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Back The Social Climber Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. About the Author
  5. Quote
  6. Part One
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. FOUR
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. Part Two
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. Part Three
  28. TWENTY
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  34. Booklist

I pick the last poster up from the ground and look at her.

MISSING: BERNADETTE WARD.

I fold up the paper and slip it into my bra.

Then I follow him up the mountain in silence.

FOURTEEN

A week after that night with Lena, Graham and I went on our first date. We met at Ludlow House, a place where neither he nor I were members, but at which he had the clout to get a prime reservation anyway. When he texted me the details for our date, I couldn’t tell if he was expecting me to be more impressed than I let on. I didn’t know members-only clubs like this existed. It wasn’t until I was seated at the bar, waiting for Graham to arrive, when two celebrities I’d never heard of were escorted through the back door to a table labeled Reserved, that it clicked.

The woman was bony and gorgeous, wearing five-inch heels she had no trouble walking in and an outfit so ugly only a celebrity could claim it as fashion. The man had a cutesy salt-and-pepper look to him, and wore a gray suit and pink shirt that accentuated it. No one was taking pictures of them, or really acknowledging them in any way, but that was the key; that was what they were paying for. To enter a public space and feel normal again.

When the bartender approached with my drink, a glass of pinot so dry I almost choked as it slid down my throat, I asked who they were.

He looked at me like he was a youth minister and I had just rolled my eyes at the “Pizza and Purity” event he’d spent months planning. “Seriously?”

I shrugged and took a sip.

“Sarah Jessica Parker and Andy Cohen,” he said. “They’re in here all the time.”

“Are they actors?”

“I mean... I guess. Sex and the City... Watch What Happens Live...” He waited for a gasp of realization from me that never came. The embarrassed oh my gosh, of course, duh that I stopped offering years ago when I realized it didn’t actually work. If you don’t know something when it’s first mentioned, you don’t know it and it’s pathetic and fruitless to try to cover your tracks.

When Graham walked through the main door, I had to do a double take. The way he glided toward me, the way he captivated the women at the tables around him, the way people stared, wondering who he was. He could have been the third in their famous trio.