17 Austria

17

AUSTRIA

LATE JUNE

PHAEDRA

I’m at a two-top table on the hotel patio—scrolling through track data on my iPad, about to slice into a nice salmon Benedict for breakfast—when brown suede high-heeled boots step into my peripheral vision.

Assuming someone is going to ask for my unused chair, I glance up and am stunned motionless by the sight of Natalia standing over me with a tentative smile.

She lifts a hand and waggles her fingers. “Um. Hi?”

I leap up so fast that I bash the table with my thigh and almost tip it over. Nat’s hand shoots out to stabilize it, and she laughs—a sound that strangles off into a cough as I tackle her in a crushing hug.

“ Holyfuckingshit! ” I squeal.

She hugs me back hard, and I haven’t been this happy in two months, aside from when I temporarily stop thinking about the rift with Nat because Cosmin is naked.

We draw apart, and I hold her upper arms in the gorgeous burnt-orange dress she’s wearing. A pair of fancy sunglasses sits atop her sleek brown hair, and she looks like an ad for expensive shampoo. A small Louis Vuitton purse hangs off her elbow.

“Sorry for not replying to your last email for a couple weeks,” she says with a wince, pulling out the opposite chair and sitting. “My life kinda blew up the day you sent it, and I was a wreck. That’s no excuse—I know.”

I settle across from her. “Not to split hairs, but it’s been three weeks since I sent it. And unless I missed something, you still haven’t replied.” I take a sip of iced coffee, cautiously studying her.

“Semantics,” she says with an airy laugh. I think she realizes it sounds dismissive, and tries again, her face going grave. “I actually tried writing back several times, and it just kept sounding all wrong, and I’d delete it, then get more anxious and emotional and ashamed of myself. I know I screwed up, Phae. I’m sorry, honestly.”

I wait, punishing her a little before allowing a wan smile. “We both screwed up. I was hitting below the belt with that stuff I said in Shanghai, so I’m sorry too.” I gnaw at my lower lip. “I’ve missed you a ton—not gonna lie.”

“Same!”

In the deep V of her neckline hangs a heart-shaped emerald pendant. I squint and lean forward to inspect it, then meet her eye. She touches it lightly as if just remembering she’s wearing it, then jerks her hand away, fiddling with the clasp of her purse.

“Hm, quite a rock you’re sporting there,” I note with a cheeky faux aloofness, going for humor. “With the earrings I’m surrendering to you, you’ll look like a Christmas tree.”

I take another long sip of my coffee, then stir it, giving Nat space in which I hope she’ll pick up the thread I’ve thrown out and start a conversation about Klaus—I suspect he bought her the necklace. I mean… an emerald? It’s pretty on the nose.

Instead, she deflects again, and I decide to let her.

“No no no, don’t give your grandmother’s jewelry to me, silly. I was teasing with that whole bet thing.” She leans forward with a conspiratory smirk. “Giving me the gossip about what the Randy Rookie is like in bed will be adequate payment.”

A waiter comes over and I order Nat’s favorite drink and pastry. “Could we get an oat-milk half-caf latte with a dusting of cinnamon,” I request, “and a scone with seedless raspberry jam?” I’m trying to show that I know her preferences because I’m a top-notch friend. I’m not sure why even our best impulses toward each other are a little on the competitive side, but it’s how we roll.

The guy doesn’t bother hiding an “Oh, you’re one of those customers” eye roll, then gives me a supercilious nod before breezing off.

“You’re sweet,” Nat tells me.

“No, you .” My eyes roam the severe angles of her upper body in the clinging dress. “This isn’t a dig, but you look like you could use some breakfast—you’re thinner than you were in April.”

She twists the handles of her purse, not meeting my eyes. “I’ve been… struggling. And considering the subject matter during the spat you and I had, I didn’t need an ‘I told you so.’”

“Nat, I wouldn’t.”

She shoots a flat look my way that says, We both know you would, and routinely do .

I amend, “Okay, I mean I won’t .”

When she roots in her purse for a tissue and dabs under her eyelashes, I can’t tell if she’s legitimately distraught, or playing it up. “It’s over, and it didn’t even really begin,” she confides. “I know I’ve said it before, but this seemed like it was going to be different.”

Her shoulders draw up, and I know better than to say anything negative or positive, as much as I’m tempted to spill out some unhelpful bullshit like It’s for the best or Are you sure?

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I venture.

A dance of about four different emotions flits across her face. Finally she looks up, everything stilled into determination. “ No. And that’s enough of my BS anyway—let’s talk about you . I’m so sorry about your dad. How is he?”

I prod my breakfast. “It’s… he has a rare kind of brain tumor. And detected late, because he’s a stubborn old Southern boy who let the symptoms rage for a year until he couldn’t hide them.” My throat catches with fought-back tears, and I swallow. “He’s got a few months left. He’s only sixty , Nat.”

“Oh, God.” She takes my hand. “I know there’s nothing I can do, but—”

“I still need you.” I risk an embarrassingly vulnerable moment, adding, “Please don’t go away again. I promise I won’t be an asshole.”

“You aren’t! And I’m not going anywhere .”

As the waiter delivers the drink and scone, something catches up to me: Why didn’t Nat seem shocked about the specifics?

“Hey, Nat?” I clear my throat. “Did Klaus tell you about Mo before my email? Or is there some kind of press leak?”

“What? No! As if that ice sculpture Klaus Franke would tell me anything.” She breaks off a chunk of scone, crumbling it into smaller and smaller morsels without eating any. “You weren’t kidding about him having a thing against journalists.”

I drag my fork through some hollandaise sauce. “Yeah. I love Klaus and everything, but he’s kind of an elegant luxury car you should only lease, never purchase.”

I’m tempted to ask Nat if Klaus said anything about buying the team, but if she’s to be believed about him not discussing my dad’s illness, the subject wouldn’t have come up. It sounds like he didn’t trust her. I’d want to be loyally indignant about that for her sake if it weren’t for the tiny, wary part of me that’s hesitant to trust her either right now.

“I’m sure I don’t have to say this to you,” I begin, trying for casual, “but everything I’ve told you about Mo is off the record. That’s obvious, right? I know you wouldn’t—”

Her hands have frozen in the act of lifting a piece of scone to her mouth, and I fall silent when I see the unmistakable hurt on her face.

“I’m your friend, Phae. Would I betray you—or anyone—for… a scoop ?”

“Of course not. I know that.” I jab at an egg yolk, trying to hide the uncertainty prickling my gut. “Wouldn’t even be much of a ‘scoop.’ He might be in hospice care in weeks—there’ll be no keeping it out of the public eye then.”

She makes a noise of pained sympathy through the bite of scone, nodding and doing her gesture that’s so familiar to me, pressing a hand briefly over the center of her chest with the fingers flexed, like she’s trapping her runaway heart in a cage. In this moment, everything about her is the Natalia I’ve known fourteen years, and I wonder how things got so off track with us.

Is this my fault?

We became inseparable in college when I was eighteen and she was twenty. I was sure I saw a future in which we’d be weird old ladies together. Has it only been the physical distance, all these years I’ve been working for Emerald, that allowed us to sustain an untested “besties in name only” status?

Hoping to put the subject to bed, I unwisely make it worse, because of course I fucking do. “Anyway, if you keep it under your hat for now, I’ll ask Reece if we can give you an exclusive. Uh, when the bad thing happens.”

Nat sets her coffee cup down with such pointed gingerliness that it feels almost louder than a slam. She studies me for a full three blinks before speaking.

“You don’t think I’d keep my word without a payoff?”

“Oh, shit. Nat, I didn’t—”

“It’s painful, being punished for working in journalism. You’re being just as weird to me as he was.”

“Fuck.” I put both hands over my face and slide them off. “Can we—”

“ I’m a person ,” she interrupts with crisp emphasis. “I’m not my job.”

“I totally agree, and I’m sorry. Let’s pretend I didn’t phrase that like a tacky bribe. My head isn’t working right. I’m all fucked up over the, y’know, Mo being sick.”

I’m not sure if she’s really sympathetic, or just understands that according to the social contract, when someone plays the Cancer-Dad Card, you stop what you’re doing. Nat has always been a little selfish—she can’t help it because she had a neglected early childhood—but she has a good heart.

She fusses with her cup, rotating it. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t mean it the way I took it.”

Now I feel guilty because I absolutely did mean it the way she took it.

“Of course not,” I assure her.

I slice a triangle of my salmon Benedict and eat it, keeping an innocuous “I’m just so content to be sitting here with you” expression on my face, even though I’m actually worried things aren’t settled between us, but for our own reasons we’re feigning that they are.

She eats a bit of scone with a microscopic dab of jam on. I point at her little plate while swallowing my own food, then ask, “How is it?”

Her polite smile is affected, and I have to take my hat off to her. She’s good at pretending to pretend something.

“I think the butter was too warm when they cut it into the flour,” she says with a careless wave. “The texture’s off. But that’s totally not your fault—you’re absolutely the sweetest to have ordered it for me.”

I give her a radiant smile anyway, delivering the line we both know comes next.

“No, you .”