But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I’d brought the Upper East Side with me. It was a second skin now. And I couldn’t just take it off and be me. The two sides of me were so perfectly overlapped that there was only one me anymore.
I understood now, when I hadn’t fully grasped it from Penn before, that I couldn’t escape the Upper East Side. He’d said he wanted to escape, but he couldn’t. I’d thought that it would be so easy. But it had followed me here of all places. To the grocery store and my sister’s engagement party and a crowd of preening college freshmen.
If I couldn’t escape it here after only such a short period of time, how could Penn hope to leave it behind when he’d been in it his whole life?
“All right, ladies, let’s give Natalie a breath of air,” Michael said over the questions from Melanie’s friends.
I didn’t realize that the crowd had grown and grown as word spread, that half the party was hanging around me. Melanie was standing next to Marina, filling her in on all of my amazing adventures at Fashion Week.
“Back it up. Natalie needs some of her own space now.” He flicked his hands to push all of her friends out of my face.
And I thought it was nice. Maybe the nicest thing that Michael had ever done for me.
Then he faced me, and I saw rage on his features.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
I straightened at his words. At the anger in them. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You think this whole party is about you?”
“No,” I spat.
“Then fucking act like it, Natalie. God, this is about me and Melanie. It’s our day. You don’t have to come in and try to take over the spotlight just because you’re some whore to a guy with money.”
My jaw tightened. “You should rethink what you’re about to say.”
“I don’t have to rethink anything,” he snarled.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Because I told Melanie that I wouldn’t.”
“I’m sure that you’re the attention whore. It’s what you’ve always been. You think you’re so cool, being the loner, but you’re just desperate for people to see you. And I see you. I see you for what you really are—nothing.”
I wouldn’t stand here and let him talk to me like that. If the Upper East Side had to follow me around, then I’d use the Upper East Side for what it was really good for.
“Michael, I watched you break my sister’s heart so that you could take her best friend to homecoming. I watched her cry all weekend while you fucked her best friend,” I said, stepping toward him. “I saw how she took you back, and I see the shell of a woman she is now when she’s around you. I see the abuse and harassment and debasement. So, you can stand there and tell me that I’m nothing, but those words are wasted on me. I’m not going to cry and grovel to you because your daddy has money while you’re a worthless piece of shit.” I blinked at him, giving him the same look I’d seen Katherine give to people she believed were beneath her. “But if you hurt my sister or try to talk to me like this again, then I’ll make sure that your life is a living hell. I will ruin you. Wreck you. I will make you wish that you’d never been born. And don’t doubt that I can do exactly that. You have no idea the resources at my disposal.”
I waited. Staring him down like the flea that he was. Waiting for him to snarl back at me like I was the bad person.
But he backed up a step. Losing ground to me as he took in my words. As he saw the dead certainty in my expression.
“You can leave now,” I said, waving my hand at him.
He gritted his teeth and then stormed off as if he were about to go find Melanie. But I couldn’t even seem to care.
My eyes found Penn’s across the backyard. He looked concerned as if he’d seen what had just happened and disapproved. But he hadn’t been able to hear what was said. And I couldn’t face what I’d had to do to that prick…even if he deserved it.
I just walked out the side exit around to the front of the house. My hands shook when I took a seat on the front steps.
Amy appeared a few minutes later. I’d been expecting Penn.
“Hey there, bestie,” she said. “I told Penn to let me take this one.”
I released a giant breath. “I hate him.”
“Yeah, Michael is a real dick. But whoa, Nat, I didn’t even know you had that in you to tell him off like that. I’ve never seen you fight dirty. Even to people who deserve it.”