The Devil Wears Black

Maddie: What are you doing tonight?

Chase: You, hopefully.

Maddie: Try again.

Chase: Out on the prowl, since my soon-to-be temporary girlfriend is refusing to see me.

Maddie: Back to being a cheater, I see.

Chase: We’re not exclusive. You kiss Ethan all the time. I bet Ethan kisses other women too.

Maddie: Forget it. Go have your fun. I hope you catch hispes.

Chase: Hispes?

Maddie: Herpes, pour homme.

Chase: Fuck, I’ve missed you.

Maddie: I actually stole this from Ray Donovan.

Chase: You can untwist your little (patterned?) panties. I’m currently at my parents’ house, playing chess with my father. And losing. Thanks to you.

Maddie: Strawberries (re: panties). How is he feeling?

Chase: Good (re: panties). And not good (re: Dad).

Maddie: I’m really sorry. There is nothing I can say to make this better, but I’m thinking about you and your family all the time. I’m seeing Katie next week for lunch. I want you to know I’ll be there for her.

Chase: The end-ness is unfathomable. Today he is here, but tomorrow, who knows?

Maddie: My mother began to write me personal letters when she first found out about her breast cancer. Little anecdotes about me as a child, about her as a mother. We bonded over flowers. I always got excited when she took me to work and there was a big order for a wedding. When she beat cancer the first time, she didn’t stop writing me letters. When I asked her why, she said it didn’t matter. Just because she didn’t have cancer didn’t mean she wouldn’t die. And she wanted to remind me she’d always love me. I think maybe telling him how you feel now is a good idea.

Chase: How did it feel? I mean, afterward.

Maddie: I felt betrayed by her. I kept thinking how could she do this to me, even though it didn’t make any sense. I knew she didn’t choose to be ill. I felt robbed of something. Tricked. Cursed. But then, slowly, I got back on my feet. You will too.

Chase: What if I don’t?

Maddie: I’ll make sure you will.

Chase: I won’t let you stick around and help me.

Maddie: I won’t ask.

Chase: So you’ll save me, but won’t fuck me?

Maddie: Precisely.

Chase: Monday. I’ll pick you up at six.

Maddie: Monday.

Chase: Mad?

Maddie: Yes?

Chase: Thanks.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHASE

It was the same studio.

Of course it was the same fucking studio.

An industrial loft on Broadway.

I wasn’t surprised. Mom had one assistant on her payroll—Berta—who was approximately eighty years old (not an exaggeration for the sake of making a point). She should’ve retired about three decades ago, but Berta was a widow, no kids, and Mom said the job kept her busy. Berta had a personal, ongoing feud with technology and used the Yellow Pages whenever she had to book anything outside the usual service providers the family used. Which meant that the studio—Events4U—was the same one she’d booked for every family occasion in the last century, including engagement shoots, Christmas cards, condolences, virtually every official picture taken of Booger Face, my college graduation pictures, and Katie’s Himalayan cat’s funeral photos (more on that never; I still hadn’t forgiven her for wasting everyone’s time while providing the feline with a proper burial).

I opened the door for Mad, dangerously close to crawling out of my own skin and bolting to the other side of the planet, thinking about the last time I’d been in this studio. Who I’d been with in this studio. It wasn’t that my family hadn’t visited here afterward, but I’d flat-out refused to set foot in this studio ever again on the grounds of I WASN’T A FUCKING MASOCHIST.

Until now.

Madison breezed in, her movements, like her being, swift and sunny. She leaned her entire upper body against the counter, greeting the person at the reception like she’d known her her entire life. Her pixie hair was growing a little longer than usual, sticking out playfully. It was fuck hot, and I wondered if she was going to let her hair grow and if that meant hair yanking during sex was in the cards for me.

Madison laughed at something the receptionist said, then fished her phone out of her bag and showed her something. The receptionist, I realized, was the same woman who’d taken my picture all those years ago. The memory slammed into me like a truck in a busy intersection. This was a one-person-operation business. The woman had been the one cooing at my (real) ex-fiancée and me—two nervous postgrads who’d made a fatal decision to get married before they’d known who they really were—to smile at the camera.

She won’t recognize you. She owns a studio on Broadway. She sees hundreds of people every week, some of them remarkably ugly, some of them remarkably beautiful. Your face doesn’t chart.

“Oh goodness.” The woman, who introduced herself as Becky, pushed her glasses up her nose, blinking up at me. She was fiftysomething, athletic looking, with a gray, conservative dress, hair the same color as her dress, and enough jewelry to sink the Titanic. “It is you again, Mr. Black.”