LITMIR.BIZ

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Christian Collinsworth. He looked every bit as gorgeous and pompous and confident as the last time she’d woken up beside him in his room at the Villa d’Este five years earlier, still naked and tangled in his sheets, mere moments before he’d casually announced that his girlfriend would be joining him in Lake Como the following day, and would Andy like to meet her? When Emily had asked Andy to invite him as a personal favor to her, Andy vehemently refused, but when Mrs Harrison placed him at the top of her guest list, right alongside Christian’s parents, who were very dear friends of the Harrisons, there was nothing she could say. Oh, Barbara? So sorry, but perhaps it’s inappropriate to invite someone with whom I had a fabulous affair to our wedding? Don’t get me wrong, he was fantastic in bed, but I’m worried it might make cocktail hour uncomfortable … You understand, don’t you? So there he stood, a hand on his mother’s back, turned toward Andy and giving her that look. The one that hadn’t changed one bit in five years and said, You know and I know that we have a delicious secret. It was the look Christian gave exactly half the women in Manhattan.

      ‘I’m going to be walking down the aisle and seeing someone I used to have sex with,’ Andy had complained to Emily when she first saw Mrs Harrison’s guest list. Never mind that Katherine had been lopped off the list at Max’s behest. Andy had wanted to cheer when he told his mom over a wedding-planning brunch, ‘No Katherine. No exes,’ despite her status as ‘close family friend.’ When Andy had confessed to Max afterward that Christian Collinsworth was also on his mother’s list, he looked her in the eye and said, ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass about Christian if you don’t.’ Andy had nodded and agreed: it was probably best to leave well enough alone and not further upset Barbara.

      Emily had rolled her eyes. ‘That makes you like exactly ninety-nine percent of brides, excluding your odd religious fanatic and the occasional freaks who met in elementary school and never slept with anyone else. Get over it. I guarantee you Christian has.’

      ‘I know,’ Andy said. ‘I was probably number one hundred something for Christian. But I still think it was weird to have him at our wedding.’

      ‘You’re a thirty-year-old woman who has lived in New York City for the last eight years. I’d be worried if you didn’t have someone at your wedding you’d slept with besides your husband.’

      Andy had stopped marking up the layout in front of her and looked at Emily. ‘Which begs the question …’

      ‘Four.’

      ‘You did not! Who? I can only think of Jude and Grant.’

      ‘Remember Austin? With the cats?’

      ‘You never told me you slept with him!’

      ‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t anything to brag about.’ Emily sipped her coffee.

      ‘That’s only three. Who else?’

      ‘Felix. From Runway. He worked in the—’

      Andy almost fell out of her desk chair. ‘Felix is gay! He married his boyfriend last year. When did you have sex with him?’

      ‘You’re so label-conscious, Andy. It was a one-time thing, after the Fashion Rocks event one year. At one point Miranda made us take drink orders in the VIP room backstage. We both had way too many martinis. It was fun. We ended up at each other’s weddings, and who really cares? You’ve got to relax a little.’

      Andy remembered agreeing at the time, but that was before she was zipped into a wedding gown and sent strolling down the aisle to marry someone who’d potentially just cheated on her, while the guy she’d always been a little obsessed with grinned at her (naughtily, she could swear!) from the sidelines.

      The rest of the ceremony was a blur. It took the sound of the glass shattering under Max’s foot to bring her back to reality. Crash! They’d done it. From here on in, she would never again be just plain old Andy Sachs, herself, whatever that meant. After that split second she would forever carry one of two titles, and neither was particularly appealing at that very moment: married or divorced. How had it happened?

      Andy’s office line began to ring. She glanced at the clock: ten thirty. Agatha’s voice came through the intercom: ‘Morning, Andy. Max, line one.’

      Agatha came in later and later every day, and still Andy couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She reached over to depress her own intercom button, to tell Agatha she couldn’t take Max’s call, but she simultaneously knocked over her coffee cup and pressed line one.

      ‘Andy? You okay? I’m worried about you, sweetheart. How are you feeling?’

      The coffee, now cold enough to feel worse than if it had been hot, slowly streamed off the desk and directly onto Andy’s pants. ‘I’m fine,’ she said hurriedly. She looked around for a tissue or even a piece of scrap paper to mop up the spill. Finding nothing, Andy watched as the coffee slowly soaked through her desk blotter calendar and into her lap, and she began to cry. Again. For someone who rarely cried, she sure was crying a lot lately.

      ‘Are you crying? Andy, what’s wrong?’ Max asked, and the concern in his voice only made her tears stream faster.

      ‘No, nothing, I’m fine,’ she lied, watching the coffee spread into a circular stain over her left thigh. She cleared her throat. ‘Listen, I’m going to have to stop by and change tonight before Yacht Party, so I can walk Stanley. Will you cancel the walker? Are you coming home first or would you rather meet there? What pier does it leave from again?’

      They went over details for the evening and Andy managed to hang up without any more talk of her crying jag. She fixed her face in a little desk mirror, popped two Tylenols, chased them with a Diet Coke, and jammed through the rest of her day with barely a breather and, thankfully, no more tears. She even found a half hour to get a blowout at Dream Dry, which in addition to a quick change at home and an ice-cold glass of Pinot Grigio made her feel somewhat human. Max swooped over to her the moment she stepped off the red-carpeted gangplank and into the yacht’s open-air living room; his soft kiss and minty, spicy smell made her dizzy with pleasure. And then she remembered everything else.

      ‘You look great,’ he said, kissing her neck. ‘I’m so glad you’re feeling better.’

      A wave of queasiness hit Andy like a shovel, and her hand flew to her mouth.

      Max’s forehead kneaded. ‘The wind is making the water rough and the boat roll. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to calm down any minute. Come on, I want to show you off.’

      The party was in full swing, and together she and Max must have fielded a hundred congratulations on their wedding. Could it only have been four days earlier that she’d walked down that aisle? A chilly breeze blew and Andy moved one hand to her hair; with her other hand she tightened the cashmere wrap around her shoulders. More than anything, she was grateful her mother-in-law had some prior social engagement on the Upper East Side and wouldn’t be joining them that evening.

      ‘This may be the most gorgeous one yet,’ Andy said, looking around the boat’s Moroccan-inspired living room. She nodded toward an intricately woven tapestry and ran her fingers across the hand-carved bar. ‘So tasteful.’

      The wife of Yacht Life’s editor, a woman whose name Andy could never remember, leaned in and said, ‘I heard they gave him a blank check to decorate. Literally, blank. As in, unlimited.’

      ‘Gave who?’

      The woman peered at her. ‘Who? Why, Valentino! The owner commissioned him to decorate the entire yacht. Can you imagine? How much must it cost to hire one of the world’s preeminent fashion designers to pick fabrics for your couch?’

      ‘I can’t even fathom,’ Andy murmured, although of course she could. Little shocked her after her year at Runway, and what still did was certainly not the extent to which crazy rich people would spend their money.

      Once again Andy watched as the woman (Molly? Sadie? Zoe?) scarfed a miniature tartare-topped tortilla and gazed, munching, past Andy.

      The

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