Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(64)

“But maybe not today.” She stands. “I’m going to get a bagel over on the corner, and I’ll take a really long time. But I’ll be here.”

She goes off. I wait, hoping he sees that I’m serious. Five minutes go by. Then ten.

Nothing.

A few black town cars pass by. Those sorts of cars tend to look alike—clean and shiny with tinted windows. But I don’t think he was in any of them.

Somehow, I feel him watching me. I feel him near. Is he coming out the front door? My heart nearly jumps out of my chest when my phone dings. A text.

Kelsey: can I come back?

Me: Not yet.

I put it away. Twenty minutes after his lights went out, a black car slides past my bus stop. I can’t see Max in the window, but I feel him. The feeling of him is an ache so intense, I want to double over. I don’t know how I came to my feet, but I’m standing, watching his taillights disappear. Empty.

A bus slides up and I’m face to face with fake Max, smile full of secrets. Ferrari-and-liquor-cart Max Hilton.

Me: Let’s go.

The next day I can’t get off of work, but I pull together another great lunch—a Korean fried chicken sandwich with spicy dressing that has some of the buildings abuzz. I pair it with cheesy puffs.

The note I include is longer. I talk about the night we sang on the couch to Carousel. I just tell him what he looked like to me—how soft his eyes got. And the glint he’d get when he’d hold a note nice and long, or hit one just right. His goofy, friendly half smile that will never appear on an ad. The point where he tangled his fingers into mine and I felt like I’d never get higher. How hard it was not to just lean in and kiss him. How I wanted to stay there forever. How bad I want to tell him that I love him to his face.

In another note, I tell him more about that day in the lunch room. How I’d bought a dress for homecoming dance against the advice of all my friends, but I’d just felt like everything was magical with him, with us.

I still feel like that, I write. I won’t stop this. I won’t stop fighting for us. You said you messed up that day, but I messed up, too. Half the responsibility was mine back then. I’m going to fight for us now in a way I didn’t back then. You said I don’t give up on my dreams. You should know I won’t give up on us.

Another day is an open-faced bao—a steamed bun sandwich—filled with tender and fatty pork belly, topped with spicy relish, crushed peanuts, and Taiwanese red sugar. I tell him about the way his face looked in the dim light of his Studio Complex on New Year’s Eve. How connected I felt with him, like we’re two pieces of a puzzle.





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Surround yourself with interesting people. Get them talking and laughing.

~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room





* * *



Max

I open the note in the lunch she sent up.

“You want to me to leave you?” Parker asks.

“I know what it says.” I fold it back up.

“That smells amazing. Are you gonna eat it?”

I push it his way. I really should eat. It’ll be a long night with the Catwalk for a Cause happening.

He grabs it and unwraps it. “How long are you going to string this out?”

“I don’t know. How long does a person sleep with somebody, and at home she has his picture full of darts? And a wall-sized chart plotting vengeance?”

“Dude, you’re talking to a guy who had a picture of Britney Spears wearing a snake on his wall well into his twenties. And it stopped being sexy when I was fifteen. People leave shit on their walls.” He takes a bite. “Oh my god,” he mumbles.

I go to the window, look down at the bench where she sat all that day. So many times I stood looking at her.

“It feels too late.”

Parker’s in a stare-off with his sandwich, like he’s stunned at its goodness. “You sure?” He takes another bite.

“It wasn’t just the fact of the picture and the chart, though that was bad enough. It was the shock of it after what I’d told the group of them. I mean, I’d just spilled my guts, right in front of her friends. About fucking pining over her. Loving her from afar. I laid it all out on the table—things I’d never told a living soul.”

“You got blindsided, no question,” he says.

I press my hand to the window. “I couldn’t believe what I was confessing to. It was like shoving a knife in my gut and bleeding out on stage. Right there in front of Mia and four complete strangers. But in a strange way, it felt good to bare my soul to them. I wanted them to see how I felt. And then the next thing I know, my face is covered in darts. Like I’m Satan over there.”

“I would’ve felt blindsided, too. And I don’t have issues.”

“We all have issues,” I say.

“You’re not good with vulnerability. How about that?”

I give him a hard look.

Parker raises his hands. “You’re not. Have you heard a recording of the way you used to play piano? Have you read the Hilton Playbook lately?”

I pick up the note. Read it over again, then I put it in the drawer with the others.





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