She clicked the Home button and was transported back to the addictive Live News Feed, where she quickly scanned her friends’ status updates on the Cowboys game, their babies’ daily milestones, their Halloween costume ideas, their happiness that “TGIF!” and the photos they’d posted from various vacations they’d taken all over the world. It wasn’t until she’d scrolled to the bottom of the second page that she saw Leo’s update, in all caps, of course, as though he were screaming directly at her.
Leo Walsh . . . GETTING PUMPED FOR JULIAN ALTER’S PHOTO SHOOT TOMORROW!! SOHO. HOT MODELS. MESSAGE ME IF YOU WANT TO STOP BY. . . .
Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Thankfully, her regular e-mail inbox pinged with a welcome distraction before she could dwell on the grossness of Leo’s update.
The new e-mail was from Nola. It was the first (well, really the second: the very first had merely read: “SAVE ME FROM THIS HELL!!!”) Brooke had heard from her since she’d left, and she opened it eagerly. Maybe there was a chance she was having fun? No, it was impossible. Nola’s vacations trended more toward the skiing in the Swiss Alps/sunning in St. Tropez/partying in Cabo types. They were generally frequent, expensive, and almost always included a man extremely fond of sex whom she had only just met and most likely wouldn’t see again once they returned home. Brooke literally hadn’t believed Nola when she announced that she’d signed up for a group tour of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos . . . alone. Staying in two-star hotels and guesthouses and traveling by bus. A single backpack for over two weeks. A comprehensive lack of Michelin-starred restaurants, Town Car services, or hundred-dollar pedicures. Zero chance of partying on a new friend’s yacht or wearing a single pair of Louboutins. Brooke had tried to talk her out of it by showing Nola her own honeymoon pictures to Southeast Asia, which were replete with close-ups of exotic insects, house pets as dinner, and a collage of all the squat toilets they’d encountered, but Nola insisted it would be fine right until the very end. Brooke wouldn’t say I told you so, but judging from the e-mail, things were going exactly as expected.
Greetings from Hanoi, a city so crowded it makes the NYC subway at rush hour feel like a golf vacation. I’m only on day five and I’m not sure I’ll make it to the end. The actual sightseeing has been great, but the group is killing me. They wake up every day with a brand-new lease on life—no bus trip is too long, no market too crowded, no lack of air-conditioning is too unbearable for this crew. Yesterday I broke down and told the group leader I’d be willing to pay the single supplement for my own room after five mornings of my roommate waking up an hour and a half early to jog six miles before breakfast. One of those “I just don’t feel like myself if I don’t exercise” types. It was sickening. Demoralizing. All-around toxic to my self-esteem, as you can well imagine. So she’s been eliminated, which I think is the wisest way I have ever spent five hundred dollars. Otherwise, not too much to report. The country is beautiful, of course, and endlessly interesting, but for the record, the only single man under forty in my group is here with his mother (who, incidentally, I like a lot—maybe I should reconsider???). I’d ask you what’s going on there, but since you haven’t cared enough to write me once since I’ve been gone, I don’t imagine this time will be any different. Regardless, I miss you and hope that at least in some small, insignificant way, you’re having a worse time than I am. xoxo, me
It took mere seconds for Brooke to respond.
Dearest Nola,
I won’t say I told you so. Actually, scratch that—I totally will. I TOLD YOU SO! Wtf were you thinking? Did my eight-by-ten of the clear-colored scorpion have no effect on you? Sorry for being the worst keeper-in-toucher in the world. I don’t even have a good excuse. Not too much to report here. Work’s been crazy for me—I’m covering a bunch of shifts for people on vacation, hoping I can collect at a later date when we can actually go away. Julian’s been traveling all week, although I guess it’s working because the album is doing incredibly well. Things are a little weird. He seems distant. I’m chalking it up to . . . hell, I don’t know. Where’s my best friend when I need a good backstory? Help a girl out here!
Okay, I’m signing off and putting us both out of our misery. Already counting the days until you’re home and we can go out for Vietnamese food. I’ll bring a flask of murky mystery water and you’ll feel like you’re still on vacation. It’ll be a blast. Stay safe and have some rice for me. Xoxo me
P.S. Have you found a use yet for those gross hand-me-down sarongs I insisted you bring just so you’d get them out of my apartment?
P.P.S. For the record, I strongly encourage you to go for the/any guy who travels with his mother.
She hit Send and heard Julian padding toward her.
“Baby, what are you doing out here?” he asked sleepily as he poured himself some water. “Facebook will be here in the morning.”
“I’m not on Facebook!” she said indignantly. “I couldn’t sleep so I came out here to write Nola. I don’t think she’s loving her travel partners.”
“Come back to bed.” He began to drink his water as he walked back to the bedroom.
“Okay, I’ll be right in,” she called out, but he was already gone.
Brooke awoke instantly from the noise in the apartment, bolted straight up in bed on full alert, terrified until she remembered that Julian was actually home that night. They hadn’t gone to Italy; instead, Julian had been on a city-hopping tour of major radio stations, meeting DJs, doing brief in-studio performances, and answering callers’ questions. Once again, he’d been gone for two straight weeks.
She leaned over to read the bedside clock, a task made harder by Walter’s hot tongue on her face and her inability to find her glasses. Three nineteen A.M. What on earth was he doing awake when they had to be up so early?
“All right, come along,” she crooned to Walter, who was wagging and jumping at this unexpected nighttime excitement. Brooke wrapped herself in a robe and padded to the living room, where Julian sat in the dark, clad only in boxers and a pair of headphones, playing his keyboard. He didn’t appear to be practicing anything so much as zoning out—his gaze was fixed on the wall opposite the couch and his hands moved across the keys without a hint of awareness. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he was sleepwalking or on drugs. She was able to sit down next to him before he was even aware of her presence.