupped hands.
“Do you understand what it’s costing you,” she said, “to be a minion for people like Seth Flanagan?”
“So, it’s undignified now and then. In the long run, he’ll age out, and I’ll never have to deal with that kind of condescension again.”
“It’s not about condescension, or lack of dignity. It’s about who you are, Joe. These people are egomaniacs, and they will turn you into one of them.”
He scowled. “What’s so wrong with having an ego? You talk about it like it’s something dirty. But I want to be proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
“And you’re proud of what we did with that article?”
“Yeah, I am. People were compelled .”
“To ruin a woman’s privacy.”
He shook his head. “It’s so goddamn punishing to pursue a dream here, MC, which you might not realize because you gave up on it three seconds after we arrived.”
“Come on, Joe. Open your eyes. These people aren’t part of your dream. They’re poseurs.” She wasn’t used to feeling angry. She didn’t think she liked it much, but it definitely felt better than being sad. “Or is that what you want to be too?”
She walked away.
“MC!” he called. “Damn it, hang on!”
But she was already in the stairwell, her boots hammering the steps.