Page 64

“Well. This will give me a chance to get toknow Charlotte better,” Elizabeth said cheerfully. We all sat down,and she lifted a slender silver bell from a side table. The bellsummoned Alan almost immediately. “Coffee service, please.” Then,Elizabeth looked to me. “Would you prefer coffee or tea?”
“Coffee is fine.” My mouth was so dry, Iwould have preferred a full pitcher of ice water.Why did youget high before this?
“So. Charlotte.” Elizabeth folded her handsatop one knee. “I’ve met your brother on several occasions. He’ssuch a nice young man.”
“He’s forty,” Matt said.
“Forty is young to me.” She went on, “Howdid you and Matt meet? He never told me.”
I had a vivid hallucination of blurting,I met him when we fucked at my brother’s wedding.Thankfully, what I said out loud was, “We met at my brother’swedding.”
“The wedding that didn’t happen,” Elizabethsaid, clucking her tongue. “That’s such a shame. It’s unbearablyrude to leave someone at the altar.”
“Why ‘unbearably,’ Mom?” Matt asked. “What apoor word choice.”
She made an impatient noise. “So, you gotattacked by a bear. You survived. But your friend got his heartbroken. That’s harder to heal.”
“Agree to disagree,” Matt replied.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed at the corners asshe scrutinized me. “You’re quite a bit younger than Matt.”
“By fifteen years,” I confirmed.
“I was younger than my husband.” The way shesaid the word “my” implied that Matt was my husband. “Bytwenty-three years.”
“Pops liked ’em young,” Matt muttered.
“And Matty has always been very immature forhis age,” Elizabeth said breezily, not bothering to give him anyother response.
I decided right then and there that I likedher.
“What made Catherine run off so fast, Iwonder?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, she caught me smoking pot on mybalcony,” Matt shamelessly admitted.
“Matthew Leonard Elliot Ashe!”
I shot a look to Matt. “Leonard?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.
“You know I don’t mind that you…indulge,”Elizabeth began. “But in broad daylight? What if the staff had seenyou?”
“They probably would be able to tell mewhere the best dispensary is.” It seemed like Matt enjoyed teasinghis mom. Not in a mean way, just to get a reaction out of her.
She didn’t fall for it, this time. Instead,she asked me, “Where did you find that dress?”
“Um, Bergdorf Goodman.” I smoothed theskirt.
“Green suits you,” Elizabeth pronounced,like her words made it so. “When we first married, Elliott and Ilived in the city. I would go to Bergdorf and Saks almost everyday. Elliott was so embarrassed that I bought clothes off the rack.But Ienjoyshopping.”
All of my clothes were off the rack. Some ofthe dresses upstairs had cost thousands of dollars. And she wastalking about shopping at Bergdorf Goodman like a guilty-pleasuretrip to Target.
“I’m used to buying off the rack,” I said,hating how timid my voice sounded. There was nothing wrong with mefor not having a bespoke wardrobe. I was a twenty-five-year-old wholived in her parents’ guesthouse, for fuck’s sake. I’d never boughtanything as expensive as the underwear I was wearing at the moment,and that was okay. That was how normal people lived.
I was a normal person. Matt wasn’t. And myheart ached at the realization that Matt’s friendship with mybrother, that Matt’s attraction to me, might have stemmed from thedesire to not belong to this weird world.
And it would certainly explain the appeal ofall the fantasy nerd stuff Matt was into.I would rather bean elf or a paladin or whatever than a rich kid growing up in ahouse that looked like an art museum.