Seven Days in June(60)

She’d call her girlfriend Jenna Jones to find her something fabulous to wear. Jenna was a former fashion editor who now hosted a ubiquitous YouTube style show called The Perfect Find. By virtue of her fashion-royalty status, she knew all the PR folks at all the fashion houses (even the small, indie-cool ones that Cece herself couldn’t get to). Jenna was Cece’s secret style weapon.

Yes, she’d call Jenna! If only she could remember where she’d put her phone. She couldn’t hear herself think over Ken’s incessant banging.

Cece swept out of the office and across the floor to the dining room. The room was chaotic. The table was upside down on the floor, and Ken was crouched next to it, hammering a leg back into its socket.

“Ken. You. Are. Killing. Me.”

Dashing Ken, a.k.a. Billy Dee Williams Lite, pushed his glasses up his nose and asked, “Do the legs look even to you?”

With an extravagant exhale, she smoothed her dress and crouched down next to him. “Almost there.”

“Good,” he said, and continued to hammer away.

“Sweetheart, I’m going to hear that banging in hell.”

“You’re not going to hell,” Ken muttered, a screw jutting out from between his lips.

“Oh please. I own real estate down there,” she said breezily. Giving his shoulder a squeeze, she stood back up and resumed pacing. There was so much to do between now and tomorrow’s party.

When Cece hostessed, she did it from her soul—with, she supposed, the energy most women her age poured into their children. But she’d never wanted kids. Books were her kids. They cuddled up with her at night, kept her warm, quieted her thoughts when her marriage seemed thin, her life choices felt pointless, or her job seemed stagnant. At brunch, Belinda had asked if she’d ever felt wild, deep love. What Cece didn’t know how to say was that she didn’t need it. She was happy not to feel anything super deeply. The top level of life was enough for her. The beginning of the night, when there was the buzzing possibility of intrigue and drama—instead of the end, when everyone was wasted and weird and dark. Long ago, she’d learned that life could be bitterly disappointing if allowed. There were blows and stumbles, but your job was to stay interested in the world.

It was why Cece was so adept at sniffing out bestsellers. She’d read a manuscript once, and without giving it intense thought, without letting the words marinate, she’d know if it worked. Cece barely took a breath between reading the last page of a novel and convincing Parker + Rowe to buy it. And after forty bestsellers, no one doubted her instincts.

Not even Michelle, of the Chicago Robinsons (whom Cece had met at the Farm Neck Golf Club in the Vineyard when Sasha and Malia were just toddlers). At the 2017 National Congressional Black Caucus Conference, when Michelle divulged that she was conceptualizing a memoir, Cece didn’t need to hear the pitch. She knew the hook at first blush.

“South Side, darling,” she whispered into Michelle’s diamond-studded ear. “Make sure you give us South Side.”

“Really? You think people want to know about my childhood?”

“I don’t think, Shelly,” said Cece wisely. “I know.”

She also knew, instinctively, that there was delicious potential in Eva and Shane. They just needed…a push. Cece couldn’t wait to see what lusty magic her party would inspire—and she prayed that Eva would pour it into the pages of her new manuscript. She may be over Cursed, but her fans weren’t, and their publishing house wasn’t. Eva had to deliver.

Just then, Ken chuckled at her from where he was sitting on their pristine amber-wood-paneled floor.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“You’re plotting, Celia. I can tell.”

“I’m not plotting; I’m planning.”

He snickered to himself, the same screw sticking out of his mouth. “My nosy girl.”

Cece grinned. She was nosy, and she was his girl. Both were true, for better or for worse.

“Work on the left leg a bit more,” she said, then blew him a kiss and swept out of the room.

*



On the other side of Brooklyn, Shane was leaning into the doorway of Eva’s brownstone. He rang the doorbell twice—and nothing. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Now he was rethinking every life choice he’d made until this moment.

The sensible thing to do would be to leave. But what if she hadn’t heard the buzzer? No. He’d wait a while longer. He couldn’t go yet.

Yesterday was both too much and not enough. The day had left him in knots, and now Shane had a restless, bone-deep itch to be in her vicinity. He wanted to watch her do things, say things. Hold her hand, make her laugh. Fuck her senseless. Give her everything she hadn’t had in so long. Give her the best of him.

According to AA guidelines, relationships were forbidden until you were two years sober. This rule made sense, but Shane couldn’t have anticipated this happening.

High school relationships aren’t supposed to be meaningful, he reasoned. Our frontal lobes weren’t even developed. How did we know it was real?

Teenagers didn’t know how to distinguish between a crush and something deeper—let alone be right about it. At seventeen, Shane hadn’t been right about anything. But her.

His mind flashed back to one small moment at the Dream House. Eva was under him, breathless and blissed out, her mouth plush from kissing and her cheeks on fire from climaxing. And Shane was deeply, existentially happy. He buried his face in her neck and gathered her up in his arms, clinging to her so tightly, he couldn’t fathom ever letting her go.