Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (176 page)

Brooke stood up and was about to make her way to Julian when Leo materialized in front of her.

‘Our boy did pretty well, dontcha think, Brooke? Little weird on the last question, but nothing major.'

‘Mmm.' Brooke was intent on getting to Julian, but out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Samara, the media trainer, and two PAs escorted Julian back outside to prepare for his next set. He still had two more songs to sing, one at eight forty-five and one at nine thirty, before this hellish morning would finally end.

‘You wanna come outside or watch from the greenroom? Might want to take it easy, you know, put your legs up?' Leo leered, which felt grosser than usual right then.

‘You think I'm pregnant?' she asked in disbelief.

Leo threw his hands in the air. ‘I'm not asking. That's your deal, you know? Granted, it wouldn't be the
best
timing in terms of Julian's career, but hey, I guess babies come when they're ready …'

‘Leo, I would really appreciate—'

Leo's cell phone rang and he yanked it from his pocket and cradled it like it was the Bible. ‘Gotta take this,' he said, and turned to walk outside.

Brooke stood rooted to her spot. She couldn't even begin to process what had happened. Julian had all but confirmed an imaginary pregnancy on live, national television. The page who had greeted them this morning appeared by Brooke's side.

‘Hi! Can I show you back to the greenroom? They're getting set up for the next segment, so things are kind of crazy here,' he said, checking his clipboard.

‘Sure, that'd be great. Thanks,' Brooke said gratefully.

She followed him in silence back up the stairs and down the long hallway. He opened the greenroom door for her and Brooke thought he may have said ‘congratulations' before he left, but she wasn't sure. Her seat had been claimed by a man in full chef whites, so she took the only empty chair left.

The child prodigy with the violin looked up at her. ‘Do you know what it is?' she asked, her voice so high-pitched it sounded like she had just inhaled a helium balloon.

‘Pardon me?' Brooke glanced at the child, uncertain she had heard her correctly.

‘I asked,' the girl said excitedly, ‘if you know what you're having yet. A boy or a girl?'

Brooke's mouth dropped in shock.

The girl's mother leaned over and whispered something in her ear, probably something about her question being rude or inappropriate, but the girl only glared back. ‘I just asked what she was having!' she screeched.

Brooke tried to relax. Might as well have a little fun – god knows her family and friends weren't going to be quite as amused. She scanned the room to make sure no one else was listening and leaned over. ‘I'm having a girl,' she whispered, only feeling slightly evil for lying to a child. ‘And I can only hope she is every bit as lovely as you.'

The phone calls from friends and family began pouring in during the car ride home and continued nonstop for days. Her mother announced that while she was hurt she had to find out on television, she was nonetheless ecstatic that her only daughter would finally be a mother herself. Her father was delighted that the picture from his party had been posted on national television and wondered how he and Cynthia hadn't figured it out earlier. Julian's mother weighed in with the expected ‘Oh, well! We sure don't feel old enough to be grandparents!' Randy kindly offered to include Brooke's future son on the small football team of Greene children he was mentally drafting, and Michelle volunteered her services to decorate the little one's nursery. Nola was livid that Brooke hadn't confided in her first, although she admitted that she'd be more apt to forgive were the little girl named after her. And every single one of them – some more gently than others – commented on the wine.

That she had to convince her entire family, Julian's entire family, all her coworkers and all their friends that first, she was not pregnant, and second, she would
never
drink during her purely hypothetical pregnancy, felt to Brooke like more than an insult. An affront. And she could still sense skepticism. The only thing that worked – that actually made people back off for half a second – was the following week's
US Weekly,
which showed a paparazzi picture of Brooke grocery shopping at her neighborhood Gristedes. Her belly looked flatter, no doubt, but that wasn't what did the trick. In the photo she held a basket with bananas, a four-pack of yogurt, a liter of Poland Spring, a bottle of Windex, and, apparently, a box of Tampax. The Pearl version, super absorbency, should the world be interested, and it was circled with a thick black marker and a caption that screamed ‘No Baby for the Alters!' as though the magazine, through some sort of savvy detective work, had really gotten to the bottom of the issue.

Thanks to that stellar journalism, the entire world knew she was
not
pregnant but she
did
have heavier-than-average periods. Nola found the entire thing hysterically funny; Brooke couldn't stop thinking that everyone from her tenth-grade boyfriend to her ninety-one-year-old grandfather – not to mention every single teenager, housewife, frequent flyer, grocery shopper, salon visitor, manicure seeker, and subscriber in North America – was privy to the details of her menstrual cycle. She hadn't even
seen
the photographer! From that day on, she ordered all products that were sex, period, or digestion related online.

Thankfully, Randy and Michelle's baby, Ella, proved to be the ultimate distraction. She arrived, like a blessing from above, two weeks after the
Today
show drama, and she had the courtesy to arrive right on Halloween, thereby giving them a perfect excuse to bail on Leo's costume party. Brooke couldn't help but feel immense gratitude toward her new niece. Between all the retellings of the birthing story (Michelle's water breaking while they were out at an Italian restaurant, the race to the hospital only to wait another twelve hours, the offer of free lifetime meals for Ella from the owner of Campanelli's), the swaddling lessons, and the counting of fingers and toes, the focus had shifted away from Brooke and Julian. At least, within their own family.

They were the model aunt and uncle, making it to the hospital with time to spare before the baby was born, remembering to bring with them two dozen New York bagels and enough lox to feed the entire maternity ward. Even Julian had seemed pleased by the whole event, cooing in Ella's ear that her tiny hands looked like they were made to play the piano. She would forever think of baby Ella as the last delicious calm before the hell storm to come.

Brooke's cell phone rang just as she'd lugged the twenty-two-pound turkey into the apartment and managed to heave it on top of the counter.

‘Hello?' she said as she began clearing her fridge of every nonessential item to make room for the gigantic bird.

‘Brooke? It's Samara.'

She was caught off guard. Samara had never, ever called her before. Did she want to check in and see what they thought of the
Vanity Fair
cover? It had just hit the stands and Brooke couldn't stop staring at it. She thought of it as vintage Julian, in jeans and a tight white T-shirt, wearing one of his favorite knit caps and smiling in just that way that showed off his astonishingly endearing dimples. He was by far the cutest of the gang.

‘Oh, hi! Doesn't he just look amazing on the
Vanity Fair
cover? I mean, I'm not surprised, but he just looks so—'

‘Brooke, do you have a minute?'

Obviously, this wasn't a social call about a magazine cover, and if that woman was even going to try to tell Julian that he couldn't make it home for the very first Thanksgiving
they
were hosting, well, she'd kill her.

‘Um, yeah, just hold on one sec.' She closed the fridge and sat down at their tiny table, which reminded her that she needed to call and check on the status of the table and chair rental. ‘Okay, I'm settled now. What's going on?'

‘Brooke, there's been an article written, and it's not pleasant,' Samara announced in that clipped, curt way she always had, although with news like this there was something comforting about it.

Brooke tried to laugh it off. ‘Well, seems like these days there's always an article written. Hey, I'm the hard-drinking pregnant lady, remember? What did Julian say?'

Samara cleared her throat. ‘I haven't told him yet. I suspect he'll be very upset, and I wanted to talk to you first.'

‘Oh, Christ. What do they say about him? Do they make fun of his hair? Or his family? Or did some creepy attention whore from his past surface with claims that—'

‘It's not about Julian, Brooke. It's about you.'

Silence. Brooke felt her fingernails digging into her palms, but she couldn't consciously stop it from happening.

‘What about me?' she finally asked, her voice a near whisper.

‘It's a collection of offensive lies,' Samara said coolly. ‘I wanted you to hear it from me first. And I also want you to know that we have our legal team on it, refuting the entirety of it. We're taking this very seriously.'

Brooke couldn't bring herself to speak. No question it must be pretty horrible if Samara was going to such lengths over some tabloid piece. Finally she said, ‘Where is it? I need to see it.'

‘It will be in tomorrow's issue of
Last Night,
but you can read it online right now. Brooke, please understand that everyone here is behind you, and we promise—'

For possibly the first time since she was a teenager – and certainly for the first time involving anyone but her mother – Brooke hung up midsentence and moved to the computer. She found the page within seconds and did a double take when a huge picture on the homepage showed her and Julian having dinner at an outdoor table. She wracked her brain, trying to figure out where they were, before she noticed a street sign in the background. Of course, the Spanish meal they'd shared the night Julian first came home after leaving in the middle of her father's birthday party. Then she began to read.

The couple sharing an order of paella at an outdoor table in Hell's Kitchen might look like anyone else, but those in the know recognized them as America's favorite new singer-songwriter Julian Alter and his longtime wife, Brooke. Alter's debut album has crushed the charts, and his boy-next-door dimples have wowed female fans from coast to coast. But just who is the woman by his side? And how are they weathering Julian's newfound fame?

Not well, according to a source close to the couple. ‘They married very, very young, and yes, they've made it five years so far, but they are on the verge of collapse,' the source said. ‘His schedule is demanding, and Brooke hasn't been very accommodating.'

The two met shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11 and clung to each other in the aftermath that rocked New York. ‘Brooke practically stalked Julian for months, following him all over Manhattan and sitting alone at all his gigs until he had no choice but to notice her. They were both just lonely,' the source explained. A close family friend of the Alters' agrees. ‘Julian's parents were devastated when he announced his engagement to Brooke after less than two years of dating. They were only twenty-four, what was the rush?' However, the couple tied the knot in a small, no-frills ceremony at the Alter family home in the Hamptons despite the fact that the Drs. Alter ‘always suspected that Brooke, a girl from some nowhere town in Pennsylvania, was trying to hitch her wagon to Julian's star.'

Over the last few years, Brooke worked two jobs to help support her husband's musical aspirations, but one of her friends explains that ‘Brooke would've done anything necessary to help Julian seek the fame she's always so desired. Two jobs, ten jobs – none of it mattered, so long as she was married to a celebrity.' The mother of a student enrolled at the elite Upper East Side private school where Brooke offers nutritional counseling reports, ‘She seems like a perfectly nice person, although my daughter did tell me that she often leaves early or cancels appointments.' The work problems don't stop there. A colleague at NYU Medical Center explains that ‘Brooke used to be the number one performer in our entire program, but she's really slipped lately. Whether she's distracted by her husband's career or just bored of her own, it's been sad to watch.'

As for those pregnancy rumors that were started on the
Today
show and quickly quashed by
US Weekly
the following week with photographic evidence that the Alters are not expecting? Well, don't expect that to change any time soon. An old friend of Julian's claims that Brooke has been ‘pushing for a baby since the day they met, but Julian keeps putting her off because he's still not positive she's the One.'

And with trouble brewing like that, who can blame him?

‘I have complete faith that Julian will do the right thing,' a source close to Julian said recently. ‘He's an amazing kid with such a solid head on his shoulders. He'll find the right path.'

She didn't know when the tears began, but by the time she finished reading, they had puddled near the keyboard and dampened her cheeks, chin, and lips. There were no words to describe how it felt to read something like that about yourself, to know that it was patently untrue but to wonder – because how couldn't you? – if there weren't tiny kernels of truth. Of course all that stuff about how she and Julian met, and why, was ridiculous, but
did
his parents really hate her?
Was
her reputation at both her jobs being compromised by how much work she'd missed? Could there be
any
sliver of truth to the story's supposed reason why Julian didn't want a baby right now? It was horrifying beyond comprehension.