29 Abu Dhabi

29

ABU DHABI

PHAEDRA

Thankfully the squeeeeee! shriek warns me a second before impact or I’d think I was being attacked and give Brooklyn a defensive punch in the tit.

She spins me around by the shoulders, and the guy in front of us in line scowls. Sometimes I really hate Abu Dhabi because of the glares I see men deliver to women when they “act up”—as in, make their presence discernible on any level.

This works in Brooklyn’s favor, because my normal impulse would be to respond to her effusiveness in typical deadpan fashion, but to send a nice fuck you, buddy to the douche in front of us, I fling my arms around her and loudly exclaim back.

“Soooo nice to see you!”

Social merriment is so unlike me that I’m worried I’ll sound sarcastic, but she makes a happy groaning noise and squeezes me. The dickhead in front of us moves off to collect his coffee, and I’m about to put in my order when Brooklyn stops me.

“Don’t get the shitty coffee here. There’s a place a cab ride away that you have to try. We can catch up!”

Technically “catching up” implies a history, but I don’t bother pointing this out. The cashier clears his throat, taking exception to Brooklyn’s valuation of the coffee.

“Don’t hate me!” she begs him, digging in her purse. Whipping a twenty-euro note out, she plants it in the tip jar before manacling my arm and dragging me away.

She practically frog-marches me into a cab—the casual observer might be concerned I’m being kidnapped. After giving me a playful hip check, she slides into the back seat and directs our driver to wherever the hell we’re off to.

“So, what’s the verdict?” she asks. “Are you going to the race? I’m gonna head to the paddock after lunch.”

“Meh. Things are weird—I feel out of place. I don’t know how to do this without Mo.”

“Hmm, yeah.” She pulls a tin of pastilles from her bag. “Doesn’t help that you and Cozzy are on the outs. Is that a real deal, or one of those things where you pretend to be mad and it turns into hot make-up sex?”

I hum a grim note of laughter. “Ha, no.”

“Oh God, Peach was such a brat on Friday when we saw you.”

I pretend to examine a building we’re passing. “Can’t say I noticed.”

“I’d have told Owen to turn her over his knee, but they’d both love it. Not much of a punishment.”

I respond with an ambiguous chuckle that works whether she’s serious or joking.

“She’s been such a sassy britches lately,” Brooklyn adds with a sigh.

Super terrif. I’ll bet she’s all kinds of spicy in the sack , I mentally sulk. A younger, more fun version of me—the bitchy banter, minus the pesky intellect and existential angst.

“Between you and me? It’s this,” Brooklyn goes on, thrusting her left hand out to display a pink diamond engagement ring that’d easily cost as much as a McLaren 720S if it’s real. “Owen proposed in Brazil. I told him to get Peach something too so she wouldn’t pout—he bought her a pair of honkin’ big Tahitian pearl and diamond Tiffany earrings.”

“Clever lad. Never hurts to throw Tiffany at the problem.”

“But then she goes, ‘Shouldn’t we all three handfast?’ And I’m like excuse me ? That’s hippie crap. I love the girl—I do. But we are not throuple-marrying. This puppy is gonna be legally binding standard issue.”

She digs a smooth candy from the tin.

“Can you imagine the press if Owen were a polygamist?” She pops the pastille into her mouth. “Like something from one of my dad’s TV shows. Peach and I go way back, so she forgets that even though she’s been my friend since boarding school, she’s the extra where Owen and I are concerned—the bar in the letter A , you might say. Sometimes literally . There’s a ‘modified Eiffel Tower’ sort of thing we…”

She trails off, because I think there’s a weird expression on my face at the surprising news—I hope it resembles the confusion it is, rather than judgment.

The emoji is dating Brooklyn and Owen, not Cosmin?

Huh.

“T-M-I?” she asks, wincing at my long pause. “Or wait, do you not know what I mean? The sex act, not the landmark.”

“I’m not that old, for fuck’s sake. Yes, I know you mean the sex act.” I give her a bland smirk. “Does it make me sound like a size queen that when I first saw the Eiffel Tower, it was way smaller than I expected? Unimpressed.”

She cracks up, flinging an arm around me. “You should live on social media—I mean it, girl.”

We both flail forward as the driver slams on his brakes and mutters darkly at another cab. Brooklyn says something to him in a language I don’t recognize, and he flicks a glance over his shoulder, smiling and responding in kind.

She notices my raised eyebrows.

“Hindi,” she explains as if it’s nothing.

“Holy shit, lady. How many languages do you have under that technicolor hairdo?”

She works the candy around in her mouth, eyes moving ceilingward in thought.

“I’m only good at two: Hebrew and Swedish, because of my parents. But I grew up in Beverly Hills with an international cast of characters swirling around our place, so I picked up bits and pieces. Mostly if I ended up fucking someone who spoke it.”

I can’t help asking, “Know any Romanian?”

She chuckles, biting down on the candy with a loud snap and grinding it up.

“I haven’t sampled Cos.” She takes out another pastille. “Neither has Peach—I know you’re worried about that.” She puts the second candy between her lips. “Not that she didn’t try to wear him down. But he’s in love with you, soooo yeah. No.” She shrugs.

My impulse is to say Not anymore , but her phone chimes and I hold back my reply and ponder her comment, gazing out the window at the city sliding past while Brooklyn sends a volley of messages back and forth with someone.

The cab pulls up to the curb outside a café with big windows, and Brooklyn pays for the ride digitally, then presses a fifty-euro note into the driver’s hand despite his protests. This girl is such a star—she has style for days and is exactly the kind of well-balanced rich kid I rarely meet. She’s generous without being showy about it, confident but not arrogant, and has a joie de vivre implying she recognizes her privilege and truly is happy and grateful rather than being a jaded monster.

I follow Brooklyn into the café and up to the counter.

“Their blended drinks are out of this world,” she tells me. “Can I do the dude thing and order for you?”

She rattles off our order in (I think?) Arabic, and I no longer want to be Sage Sikora when I grow up. I want to be the love child of Sage and Brooklyn.

She herds me to the end of the counter and thrusts the cup of slush into my hand. “Try it,” she urges, plonking a paper straw into her own.

I take an experimental sip. “That’s fucking delicious.”

“Right?” She grabs a white pastry bag and tips her head sideways for me to follow as she weaves through the tables.

“What’s in it?” I ask.

We head for a row of stools facing the windows.

“Dates and honey. Really sets off the coffee.” She pulls out the chair for me, then sits too. “Don’t think I’m a stalker, but let’s go shopping together and have brunch before sharing a ride back. Wanna?”

“Um.” I sip the cool drink and swipe a shred of unblended date pulp off my molar with my tongue. “I’m flattered you seem to like me, but not gonna lie—I suck at friendship. I get quiet or crabby or just straight-up weird.” Wiggling the straw to stir my drink, I add, “My bitch-tastic cleverness on social media can be misleading.”

“Don’t make me adore you more than I already do. Socially awkward people are my catnip—the yin to my yang. The fact that Owen and I are both extroverts is a fluke.”

She opens the pastry bag and extracts a slab of baklava. She peels a flake off and lays it on her tongue, then points at the rest with eyebrows raised to share. I pull out the whole clove studding the top and suck the honey off the tip.

“You’ll think I’m full of shit,” she tells me with a sly smile, “but Peach is super insecure.”

I cover my lips as I laugh with a mouthful of coffee slushy. “I do think you’re full of shit.”

“For real though. We became friends in boarding school because she was a disaster.” She lifts another layer of phyllo and nibbles it. “Her dad’s in jail for trying to have her mom offed. And the mom’s a lush who’s addicted to plastic surgery. Peach is surprisingly fragile.” She examines me while chewing. “Not saying that to make you pity her. Just, people get a certain view of each other.”

“Huh. Yeah, true.”

I know Brooklyn isn’t trying to make me feel like an asshole, but I do.

“Friday night she got morose because Cosmin wouldn’t take her to his room. She cried when we got back to our suite and said, ‘Why can’t I be a science genius girlboss like that Emerald owner, so guys get obsessed with me, and I could take it or leave it like she does?’”

“Holy shitbiscuits, I cannot convey to you how thoroughly I do not feel like I could ‘take it or leave it.’” I suck in more of my coffee drink, scowling. “I’m in love with him. But for fuck’s sake, don’t tell him that. I just can’t—” I fiddle with my straw.

“Do go on,” Brooklyn says in a comically fake British accent. “You just can’t what ?”

I eat a layer of baklava, considering how much to share. “Bottom line,” I tell her, sucking sugary walnut goop off my teeth, “he’s better off without me.”

She laughs. “Literally no one means it when they say that. Is the sex terrible? It’d be a pity if those good looks are wasted on a guy who’s lousy in bed.”

“Oh hell no—he’s a rocket. But, uh…” I angle a reticent glance at her. “You didn’t sign on to be my therapist, but here’s the skinny: I fucked up. You know Cos and I got into a thing, and the team found out and it was like ‘Nope! Shut it down.’ Which we did. Aside from a bit of an ‘oopsie’ in Texas, when—”

“The rainstorm in the car,” she says with a serious nod.

My eyes go wide. I’m not mad Cosmin told her, because I’m certain he was doing his angsty Romanian thing and not gossiping. Still, it’s uncomfortable.

“Oh. Um.”

“Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that.” She takes another sip of her drink. “But he said it was the most passionate sex of his life, and he hoped it was good for you too, but he was so in-his-head in love with you during it that he more remembers the emotional intensity.”

Her words splinter me like a cannonball of sorrow. My fucking God.

What might things be like if I’d stayed in Austin? If the next morning we’d met up in one of our suites, made love again (that term… who am I?) and committed to going forward as a couple, damn the consequences, Bonnie and Clyde without the grisly parts.

“All right, but here’s the deal,” I insist. “ I gave up. The thing that made me change my mind was a letter from my dead dad saying it’s okay to fall for Cos.” I cover my face, frustrated. “It doesn’t make me a good candidate for managing the kind of commitment and struggle a life with Cosmin Ardelean would entail. I’m not equipped for this!”

On one hand it feels odd to be trauma dumping with a near stranger. But my lack of history with Brooklyn is actually making it easier to confess things. Nat and I are still rebuilding the bridges we torched during our fight, and I haven’t been willing to discuss much of this with her yet. Since Mo’s passing, we’ve had lots of convos about family and grief, but have conspicuously avoided anything more than superficial relationship chat.

Brooklyn scrunches one side of her mouth. “You’re being absurd.”

“Are you hearing me?” My voice is panicky. “ I needed my dad to give me permission , Brooklyn—a dead guy! I’m not a competent leader, I suck at love, and dammit, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have a hundred-million-dollar team to run!”

Crying in public is the worst. With my luck, there’s a tabloid fuckface across the street getting it on film, and I’m off and running into humiliating-meme territory again.

Brooklyn’s arms go around me, and rather than wanting to flap like a chicken to free myself, I sag into the comfort.

“You can tell me to mind my own business,” she says, patting my back, “but I’m gonna put it out there anyway—being a nosy, bossy bitch gives me a blank check on saying things people may not wanna hear.”

“Okay,” I sniffle against her.

She pulls away. “This’ll sound like a cheesy movie, but… do you love him?”

“I just said I did!” I squawk, my voice creaky.

“And has being an engineer taught you to analyze failure and make changes without getting pissy about it?”

“Obviously.”

Oh, shit.

I see where she’s headed with this, and I want to stop her, because dammit, she’s going to make me take a gamble on love. And it’s way less scary to tell myself it’s already ruined. Loss has been the theme of my year, and I’ve gotten skilled at it, but sticking my neck out with Cos and having him shoot me down might destroy me.

She gathers my hands in hers and goes all earnest, and the cynic in me is hating this so much, while the in-love dork is hanging on her words.

“When people say ‘The only thing that matters is love,’ it sounds overly simplistic,” she tells me evenly. “The practical asshole in all of us replies ‘That’s bliss-ninny nonsense. Difficult real-life shit is going to happen. The world doesn’t run on love.’ And that Practical Asshole is right, sure. But you know what?”

Her face is fierce, and she stabs her finger at an invisible foe.

“The difficult real-life shit is going to happen anyway. The thing that makes it bearable is love. We don’t forgo love because bad stuff is going to happen, or because love might fail. We take the risk because when it does work, it makes the struggle worth it. It’s why we wake up and keep swinging every day.”

She gives me an almost grandmotherly smile I wouldn’t expect on a manic polyamorous Hollywood kid with hair the color of Froot Loops.

“Now let’s go buy you a cute outfit and get to Yas before the race starts, so you can tell Cozzy you’re all in.”