Beautiful Stranger (3 page)

Anna nodded. She was happy to hear about Dr. Birnbaum wanting to reconnect with his son. But what did that have to do with Ben leaving Princeton?

He stopped and turned to her, running his hands under her wispy blond hair at the nape of her neck. “College will always be there. I can go later. But right now … I really want to do this. And with my father’s backing, I can. I know he’ll support me—he’d never want to repeat what his dad did to him.” His eyes bore into hers. “So what do you think?”

What did she think? She thought he should probably go back to school, but could she possibly be the one to dim the light she saw in his eyes? Besides, this was probably just one of his idle fantasies, like the plans she’d made in her imagination for weekends in Manhattan with him. She knew that if anything, Ben probably just needed to talk it through. Eventually he’d realize that dropping out of school wasn’t a realistic plan.

“I think it’s fantastic,” she finally pronounced, and was rewarded with Ben’s wide, dimpled smile. “Maybe you could do it someplace no one else would think of. Not Hollywood Boulevard, or Los Feliz. Someplace different. To show that the club would be different.”

“Right, because you’re such a club kid,” he teased, kissing her neck softly. They were standing in the driveway of a small frame house, on a street with a dozen other small frame houses. It was a world away from the estates and mansions of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, but the location didn’t matter. When she was close to him like this, she tried to remember exactly why it was she’d decided they should rewind their relationship to “dating,” because all she could think about was his body and her body and—

No. That was not a productive train of thought.

The lights in the house flicked on, and Ben suggested that they turn left onto Venice Boulevard and loop back to the Transnational lot. As they strolled, they joked about club locations and names. “How about … an old hospital?” he asked. “We could call the club Lovesick.”

She laughed, happy that Ben hadn’t yet brought up the fact that if this club idea actually came to fruition, he’d be here in California and she’d be three thousand miles away at Yale. If he hadn’t come to that realization yet, he couldn’t really be serious, which made it easier to play along. “Gee, I don’t know of any old hospitals that are for rent. How about …” She closed her Chanelmascara’d eyes as she tried to think of the wildest place for a new nightclub. But as she opened them again, she spotted an abandoned auto repair shop, its wall covered in faded murals of ancient taxicabs. There were two gas pumps in front so old that they listed the price of a gallon in cents, not dollars. Through the broken windows, she could see hydraulic lifts, long neglected.

“How about … the Body Shop?” Anna joked, pointing a slender finger at the weedy, garbage-strewn property.

Ben rubbed the stubble on his chin. “How about it?”

She’d seen that look on his face before. “You’re not serious.”

“Why not? It would certainly be unique. Of course, the name sounds like a strip joint. But maybe that could work in our favor.”

“You
are
serious.”

“Maybe I am. It would take a ton of work but …” He looked at her earnestly. “But I’d be willing to do it. I really want this, Anna. Maybe it’s crazy, but … all I can say is, I never feel this rush when I’m at school. And don’t say it’s because I’m only going to be a sophomore.”

Anna looked at Ben’s pleading eyes and realized this wasn’t idle fantasy. He was dead serious, and he’d thought it through. She managed a weak smile. She was not about to be the one to say no to his dream, even if she hadn’t ever realized that that dream would be opening a club. Hadn’t she come to Los Angeles to reinvent herself? Well, maybe that’s what Ben wanted to do, too. Who was she to judge what he wanted to reinvent himself into? Besides, just because an Ivy League education was right for her didn’t mean it was right for him.

She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Like I said, I think it’s fantastic.”

His lips met hers in the softest of kisses. Then he kissed her again, harder, drawing her in close and holding her tight.

But as their lips met, the small part of her brain that was still functioning couldn’t get beyond the fact that if Ben did stay here to open a club, in just three weeks she’d be starting college three thousand miles away. From Yale to Princeton might have been doable, especially for a couple that was just “dating.”

But from Los Angeles to New Haven? Many a relationship had died over less. The thought made her feel truly lovesick.

Thanks to Good Genes and Just the Right Amount of Silicone

“N
ever ask me about a guy when I’m doing downward facing dog,” Cammie quipped, arching her slender back as her knees dug into her purple Styrofoam mat. She and Sam were in the last few minutes of an extreme yoga class at Yoga Booty on La Cienega Boulevard. The class had been Cammie’s idea, but she didn’t want to go alone. Getting Sam to agree had involved nothing more than a pointed look at her best friend’s thighs, an arched brow, and five little words: “Are you putting on weight?”

Actually, Sam was looking really good these days. Not that she’d dropped a pound, because she hadn’t. But there was a sparkle in her eyes and a confidence in her step that Cammie had only ever seen in Sam post-Eduardo. That was what love did to a girl.

Not that Cammie would know about love. Sure, she’d
thought
she loved Adam Flood. She’d thought he brought out a side of her that no one else ever had.

But look what that had gotten her. Stood up. Fucked over. Alone.

Damn
him.

He hadn’t shown up at the
Ben-Hur
wrap party last night. That he would choose to extend a camping trip with his parents up in Michigan, where there were more mosquitoes than mojitos, rather than be with the hottest girl ever to graduate from Beverly Hills High—namely, her—was unfathomable.

Not only had he not shown up, he hadn’t even called. Hadn’t texted. Hadn’t anything. It was mortifying. When the night had come to an end and Adam was a no-show, even Parker had looked at her with something resembling pity. Dee had given her a tight hug and said that if Cammie wanted to talk before she left on her vacation with Jack, she’d be there. Sam had suggested a triple Flirtini.

The nerve. Cammie was a girl who pitied other girls. They
never
pitied her.

She’d thought she’d feel better if she sweated out her anger. Yes, she was quite sweaty in a hundred-and-ten-degree yoga studio. But the class was ending, and even though she was probably five pounds thinner she didn’t feel better at all.

“Exzellent work!” Zazu, their instructor, called. She was a coltish eighteen-year-old brunette model wannabe, a recent arrival from Marseilles with an almost indecipherable accent and an astonishingly lithe body under tan muslin yoga pants and a white cotton top. “Breez deeply and let all ze tension leeve ze body.”

“We’re outta here.” Cammie scrambled to her feet and beckoned Sam to follow her. She was in no mood to “breez” deeply with Zazu, thank you very much. In moments, she and Sam were stripping down to shower in the locker room.

“I can’t imagine Adam not even calling you,” Sam commiserated. Yoga Booty had custom terry cloth towels for their clientele, and Sam wrapped herself in one. “I mean, maybe something is really wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Cammie threw her sweaty clothes into her pink and green floral Kate Spade gym bag and caught a glimpse of herself naked in the full-length mirror. Her body was ideal, thanks to good genes and just the right amount of silicone. A recent Brazilian wax at Pink Cheeks in Sherman Oaks had left her smooth and hair-free where she wanted to be smooth and hair-free. Her high-cheekboned face and pouty red lips were set off by a halo of sexy strawberry blond curls.

Even sweaty, she was fucking luscious. How
dare
Adam blow her off! And what the hell was he doing that could be better than being with her? Fishing for walleye? Chopping wood? Mixing up a batch of delicious Tang?

Minutes later, Cammie let her anger simmer as the steamy water beat down upon her from twin showerheads. When she stepped out, she found Sam already dressed in new high-waisted Chloé jeans and a red sleeveless cashmere tank, blow-drying her shoulder-length straight brown hair at the large mirror that ran the length of the dressing room as she hummed to herself. Sam Sharpe. Humming? Looking into a mirror and evidently feeling okay with what she saw there? While Cammie was on a slow burn? That
never
happened. It was always the other way around. And she liked it that way.

Cammie quickly dressed in CK white linen shorts and a T-Bags silk-screened white T-shirt of Marilyn Monroe holding hands with Marilyn Manson. Instead of drying her hair, she twisted it into a makeshift bun and secured it with a silver Cross pen. Nor did she bother with makeup. Cammie
always
bothered with makeup, so of course Sam noticed. Looking perfect was at the top of Cammie’s to-do list every single day.

“Why don’t you just call him?” Sam asked, as she finished her hair and opened her H. Couture Beauty cosmetics case.

“That reeks of desperate. I’m never desperate.” As if to illustrate that fact, Cammie whipped out her limited-edition Razr and turned it off.

Fifteen minutes later, they made a pit stop at the first-floor juice bar for the fresh-squeezed ten-fruit concoction of the day with a double shot of vitamin B for energy. Cammie considered taking a vegan walnut brownie, but she was sure it tasted like ass, like all the other healthy baked goods. Why waste the calories? As for Sam, Cammie was shocked to see her ordering a slice of baklava that oozed honey and nuts. It had to be a sign of the apocalypse.

“Eduardo doesn’t care about whether he can serve tea on your ass?” Cammie asked. She knew it was a low blow, but she was feeling too terrible about herself to be nice to anyone else right now.

“Actually, he loves my ass,” Sam replied, seemingly unfazed. She was actually chewing her baklava with gusto.

“He’s an exceptional guy,” Cammie muttered.

“I still think you should—” Sam was interrupted by the chime of her new Motorola Razr V3. She pulled it out of her oversized, studded white leather Zac Posen bag, checked caller ID, and then winked at Cammie.

“Hey, handsome,” she purred into the platinum phone.

Cammie gritted her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt. Eduardo, obviously. Meanwhile, her own phone was so not ringing—it wouldn’t have made a difference if she had left it on. She had had more boyfriends and flirtations than she could possibly count. Guys lusted after her all the time—all types, all ages. They called and e-mailed and texted. They sent her cards and flowers and gifts and she didn’t give a flying fuck. Only twice in her eighteen years on the planet had she really, truly cared about a guy.

And it now appeared that in each of those two instances, the guy had dumped her.

First had been Ben at the end of junior year. Oh, she had never let on that she really cared when they were together, lest he think he had any kind of power over her. But when he’d come to Jackson Sharpe’s wedding on New Year’s Eve with an unknown blonde on his arm, Cammie had wanted to shave Anna Percy’s naturally blond, perfectly shaped head. How could he possibly prefer that snotty, skinny, boring, over-intellectual ice princess to
her
?

Now there was Adam. They were the most unlikely couple in the world. He was nice, sweet, smart, caring, a genuinely good guy. No one would use any of those adjectives to describe her. That much Cammie knew. He’d brought out vulnerability in her that she hadn’t even allowed herself to feel since before her mother died years and years ago.

And this was what she got for it.

“Yeah, tomorrow is good,” she heard Sam tell Eduardo.

Hmmm. She wasn’t looking as radiantly love-struck as she had been a few minutes earlier. What was that about? Then she hung up with barely a goodbye.

“Everything okay?” Cammie asked, hoping against hope for the worst.

Sam’s face was white, her eyes huge. “He said we need to ‘talk.’”

“Oh, shit,” Cammie breathed. Everyone knew “we need to talk” was code for “I’m breaking up with you but I’m too evolved to do it by text.”

“I thought everything was fine!” Sam picked up what remained of the slice of baklava and hurled it into the nearby trash bin. “I bet he’s seeing that bitch Gisella, remember her? The fashion designer friend of his from Peru? The one he got involved in your fashion show? I saw how she looked at him. She wanted him. Correction. Wants him. Correction. Has probably got him. Let’s get out of here.”

They gathered up their stuff and headed for the door.

“No need to jump to conclusions,” Cammie counseled, although it made her feel a hell of a lot better to have Sam join her in romance misery.

“God. What am I going to do?”

Sam fished her oversized white Chanel sunglasses out of her bag and popped them on her face.

Cammie would have answered, but she was struck numb when she saw who was leaning against the white concrete building, sipping from a Starbucks cup in his right hand.

“Umm …” For once, even Cammie Sheppard was at a loss for words.

“I’ll go take a sauna and call one of our drivers,” Sam told her. At least she knew how to handle the moment. Without another word, Sam headed back into the Yoga Booty building.

Her words barely registered with Cammie. All she could think was, if Adam was going to just show up, why did it have to be the one time she didn’t look her best?

He stood tall and lanky with his short-cropped, spiky brown hair. As he turned his face away from the sun, Cammie could see just a hint of the star tattoo behind his left ear. He wore baggy jeans and an old Ramones T-shirt, and he was much tanner than the last time she’d seen him. There couldn’t be a whole lot of shade out on a lake in the wilderness of the upper peninsula of Michigan.

“One of your housekeepers told me you were here,” he explained. Still leaning against the building, he put down the Starbucks cup and extended his arms in an unspoken invitation.
Come and hug me
, they were saying. Her first instinct was to accept the invite. The thing about Adam was, he always managed to melt her tough exterior, to somehow get to her softer core. With him, she was actually
nice
. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a fatal flaw, but, in all honesty, she
liked
the girl she was with him. But Cammie stayed where she was, balling her hands into fists at her sides. She was not about to throw herself at a boy who professed his love and then stood her up.