“Everybody hated her,” Max whispers, and then Tyler is grabbing me by the hand, and he is whisking us both back inside, giving us water and playing more music, and we dance some more and I don’t get another chance to ask Max what she’s talking about, and the rest of the night is dark, gone from my memories.

Modesty & Temperance

Modesty
&
Temperance

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

I blinked awake on a king-size bed covered in gauzy linens, surrounded by the paper fingers of a hundred ferns. Sunbeams shone through the windows and landed on my skin. Plants crept up the walls, so dense and green that I could practically feel them growing: Waxy, heart-shaped leaves brushed my shoulders, and porcelain fingers protruded from the walls, holding up ropes of vines like a surrealist gift. The sounds of a tropical hothouse—misters, birdsong, a gentle waterfall—played through invisible speakers recessed somewhere in the concrete room. I didn’t remember going to sleep, and at first, I wasn’t sure where we were.

Tyler lay next to me with a pillow over his head. I still wore the romper. The blue tulle skirt made a soft mountain on the floor. My head thrummed unhappily, pushing up against the dry hollows of my skull.

Max’s house. Champagne. Ugh.

I stumbled toward what I hoped was a bathroom, brushing through ferns like a dinosaur with every thundering step, hoping Tyler wouldn’t open his eyes before I could clean myself up. I eased the door open, pushing the hand—this one made an okay sign—to find an elaborate en suite on the other side.

More strings of ivy wrapped their way into a walk-in shower so huge that it didn’t need a door. I let myself luxuriate in there, soap foaming over my skin, water hot and blissful, the shampoo that same expensive bottle that Max had once left behind—except this time I wasn’t in a molding tile bath in Florida, wishing I were anywhere else. This time I was a guest. Max herself burned the evidence. She took me into her home, showed me her life, made me part of the club. She finally gave me permission to move on from that girl from the wrong side of town.

Tyler was still sleeping, so, wrapped in a bath towel the size of a blanket, I hunted for coffee. I didn’t have to look far; a tray waited on a console table outside our room, set with two porcelain mugs, a camp thermos, and a gold-edged notepad. Max’s familiar scribble was on the top page:

getting fleur from train in Hudson, maybe catch you, maybe not. call me later!! let’s all hang out!! & please set the alarm when you go—you know the code—xmax

Once again—I was alone in Max’s house. Almost—and that was close enough.

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