Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know (244 page)

‘What are you grinning about?' Lily asked.

‘Nothing. Just envisioning myself married one day to a forty-year-old man with two kids and a receding hairline whose ex-wife hates me almost as much as Max hates him. Words like
custodial
and
weekend visitation
will fill our conversation. We'll figure out how to stepparent together. It'll be beautiful.'

‘You'll make a fabulous evil stepmother,' Lily said, standing up to hug her friend. ‘And who's to say you won't end up with some hot twenty-two-year-old stud who has a thing for
cougars
…'

‘And toddlers …'

‘He'll love his cougar mama, and you'll love that his biggest worry in life is the state of his tan during the long, cold New York winters.'

Andy laughed. ‘I could be a cougar mama to a golden-bronze man-boy any day. For you, Grams, if you're somewhere
listening
.'

‘See?' Lily said, helping her own grandmother stand up and motioning for Andy to walk toward the living room. ‘Life is just beginning.'

The word counter on her writing program sent out a silent, blinking alarm:
500 WORDS!
it blared in all caps, a festive purple and green message dancing across her entire screen. Smiling to herself, Andy hit ‘save,' removed her noise-cancellation headphones, and headed to the tiny lounge area of the Writer's Space to make herself some coffee. Slumped at one of the two-tops and reading from a Kindle was Nick, a recently transplanted L.A. screenwriter who had penned an outrageously successful pilot for a thirty-minute comedy and was currently working on his first and eagerly anticipated movie screenplay. He and Andy had become casual coffee-room friends a few months earlier when she had joined the space, but Andy had been shocked when he asked her to see an indie film the week before last – so surprised she actually said yes.

Not that it had been graceful.

‘You know I have a daughter, right?' Andy blurted the moment he finished describing the Iranian film he was hoping to see.

Nick had cocked his head full of floppy dirty-blond hair, stared at her for just a moment, and then broken into laughter. Merry, sweet-sounding laughter. ‘I absolutely did know that. Clementine, right? You remember showing me that picture of her on your phone from her music class? And the one your nanny sent of her with red sauce smeared all over her face? Yes, Andy, I know you have a daughter. She's welcome to join us if you like, but I'm not sure it'll be her kind of film.'

Andy was mortified. She'd asked Lily and Jill a thousand times how she would one day tell a date about Clementine – when was the right time, the right circumstance, and what were the right words to use – and both of them had insisted she would just know in the moment. This was probably not what they had in mind.

‘Sorry,' she mumbled, feeling her face turn hot. ‘I'm sort of new at this.'
Understatement of the century,
she thought. It had been a year and a half since her divorce, and although the invites hadn't exactly been rolling in, she'd turned down a few out of sheer anxiety and fear. But something about Nick's kind eyes and gentle manner made her feel like it was okay to say yes.

It had been a perfectly lovely evening. She was able to bathe and dress Clementine before explaining to her daughter that she was going out to see a movie with a friend. Not that Clem understood enough to be upset, but Andy always tried to explain everything.

‘Daddy?' Clem asked, as she did at least a dozen times a day.

‘No, not with Daddy, sweetheart. A different friend.'

‘Daddy?'

‘Nope. Someone you haven't met. But Isla will read you your stories and tuck you in, and I'll be right here when you wake up in the morning, okay?'

Clem had rested her damp, sweet-smelling head against
Andy's
chest, snuggled her lovey blanket to her face, and let out a long, relaxed sigh. Andy literally had to force herself out the door.

The date had been perfectly … fine. Nick offered to pick her up in a cab, but Andy felt more comfortable meeting him at the theater. He had already purchased their tickets and saved them aisle seats, so Andy bought popcorn and Raisinets and maintained a steady stream of perfectly acceptable small talk in the fifteen minutes before the movie began. Afterward they'd gone for dessert at a coffee shop on Houston and talked about Nick's years in L.A., Andy's new position as a contributing editor for
New York
magazine, and, although she'd pledged not to, Clementine. When he dropped her off, he'd pecked her lightly on the mouth and announced he'd had a great time. He even seemed to mean it. Andy quickly agreed – it had been fun, and way more relaxed than she'd expected – but she forgot about the date, and Nick, the moment she walked in her front door. She remembered long enough the next morning to text him a thank-you, but she stopped responding after a couple back-and-forths and was so totally consumed with Clementine and her most recent assignment and planning an upcoming weekend visit with her mom and Jill that she'd barely even noticed Nick was absent from the Writer's Space the entire next week.

Yet here he was, still totally absorbed with his reading – enough so that Andy could probably slip back to her desk area unnoticed – and Andy felt instantly guilty. For what, she wasn't sure. But for something.

Clearing her throat, she took the seat opposite Nick's and said, ‘Hey there. Long time, no see.'

Nick looked up but didn't appear surprised to see her. Instead, his face broke into a wide smile and he flicked off his Kindle. ‘Andy! Good to see you. What's going on?'

‘Not much. Just taking my five-hundred-word break. I was going to make some coffee. You want some?' She headed toward the coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, relieved to have something to do with her hands.

‘I just made a pot. That one there is fresh.'

‘Got it.' Andy plucked her mug off the shelf – a photo mug of Clementine blowing out candles on her Elmo first-birthday cake – and filled it with coffee. She fiddled with the milk and Splenda as long as she could, unsure of what to say once she turned around, but Nick didn't seem nervous.

‘Andy? Are you around this weekend?' he asked.

He was looking her straight in the eye when she rejoined him at the table.

She hated when people asked that without stating what it was they wanted. Was she available for front-row tickets to see Bruce Springsteen perform at the Garden? Yes, she could probably swing that. Did she have hours of free time to help Nick move from one sixth-floor walk-up to another? No, she was fully booked this upcoming weekend. Frozen and not knowing what to say, Andy stared at him.

‘A friend of mine, an illustrator, is having his work shown at the National Arts Club. A private exhibit. A bunch of us are going for dinner afterward to celebrate, and I'd love it if you wanted to come.'

‘To the exhibit? Or to dinner?' Andy asked to buy herself more time.

‘Either one. Preferably both,' Nick said with an undeniably cute impish grin.

A million excuses ran through her mind, but unable to formulate any of them into speech, Andy smiled and half nodded. ‘Sounds good,' she said without the least bit of enthusiasm.

Nick looked at her strangely for a second but must have decided to ignore her halfhearted response. ‘Great. I'll swing by and get you around six?'

Andy already knew that none of it would happen – not the swing-by, the inevitable Clem meeting, the date overall – but she felt totally incapable of explaining why. Nick was perfectly sweet, cute, and smart. He seemed into her for whatever reason and was pursuing her in a lovely, low-key, nonthreatening way. Just because she'd felt nothing when he kissed her and almost immediately forgot about him after their date didn't mean they weren't a good match. She could practically hear her sister and Lily:
You're not agreeing to marry him, Andy! It's a second date. You don't have to be madly in love to go on a second date with someone. If nothing else, it'll get you back in the mix, help you remember what it's like to be in the scene again. Go, relax, enjoy. Stop trying to orchestrate every detail. Who cares if it works out or it doesn't? Just try
.

Like it was ever that easy.

‘Andy? Is six okay?' Nick's voice snapped her out of her haze.

‘Six? Six is great. That totally works.' She smiled widely and felt instantly ridiculous. ‘I better be getting back to work!'

‘You just sat down.'

‘Yes, but this article is due on Friday and I haven't even begun editing it yet!' She sounded flighty and forced to her own ears. How awful must she have sounded to him?

‘Will you tell me what it's about?'

‘Saturday,' she said, halfway out of the lounge. ‘I'll bore you with all the details then.'

Her desk, when she finally reached it, felt like a respite. Andy tried to reassure herself that Nick was a super-nice guy who, if nothing else, would be a fun person to do things with. Why did she need to think beyond that? It was simple: she didn't.

She managed to concentrate for the next hour, putting down another hundred words, and began to feel better about meeting her Friday deadline. Her new editor at
New York
magazine, a
Vogue
transplant named Sawyer, was an absolute pleasure to work for: calm, reasonable, totally professional in every way. He approved – and sometimes assigned – Andy's story ideas, discussed in good detail what he'd most like to see her focus on, and then stood back while she researched and wrote, getting involved again only once she'd submitted copy in order to provide terrific line edits and ask thoughtful, substantive questions. Her current article was, coincidentally, an in-depth feature piece on the ways in which same-sex partners tried to differentiate their weddings from conventional weddings without alienating conservative family members. It would be her largest piece for them yet, and she was pleased with how it was shaping up. It provided her with a decent-enough salary – at least when combined with the interest she made from her cut of
The Plunge
's sale, since she'd immediately saved and conservatively invested the principal – and the time to work on other projects. Namely, a book. Although she only had a hundred or so pages and hadn't yet shown it to another human being, Andy had a good feeling about that one, too. Who could say for sure if she would ever really publish a roman à clef about Miranda Priestly? All Andy knew was that she loved being back in control of her own life.

An e-mail banner popped up on her cell phone, and Andy reflexively clicked to open it.

Greetings from the City of Angels!
the subject line blared. She knew immediately it was from Emily.

Dear friends, family, and adoring fans,

I'm thrilled to announce that Miles and I have finally found a home and are getting all settled in. He's already begun shooting his new series, Lovers and Losers, and everyone who's seen the footage swears it's going to be a HUGE HIT (think Khloe and Lamar meets The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills!!!). My new gig as a stylist to the stars is off and running. I've already signed Sofia Vergara, Stacy Keibler, and Kristen Wiig, and not to drop any names here or anything, but I'm having drinks with Carey Mulligan tonight and will hope to call her an Emily Charlton client by the end of happy hour. We both miss New York, and of course all of you, but life is pretty sweet out here. Do you know it was seventy-eight degrees today and we went to the beach? Doesn't suck. So please please please come visit us soon … did I mention we have a pool AND a hot tub? Visit. Seriously. You won't regret it.

Love and kisses,

Em

If Andy had tried to send some sort of message to Emily that they were no longer friends, Emily hadn't received it. Despite Andy throwing Emily out of her apartment the morning after she'd discovered the contract signing, despite her refusing to return any of Emily's calls or e-mails unless they directly concerned the sale of
The Plunge,
and despite her ignoring Emily when they ran into each other socially, Emily wouldn't accept Andy's silence. She continued to text and call and e-mail with random updates or funny bits of gossip, and she always greeted Andy with a big hug and an excited hello when they saw each other. Which is why it was such a relief when Andy got the e-mail from Emily a couple months earlier announcing that she and Miles were moving to Los Angeles. Distance would surely accomplish what Andy could not seem to, and she welcomed the idea of severing ties.

Emily's dismissal from
The Plunge
after a mere ten weeks on the job shouldn't have come as a surprise – this was Miranda, after all – but when Max told Andy, she couldn't help the
I told you so.
A single issue. That was all the time Miranda had granted Emily and her new editor in chief to prove themselves at Elias-Clark before firing the entire editorial team she had so relentlessly insisted on retaining. Although it only added to her PTSD-like symptoms, Andy couldn't stop reading all the different accounts of the firing. A gossip blog had the most comprehensive coverage, probably supplied by Agatha or one of the other assistants who actually witnessed the whole thing, and Andy read it voraciously. Apparently it had been a day like any other, the week after
The Plunge
had published its first issue at Elias-Clark. On the cover were Nigel and his new husband, Neil, who was – at least judging by the photos – surprisingly nebbishy, unfashionable, and older than Nigel by at least two decades. Nigel had gained a bit of pudge, no doubt from prewedding bliss, but combined with Neil's
already
-challenged appearance, not even St Germain could make them look totally fabulous. Never mind that the first-ever issue of any wedding magazine dedicated to same-sex marriage had gotten tremendously positive feedback from all over the country for its sensitive and insightful coverage of a long-overlooked group – the cover wasn't glam enough, and that was unforgivable. None of it was Emily's fault, but such details didn't concern Miranda.