Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The bedroom door clicked shut, and Maddy leaned her full weight into it.
Head back. Eyes closed. The breath she had been holding since she entered the living room left her lungs in one long exhale.
What the hell was that?
There was a body-length mirror across the room that Maddy strategically avoided looking at. If she didn’t see her own reflection, she could pretend the heat she felt flushing her neck and cheeks wasn’t there.
God. Had Aspen noticed? And what else exactly had Aspen noticed?
She sure took her sweet time trailing her eyes up Maddy’s body.
And not in the deliberate way she did it last night.
No. This was different. Slower. Lingering.
Nearly…predatory. Maddy felt goosebumps erupt all over her body. Fucking AC.
Maddy shook the look in Aspen’s eyes out of her mind and straightened off the door. She had been in this room for thirteen hours and registered approximately none of it.
Last night she had done exactly what she said she was going to do.
Showered. Eaten drunken noodles straight out of the carton with chopsticks while standing at the kitchen island, then climbed the stairs and collapsed face-down into the comforter.
She slept thirteen hours, which she had not done since she was a teenager.
She looked around the room. It mostly looked the same as it had when she left it fifteen years ago…
with some Bunny added in. Throw pillows in teal and gold.
A succulent in a ceramic pineapple on the windowsill.
New curtains in a geometric line print that matched nothing else in the room.
On the bed, layered over the light gray duvet she had picked out the summer before senior year, a decorative throw in a shade of coral that no version of Maddy, past or present, would have selected voluntarily.
Bunny had probably claimed the coral opened up the room or warmed the whole vibe, or whatever Bunny had decided this season’s design language was.
Above the desk, the bookshelf her father had installed when she was eight was lined with debate trophies—all first place except the second-place finish at the freshman-year regionals, which she was still annoyed about.
She had plastered a fake smile on her face to accept the award, but underneath that smile was a determination to do whatever it took to never lose again.
And she hadn’t. Her eyes continued along the shelf.
Model UN gavel. AP Scholar certificate. Her Valedictorian sash, hooked on one of the trophies, dangling over the edge of the shelf.
The room was notably free of dust despite no one having lived in it for a decade and a half. She dimly wondered how often Bunny came in here to clean it and keep it in pristine condition, awaiting Maddy’s return.
The fairy lights strung along the wall had a series of photographs clipped to them with tiny wooden clothespins. Maddy stepped closer and looked at the first photo.
Prom with her high school boyfriend—Jake’s arms around her waist from behind, chin tucked over her shoulder.
They’d been crowned Prom Queen and King.
Jake wasn’t like most of the other jocks; he was a total history buff, wasn’t cocky—even though he had every right to be, and had been a sweet, uncomplicated boyfriend, who didn’t deserve what Maddy did to him. She forced her eyes to the next photo.
The beach. Noa, her best friend since kindergarten, with her head thrown back, mouth open, caught mid-laugh.
Jake was looking at his right arm, jaw dropped open.
Maddy, sandwiched between them, had one hand gripping Jake’s left forearm and her whole body leaned into Noa, laughing so hard her eyes were closed.
Maddy smiled; she remembered that day. They had been sunbathing side by side, chatting and laughing as they did every weekend, when her father asked the three of them to sit up and pose for a nice photo together.
Then, right as he had gotten into place and was about to snap the photo, a seagull had flown overhead and shat on Jake’s arm.
Maddy couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed that hard about anything.
The next photo was taken in DC, senior year.
She and Noa flanking the national debate tournament champion trophy in a hotel lobby.
Her eye caught on the edge of the photo.
Aspen. She had looked at this picture a thousand times and never once noticed the background.
Aspen, three feet behind them at the edge of the frame, slightly out of focus, watching Maddy and Noa pose with an expression that, if she wasn’t mistaken—and she rarely was—looked oddly close to the expression Aspen had worn downstairs ten minutes ago.
Not the first one when Aspen’s eyes were on her pajamas—the one that came right after, when they reached her face.
When her eyes shifted from sharpness into something else—something Maddy wasn’t able to read, her lips quirked into a small smile.
But it wasn’t her signature smirk. It held no trace of the tease and smugness from the night before.
Maddy didn’t have a place to slot this particular smirk.
Maddy rubbed her arms. That damn chill was back.
She shook her head and shifted her gaze to the next photo.
The Junior Lifeguard Sand Sprint. Maddy at age six, her father hoisting her onto his shoulders in celebration after she had just beaten all the boys in her age group and won her first gold medal. Maddy looked away. That was a far enough trip down memory lane for one day.
Maddy took a cleansing breath. Everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours was a fluke, she told herself. She had been exhausted—both physically and emotionally from the travel, lack of sleep, and panic of thinking her mother was dying, followed by the anger of realizing she wasn’t.
She had been unprepared and caught off guard by the situation she walked into last night. Then she had been groggy and disoriented, waking up in this bedroom, in this house, on this particular island that was not the island she was expecting to wake up on.
Now, she was rested. Caffeinated. Re-oriented to her surroundings. And she needed to take back control.
Maddy closed her eyes. She was calm, she told her body. Composed. Completely and utterly in control. She opened her eyes.
Here was the plan: get dressed. Go downstairs. Refill her coffee. Keep all interactions with the two women in the living room as brief and concise as possible for the foreseeable future.
Maddy gave herself a solitary nod and crossed to her suitcase.
She pulled out the cleanest, wrinkle-free clothes she could find. Light-wash jeans. Her soft oatmeal-colored tank top. The bra she should have put on twenty minutes ago.
She got dressed and ran through the final touches.
Pulled her hair out of its ponytail. Finger-combed her hair back and redid it.
Pumped some lotion onto her fingertips and rubbed it onto her peeling nose.
Applied tinted lip balm to her lips. And dabbed a spritz of her expensive perfume to the pulse point of her neck for good measure.
Finally, she allowed herself to look at her reflection in the full-length mirror. Better. Not the version of herself she’d put in front of a network executive, but a significant upgrade on both versions that Aspen St. Claire had witnessed in the past twenty-four hours.
She picked up the empty coffee mug from the nightstand and walked towards the door. Her hand paused on the door handle. She took one more deep, composing breath and opened it.
* * *
Aspen turned from the sink, drying her hands slower than necessary with her gaze locked on Maddy.
You look good rang through Maddy’s mind again.
She didn’t know exactly what Aspen had meant by the words, but she knew it wasn’t good.
Because she hadn’t looked good last night.
She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that much.
She hadn’t bathed in three days, her clothes were dirty, hair was greasy, nose was peeling, and she could feel the dark circles under her tired eyes.
And Aspen had said it with that same infuriating smirk that Maddy could pick out of any lineup, and it made her skin prickle.
Whatever look had happened forty-five minutes ago was even harder to decipher. And Maddy didn’t know which look to expect from Aspen now. At least she was dressed for the occasion this time.
Not that she wanted Aspen to be looking.
Although she supposed that, after being entirely unprepared to be seen by Aspen St. Claire following their last two encounters, it was perfectly justifiable to want to be seen in a more prepared state.
To prove that she hadn’t become a complete disaster in the past fifteen years, but was, in fact, a very well put-together, high-functioning adult.
Not that she needed to prove herself to Aspen St. Claire. But it was the principle of it.
“Now.” Bunny opened a notebook filled with her looping script.
She adjusted the jeweled reading glasses that had migrated from her hair to her nose somewhere between the living room and the donut pillow she was now perched on at the kitchen island, and smoothed the open page flat with the palm of her hand.
She looked up over the rims of her glasses at the two of them.
“The Cup is in five weeks, and there is a lot to coordinate.”
Aspen walked around the kitchen island and sat on the barstool next to Bunny.
Maddy stayed where she was, resting her elbows on the counter, refilled coffee between her hands. Close enough to participate. Far enough to leave.