He kissed my forehead. “Sweetie, it all makes you who you are, which is someone real special, and also maybe a little crazy,” he said.
“But—”
My mother stopped me. “I have never worried about you,” she said. “Not really. We used to joke you could stand in the middle of a tornado and find a way to enjoy the breeze.”
I cracked a tiny smile.
“That’s a good thing, Bex,” she said. “But it doesn’t give you license to sit here and wait for life to find you. It just means you can survive whatever is out there.”
This is one of my favorite memories of my parents, because in their faces I saw the most naked love and concern and support—and faith. They believed that I was brave. They believed I was tough. They believed in me, period. The original Bex Brigade.
“You win,” I said. “I’ll go back.”
Dad stood with a groan. “Thank goodness. My knees couldn’t take much more.”
I scooted over so he could sit on my other side. “I just hope I don’t do anything stupid while I’m trying to reconnect with my inner awesomeness.”
“You won’t,” Mom said.
“You will,” Dad said.
“Earl, really.” That one was me.
“What? Everyone does stupid stuff,” Dad said. “The Cubs have a rich history of it. But they never stop playing, and I love them anyway.”
We heard a throat clearing. “I have an idea, if I may,” Lacey said from the stairwell. A thumping noise accompanied her hopping down the last few steps.
“Clive’s got a new girlfriend,” she began, coming around in front of us. “Her dad owns half the world, basically, and she’s throwing a New Year’s Eve party on their private island. Staying at their house is free, and he owns Luxe Airlines, so we can get there for like twenty bucks or something insane,” she said, at our mother’s expression. She bounced on the balls of her feet. “What do you say? Nick won’t be there. You can see everyone in a super-fun atmosphere and then we’ll all head back to England together.”
“Hell, I’d go, if I didn’t think you’d rather die than party with your old man,” Dad said.
I threw my arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. “You’d be great company, but I should probably brave this one on my own.”
Lacey’s eyes sparkled. “So you’re in?”
“I’m in.”
And that’s how the debauchery started.
Chapter Two
The room reeked of booze and smoke and stale sweat. My mouth felt like I’d eaten a stick of paste, and tasted about as compelling. My head throbbed. My stomach churned. I was clammy and cold, which I quickly realized was because I was naked other than a sheet covering my ankles.
And some guy’s leg was thrown over mine.
His breathing was slow, heavy, rhythmic; whoever he was, he was asleep. I pried open my eyes and saw a very posh hotel room that a cyclone of hedonism had torn to bits. The carcasses of the minibar blanketed the floor alongside heavy glass ashtrays full of cigarette stubs and ashes. Clothes dangled from anything they could; a deck of cards lay scattered as if someone had hurled it up into the air. A trail of powder led to the suite’s second room, where I could see a slumbering couple I didn’t recognize. Carefully, so as not to stir him, I lifted my head and looked my mystery companion in the face.
It was Clive.
* * *
New Year’s Eve on Wayne Hanson’s island reawakened a sleeping beast in me that would have given my selective biographer Aurelia Maupassant a stroke. I flirted with inappropriate guys. I gave out absurd fake names like Picasso Von Trapp and lied elaborately about my job—neurosurgeon, buttock-implant technician, party planner—while wearing tight shirts and tighter skirts provided by Joss, who seemed to like me a whole lot more now that I was feeling, as Bea might’ve said, more experimental and psychotic. Clive’s new girlfriend, an old ex of Nick’s called Davinia Cathcart-Hanson, was generous with the perks of her father’s conglomerate and routinely booked us cheap airfare and gratis suites anywhere that had a warm beach, strong drinks, and a throng of people who either didn’t know who I was or didn’t care. And I went, again and again, to escape the memories that were boxed up in my Chelsea love nest along with a great deal of Nick’s stuff. Which apparently he didn’t want. He’d simply dropped away without so much as a note to