In Too Deep (14 page)

Is she coming on to me?
Drew thought, a nervous sweat breaking out on his palms. Being in the same room with Mad and Casey would be difficult if Mad was in a
coma
. If she was going to turn it all on like she seemed to be doing, it was going to be impossible—impossible for his head, heart, and pants to make it through this day intact. Drew shot a quick glance at Casey to see if she’d noticed Mad’s smoldering look—or his admittedly sweaty response—but she was bent over, fiddling with a snaky pile of white extension cords, and hadn’t seen a thing, or at least that’s what he told himself . . .

“So we’re almost ready then, right, Drew?” Casey said, straightening up, her eyes scanning the production checklist that she held on a clipboard in one hand, the other tweaking the knobs of the sound deck. “The lighting is set. The sound is set. We can go ahead and shoot.”

“Oh,” Madison said, her eyes breaking away from the camera, that unearthly halogenlike glow she had been radiating, catching Drew so incredibly off guard, dimming down to her regular, eighty-watt output, “I thought we were already filming.”

Drew looked up from the viewfinder and again caught Madison’s gaze. The spark, the smolder, the sex that had been there just seconds before was almost completely gone and she quickly looked away, a wandering hand reaching up to twirl a strand of hair around her finger.
It’s the camera
, Drew realized.
She couldn’t care
less
about me—it’s all for the camera. She lights up, comes alive in front of it
. There was no doubt about it—Madison Macallister was a star.

“Okay,” Drew said, trying to sound as businesslike as possible as he pressed record and the red light atop the camera began to blink. “We’re rolling.” Drew pulled away from the camera and consulted the set of questions he’d printed out hours before, holding the piece of white computer paper in front of him like a shield.

“So, what’s it like being rich?” he asked bluntly, trying to get the ball rolling as Mad stared at him unblinkingly, her face glowing like a fallen star in the harsh white light of the halogen bulbs.

“You tell me,” Madison said evenly, a half-smile turning up the corners of her lips.

“Very funny,” Drew said sarcastically. His dark hair flopped down over his eyes, and he pushed it back with annoyance before continuing. “What does being rich mean to
you
?”

“Well,” Mad said, looking thoughtful, “the politically correct answer would probably be that I don’t have to wait in line, I have endless options, and get whatever I want—at the expense of everyone else.”

Drew’s mouth fell open slightly. Jesus—in the relatively short time they’d known each other it was probably the most thoughtful answer Madison had ever given him about anything even
remotely
political. Who was this poised, thoughtful, gorgeous girl sitting in front of him? As he watched her ready herself for the next onslaught of questioning, Drew was filled with the sneaking suspicion that he might not know Madison as well as he thought he did . . .

“But it’s all I’ve ever really known, so it’s kind of hard to be objective about it,” Madison continued, her gaze level, her voice calm and purposeful. “It’s probably a hard question for you to ask—and a tougher one for me to answer.”

“Well, give it a shot,” Drew said with a grin.

“Talking about money is vulgar,” Madison said with obvious distaste. “I feel all itchy just thinking about it.” Drew watched as Mad proceeded to rub her slim arms through the slippery satin of her blouse.

“When was the first time you realized you were rich?” Drew asked, changing the subject and attacking the topic from another angle.

“Hmmmm . . .” Madison cocked her head to the side, looking thoughtfully into the lens again, her green eyes catching the light. “I think I was around six, and we had this Guatemalan housekeeper who used to bring her little girl to work with her—she was about my age.” Madison reached over to Drew’s desk and grabbed a bottle of Evian, taking a long swallow before continuing. “Anyway, she was always totally amazed by all my toys and stuff, and that’s when I realized that not everyone lived the way I did.”

Drew glanced over at Casey, who was seated on the edge of his bed, the yellow and green plaid skirt she wore clashing spectacularly with his blue and orange Ralph Lauren plaid comforter. She was watching Madison attentively, a rapt expression on her freckled face.

“Does being wealthy influence what you plan to do with your life?” Drew asked, leaning into the camera and checking to make sure the shot was still perfect. “How does modeling fit in?”

“Well, obviously I don’t
have
to work or anything.” Madison gave the camera a tight smile. “But knowing I have money means it’s not such a big deal if I end up sucking at it.”

“Why not?” Drew asked, genuinely curious. “I’d think there’d be even
more
pressure on you to succeed at modeling since everyone knows you’re wealthy—don’t you worry about people saying that the only reason anyone even pays attention to you is because of your parents’ money?”

“If I worried about what people said all the time I’d be in a locked psych ward,” Madison snapped, “not on the verge of signing a major modeling contract.”

“You haven’t signed it yet?” Casey asked with amazement, pulling her legs beneath her on the bed until she was sitting cross-legged. “I thought you were going to talk to Edie yesterday?”

“I was,” Madison said with annoyance, brushing a pale piece of hair from her face. “I
am
. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“Speaking of your mom,” Drew interrupted, “did finances have anything to do with your parents’ decision to split up last year?”

Madison opened her mouth, then closed it again, speechless. She stared into the lens, her confident and slightly irritated expression crumpling like a white, unlined sheet of paper in Drew’s fist. “It wasn’t . . .” she sputtered. “It didn’t . . .” Her mouth began to turn down at the corners, and she suddenly turned her face away from the camera for the first time, her face glowing in profile, one tear sliding down her cheek as she cried without sound, her shoulders shaking. “They couldn’t,” she continued, her voice breaking, “they just didn’t . . . love each other . . . anymore.”

“Shit,” Drew muttered under his breath, getting up and grabbing a box of Kleenex off his night table and handing it to Madison, who grabbed a tissue and dabbed her eyes carefully so as not to smear the navy liner on her top lids. Drew knelt down at her feet, placing one hand on her knee. Even if she wasn’t his girlfriend anymore, he still hated to see her cry, and most of all he hated the idea that it was his stupid, thoughtless question that had
made
her cry in the first place.

“Hey, Mad,” he said quietly, forgetting the camera still humming quietly, the red light blinking, and the fact that his new girlfriend was in the room, her eyes following his every move. “I’m sorry.” She looked over at him, the tears still making their way slowly down her face, muting the color of her electric green eyes, and placed her hand on top of his, the warmth of her skin like an electric shock shooting through his body. What was going on with him lately? Just when he thought he was ready to make Madison a part of his past forever, moments like this made it clear that shoving Mad to the back of the line of his life wasn’t going to be as simple as he’d originally thought.

“It’s all right,” she said, pulling her hand away and blowing her red nose. “We can finish.”

“You sure?” Drew asked, standing up and running a hand through his hair. “It’s just a stupid documentary.”

“It’s
not
stupid,” Casey said from her post on the bed, maybe a little too sharply. Casey stared down at her knees, biting her bottom lip and kicking one black ballet slipper against the other before getting up and walking quickly to the door, her hair swinging like a flag from the rush of air as she closed it firmly behind her.

“What’s up with
her
?” Mad asked, throwing her used tissue to the floor and crossing one slim leg over the other.

Drew shrugged, taking a seat behind the camera again and rechecking the shot. He knew that he should probably go after Casey—that’s what a good boyfriend would do. Drew knew that when girls left a room like that—obviously upset—they generally wanted you to follow them. But as strong as the feeling in his gut was that told him to get moving
pronto
, his feet were somehow cemented to the thick, navy carpeting of his room.

“So,” Mad said, her teeth shining like a string of polished pearls under the lights, her composure regained. “Fire away.”

As Drew looked down at his sheet of questions, and then the empty space on the bed where Casey had sat moments before, the empty space grew larger and larger until it filled both the room—and his brain. He knew, from the sinking feeling in his stomach, that, by continuing to sit here with Madison, he might’ve just blown things with Casey for good.

secrets and lies

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat with that ? ”
Jared pointed at the mug of chamomile tea resting on the table, the steam rising from the chipped blue cup and obscuring Phoebe’s face. Phoebe shook her head, wrapping her cold fingers around the hot cup, grateful for the cloud of steam that hung between them like a curtain. Maybe if she just kept ordering tea, the white, gauzy steam would completely hide the fact that she couldn’t look Jared in the face without imagining his lips on hers, the sweet, forbidden pressure of his mouth, and the way his eyes misted over when they finally pulled away from one another.

Phoebe forced herself to look away from his sharply chiseled face, and at the horrendous “art” adorning the walls that looked as though it was fashioned from yards of red string and copious white puka shells. The Potted Fern was a macramé disaster on Ninety-sixth Street and Park, decorated with gross hippie art and overflowing with plants, green tendrils hanging down from the watermarked ceiling, tickling the shoulders and faces of unsuspecting diners. Since the place was the total polar opposite of anything even remotely
approaching
cool, Phoebe knew there was zero chance that she’d run into anyone she knew there. Still, she couldn’t help looking around nervously every few minutes as the door swung open . . .

“So, what’s going on?” Jared said, dumping half the sugar container into his black coffee and stirring the dark liquid slowly, his eyes locked on hers. “You sounded pretty upset on the phone.” Just watching his long hands stirring his coffee, she wanted more than anything to be the spoon, to be slid sensuously between those full red lips . . .
Get it together
, she told herself, dropping her gaze to the chipped Formica tabletop.
You are such a sex beast lately . . .
And the brown leather jacket he wore with a dark blue Billabong T-shirt—slightly ripped at the neck—sent the smell of tanned leather across the table in waves, mixing with his signature scent of ripe citrus and salt that made her want to pass out—just so he could press his lips to hers and resuscitate her.

“I was walking home yesterday, and I saw my mom go into a hotel.”

Jared halted his cup in midair on the path to his lips. “Uhoh,” he said, his blue eyes narrowing cynically. “Let me guess—she wasn’t exactly meeting your dad, right?”

“You got it.” Phoebe exhaled loudly, pushing the cup away and leaning her elbows on the table. “But that’s not the worst part.”

“It gets worse?” Jared smirked, raising an eyebrow.

“Definitely.” Phoebe said, poking one finger through a hole in the sleeves of her pale blue sweater. She’d purposefully worn her grossest clothes today and not washed her hair this morning—just to prove to herself that she definitely wasn’t interested in him. Why spend hours picking out the perfect outfit when she was
so
not dating him anyway? “Jared, you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” Phoebe began, her voice solemn and slow.

“Why tell
me
?” Jared asked, draining the last of his coffee and pushing the cup to the side. “Why not tell my sister—or one of your other little friends?”

Now it was Phoebe’s turn to smirk across the table. “As much as I love your sister, you and I both know that she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut about this—and I know you will.”

“How do you know?” Jared whispered, reaching across the table and taking her hand in his, folding her fingers into his own.

“Because I’m asking you to,” Phoebe answered, aware that she was barely breathing as his grip tightened. With considerable effort, Phoebe forced herself to pull away, putting both of her hands under the table—and out of his reach.

“All right,” Jared said, nodding slowly while simultaneously shrugging his arms out of his leather jacket. At the sight of his caramel-colored, slightly muscled biceps, Phoebe felt like she was about to fall into a swoon. Wait—didn’t that only happen to maidens in nineteenth-century novels whose corsets were pulled too tight? What excuse did she have for feeling so dizzy and strange at the sight of Jared’s bare flesh?

“Well, I waited for my mom to come down from the room and leave the hotel—it took forever. And when she finally showed up she wasn’t exactly alone, if you know what I mean.” Phoebe paused, cracking her knuckles nervously under the table the way she always did when she was worried or nervous—or both. “She was with Drew’s
dad
,” Phoebe finished, the words coming out in a rush.

“You’re kidding me.” Jared raised a hand and motioned to the waitress for a refill. “Weird. The Van Allens always seemed so happy to me,” Jared mused aloud as the waitress refilled his cup, the rich, dark aroma of roasted coffee beans perfuming the air.

“I know,” Phoebe agreed, pulling her own cup of lukewarm tea toward her and sipping the tepid, floral-scented liquid. “That’s why it’s so strange. I mean, was it an
act
all this time? I always thought they were the happiest couple on the Upper East Side.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jared raised the cup to his lips, then put it back down, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin before continuing. “Maybe it wasn’t an act, Phoebe—maybe things just
change
.”