Page 53 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
I’m humming as I carefully Jenga the month’s Costco run into the back of my car. Applesauce, Pirate’s Booty, enough bananas to make Sir Joseph Paxton wet his button-fly trousers, and then a box of Pocky sticks the size of a small shipping container for Fern.
I also picked up a box of plums for Maddie, because she steals them like a William Carlos Williams narrator, and also I enjoy watching her eat them very much. Just this morning, she took a bite out of a ripe, juicy plum at a stop sign as we were driving to campus together, and I stared at her mouth with such undisguised hunger that she unbuckled her seat belt, shifted to her knees, and...
Well. Thank God for the empty parking lot behind the basketball arena.
I can still feel the soft stretch of her lips around me.
I’ve progressed to whistling as I push the awkwardly wide cart into a corral, and I’m still whistling when I feel my phone pulse in my pocket. I pull it out to see a text from Joey to the Andromeda Club group chat.
Joey Fucking Kemp:Emergency Andromeda Club meeting. Bram’s House. Now.
What???
NO.
I duck into my car and furiously try to tap out a response as the chat blows up.
Alessandro:I’M HERE IN MOUNT ASTRA I CAN FINALLY COME OMG
Leo:We are aware how sticky Bram’s house is, correct?
Sloane:I get off work in just a few minutes!
Sara:If my signal is good enough, I want to call in to the meeting!
Leo:... from the glacier?
Me:Guys. Wait. We can’t have an emergency meeting at my house.
Joey Fucking Kemp:It has to be your house, Bram!!! Alessandro and Leo live in KC and no one wants to drive out to Lucien’s weird compound.
I pause. This is true. Per the divorce arrangements, Lucien Méchant is giving Sloane four months of sole occupancy at his giant place outside KC, Persimmon Hill, but it’s a drive from Mount Astra, and also it’s really difficult to achieve casual human connection in a house with a dressage arena out back.
Me:Let’s meet at YOUR house, then.
Joey Fucking Kemp:It can’t be my house, dude! Riley is pissed at me and told me she couldn’t look at my face tonight!
Oh, fuck me. Ugh.Fine.
Me:In that case, emergency meeting at my house, but I have to get the twins to bed at eight. And no one is allowed to eat Fern’s Pocky.
Leo:Is Cole McKenney coming?
Leo:That’s right, he’s not.
Leo:Because he isn’t real.
“AND THAT’S HOWwe’re related to the Medicis,” Dr. Alessandro Ottaviano is saying as I stride in from the back door to find Maddie perched on an ottoman and staring raptly at him as he holds court in my armchair. He’s wearing a three-piece suit, shoes from a brand I can’t pronounce, and has his ankle propped on his opposite knee in a posture of erudite elegance.
He is also inexcusably handsome, with a long nose, thick brows, and smile lines bracketing a sculpted mouth that wouldn’t look out of place on an ancient statue. He has russet-brown skin, tight curls that he’s wearing a little longer these days, and glinting dark brown eyes that Maddie can’t seem to stop staring at.
He throws her a quick wink after name-dropping the Medicis, and she beams back at him. I am abruptly grumpy.
“And of course, we’re still the princes of Ottaviano—”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough story time for now,” I cut in before Maddie can absorb that Alessandro is (very, veryconditionally) sort of royalty. “Maybe you should check on the twins—”
“Bram, is Sara’s dog out? I need to run back to the car to grab the Perrier,” says Sloane from behind me in the kitchen.
