Page 14

14

KIT

MANHATTAN

I land at midnight—seven AM back in Tanzania—wide awake. New York is freezing, the cab line is twenty people deep, and my apartment feels very empty when I arrive.

I video-call Blake because I said I would. He’s in Vegas until Monday, and though I was worried about having to pretend things were fine until then, it doesn’t appear to be an issue.

He asks about Kilimanjaro but is only half-listening to the answer as he walks down a neon-lit street. I mention Miller and his brow furrows, as if he has no idea what I’m talking about. When I remind him, he says, “ Oh, right ,” and for a half second, he’s focused, trying to make up for the fact that he wasn’t before. All too soon, though, he is only half-listening. He tells me the London marathon is full and suggests we just run New York again. Just like I knew he would.

How insane this entire relationship was .

I was fine with calls where he didn’t listen because I didn’t especially want to listen to him either. His lack of attention was a fair exchange for the corresponding lack of care and affection on my part. I was fine with all the ways he kept me stuck in a Tuesday because I sort of suspected I wasn’t going to get to Thursday anyhow.

“I love you,” he says, preparing to hang up as he enters a restaurant. “I’ll see you Monday?”

I don’t want to say I love you back, but he ends the call before I get the chance. I’m not sure he’d have listened if I said it anyway.

Thank God I’m getting out.

* * *

I wake the next morning to a ringing cell phone on my nightstand.

“I’m coming over,” Maren announces. “Mom’s upset that you haven’t replied to her texts.”

I groan. “For God’s sake. I just landed at midnight. I’ve been up for twenty seconds.”

“She pulled strings to get you in with Geoffrey for highlights and a cut, and now she’s panicked you’re going to blow it off and put her on his bad side.”

“I won’t,” I promise. “You don’t need to come up.”

“I’m nearly there,” she says. “I’m bringing you coffee if that helps.”

I force myself out of bed. I know ending things with Blake is the correct choice, but in the cold light of day I also wonder what I’ll have left in his absence. I’m about to be single and potentially unemployed, and home is no longer this apartment or even NYC but instead, a dusty sleeping bag inside a dirty tent I share with Miller…and I can’t buy it back.

Since Maren is already on the doorman’s list and has a key, she lets herself in while I’m in the shower and is curled up in one of my leather chairs when I emerge, with the New York City skyline framed behind her by the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun is barely peeking out beyond the skyscrapers in the distance.

My apartment is everything I once wanted...but I no longer want it.

“What’s your passcode?” she demands, unabashedly trying to unlock my phone. “I want to see your pictures.”

“We need some boundaries,” I reply, tying my robe and snatching the phone from her hand as I take the chair across from her.

She pushes a cup in my direction across the glass coffee table. “Tell me everything.”

I take a sip, stalling. Somehow, I just assumed I could skip the part where I admit that the love of her life was on my expedition, but that’s ridiculous—Dad knows. Miller knows. One of them will say something to someone, and it will look really bad that I omitted the information. “Yeah, so did you hear who was on my trip?” I ask. I hope that the fact that I cannot meet her eye just looks casual and not nerve-ridden.

She frowns. “To Kilimanjaro? Who on earth would be on the same trip there ? Someone I know?”

My laugh is tinged with misery. “Someone you know all too well. Miller. Miller West.”

Her mouth falls open. “You’re kidding.”

I’m about to say I wish I were , as if he’s still my nemesis, but I can’t bring myself to do it. “Nope. I had no idea he’d be there.”

She leans in, eyes wide, but also gleaming with excitement—and that’s what I was worried about. She’s already growing hopeful about the fact that he was there at all. “So, did you see much of him on the way up?”

She’s picturing us just randomly on a mountain at the same time. She can’t begin to understand how intimate it all was. “It was hard not to. There were only eight of us.”

“Eight,” she says, shaking her head. “Was he there with that girl he’s seeing?”

Now it’s my turn to be surprised, and holy shit, what an unpleasant surprise it is. If my stomach could literally drop from my body, I’d be picking it up off the carpet right now.

It shouldn’t matter to me if he’s with someone—hell, I’m still almost engaged—but if he was taken…he shouldn’t have done a lot of the things he did. I suppose that’s hypocritical, but at least I was open about my relationship status.

“No, he was there alone,” I say, struggling to ignore the pit in my center. “He never mentioned anyone else.”

She rests back in the seat, pulling a designer blanket over her lap. “The last I heard, he was dating Cecilia Love.”

I like that even less. I know who Cecilia Love is, and she’s exactly the kind of girl he might want to end up with—beautiful, but also smart and ambitious. If I were a better person, I’d want that for him.

“I don’t know,” I say quietly, “but like I said, we were climbing for eight days, and he never mentioned anyone.”

“Did he ask about me?”

I sigh. I knew that this was coming. No matter what I said, she was going to find a way to turn this into something she could pin her hopes on. Maren would never in a million years cheat, but Harvey is a dick, and I think she just enjoys daydreaming about a different life—one she won’t actually pursue.

“He asked about everyone,” I say with a shrug. “Apparently, he’s been having lunch with Dad every month for ages. I couldn’t believe it.”

“With Dad ?” she asks. “What on earth would they need to meet about?”

“I don’t think they’re meeting about anything,” I say. “I think they just legitimately enjoy each other’s company. I was as surprised as you.”

Now, of course, I am no longer surprised. My father is brilliant and entertaining and so is Miller. I honestly can’t think of two people I would rather share a meal with than them, so it makes complete sense that they’d have sought each other out.

Maren does that fidgety thing with her fingers—tapping, tapping along the side of her disposable cup—which is what she does when she’s excited and trying to be cool. She wants to hear more about Miller but knows her obsession is getting weird.

“So, how was it?” she asks.

“People were nice enough,” I tell her. “There was an annoying chick and her boyfriend, who was older than Dad and obnoxious as hell, but otherwise everyone was great.”

Better than great. So much better than great.

“What did you do the whole time?” she asks. “I mean, I know you were climbing, but you must’ve had downtime. I would die without Internet for that long.”

My eyes fall closed for a minute as I picture myself curled up in a sleeping bag next to Miller, watching 30 Rock and eating his chocolate. Lying in the dark, listening to him breathe. God, I was in so far over my head, and I didn’t even know it.

I shrug. “You’re pretty tired after the climbing. For the most part you just want to sleep.”

“Let me see your pics,” she says.

She’ll only be scrolling through, looking for Miller. I hope I didn’t focus on him too much. I open the phone, quickly hide the photos I took just of him, and hand it over.

“Jesus,” she says, fanning herself. “He’s just as hot with that full beard as he is without one.”

Please let this go, Mare. Please. It killed me to let you have him the first time.

I wouldn’t survive it a second.

I pull the phone away from her with my stomach in knots. “What time is this appointment Mom made?”

She glances at her diamond-encrusted Cartier watch. “Argh. We better get going. Put on some clothes Ulrika won’t have a tantrum about.”

I laugh as I walk to the bedroom. “She’ll have a tantrum about something . I’d rather it be my clothes than my weight.”

Maren laughs. “Are you kidding? You look emaciated. Your weight is the one thing she won’t have a tantrum about.”

Thirty minutes later, we arrive at the salon to find my mother fuming, though we’re not late. “You could have replied to my texts,” she snaps.

“Mom,” Maren argues. “It was after one when she got home.”

My mother ignores this. “Your nails are a disaster,” she says to me as she examines one of my hands. “Get that taken care of before my birthday party, please. I’ve got someone coming over to do our spray tans tomorrow night, and someone else will be there Saturday afternoon to blow us out.”

I simply nod. It has been like this with her for most of my life—no matter what goal I set or what I accomplish, her primary concern has always been my appearance. Her beauty was what got her ahead in life, and she can’t picture another way forward for her offspring.

I sometimes think that’s why Maren wound up with Harvey…because my mother worked so hard to convince us both that our looks were all we had to sell.

“Well,” she says, looking me over, “at least you came back skinny.”

I laugh to myself. “Kilimanjaro was amazing. Thanks for asking.”

My mother dismisses this with a roll of her eyes. “I refuse to dignify the whole experience by asking questions about it. I still can’t believe your father made you go.”

In a way, I can’t either. My dad loves me—that is indisputable. And maybe Miller made it sound like a relatively easy climb and Dad figured, just like I did, that anyone who can run a marathon can climb to 18,000 feet. But having done it, I don’t think I’d suggest anyone attempt the climb with as little preparation as I had. Unless they’ve got a Miller of their own there to help them along, anyway.

“It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, Mom. I don’t regret it.”

I think it’s true. I just wish I hadn’t returned quite so unhappy with the life I had before.