Chapter 3
THE WEEKEND SEEMED to drag by, and I didn’t hear one single word from James the whole time. He didn’t have my cellphone number or know where I was staying, but as corny as it was, I felt sure that a man like James would have no trouble getting in touch with anyone, because trivial details like contact information would be easily at his summoning. I just had the feeling that if James wanted something, he would make it happen, no matter what.
Of course, just because James wasn’t looking in on me, that didn’t mean I wasn’t googling up on him. For the next day and a half, I locked myself away in my room at Madison’s and kept my eyes glued to the computer, immersing myself in the world of James Lysander Cross IV.
It was like reading a work of fiction, so fantastical and out of this world that it couldn’t possibly be the truth, couldn’t possibly have really happened. From the winter he trekked across the northern icecap with a labradoodle he affectionately named Balto to the summer he tried to re-create Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days on nothing but a pair of camels and a dilapidated hovercraft to the parties and premieres. From the film cameos to a ten million-dollar poker championship in Montenegro and tribal dances to royal tea, from Coachella to a month of silence at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, James’s life was, in fact, reality stranger than fiction.
Nicholas Hunter, the son of a billionaire I considered Manhattan royalty, had even invited James to be his best man in the wedding that practically shut down the entire state. That twin I knew officiated the fucking ceremony, but even more than that, he apparently swooped in for a helicopter rescue at sea to save the bride and groom from their ceremonial duties and whisk them off to a more intimate celebration farther upstate.
My original diagnosis on the rooftop was correct: James is a child of whimsy, of music, of dancing. No wonder those natives thought him a god, because he is, one who wanders the Earth, a spirit of adventure personified, finding freedom in the glorious body of a perfect-looking man.
As for the women, I couldn’t even begin to fathom it. It went way beyond the typical hot playboy dating supermodels. There were actually queens on his list of former flames, as well as notorious virgins and heads of state. One reporter wrote that he spotted James at a party with the highest-paid lingerie model on the planet, but he spent the entire night dancing with the wife of the host before going home with a caterer no one had ever heard of, a lowly caterer who went on to become one of the most sought-after actresses in all of Hollywood.
The man was a legend, a god, a deity, the kind of superstar others wrote stories about. The whole world watched him from afar through the eyes of the paparazzi who flocked around him like sharks in bloody water. They sought his inspiration and wanted to know everything about how and whom he loved.
The type of person my roommate shoulda told me about!
“Della, are you coming?” Madison’s voice echoed up the stairs, buzzing with that anticipatory energy she always had at the start of a new work week, as if espresso naturally flowed through her veins on Monday mornings. “We’re going to be late.”
I glared in the general direction of the door but didn’t respond. At that point, I was sure she didn’t expect me to, since we hadn’t been on speaking terms since I’d returned home Saturday morning.
There was a brief pause, followed by a light flutter of footsteps as she made her way up the stairs. Instead of knocking on my door, she burst right in, and her eyes instantly performed a full sweep of the perimeter before coming to rest on me. “I said,” she continued, her lips twitching as she tried very hard not to grin, “are you coming?”
Unlike me, Madison found the twin topic to be highly amusing. Also unlike me, she deemed herself innocent, completely and resolutely free from any blame in any part of the tumultuous situation.
“Go back to hell, she-witch,” I muttered, never taking my eyes off the screen. “Also, take all that Monday-morning pep with you.”
She smiled in spite of herself, cocking her hips to strike a comical pose in the doorway. “Oh, so it’s going to be another one of those days, is it?”
“No one loves you. Your life is meaningless.”
“My life? Dear, I’m not the one who wasted my weekend cyber-stalking my one-night stand, with a bottle of wine and a bag of cheese curls my only company. Why, you’re one step up from one of those teenage boys who lives in his mum’s basement. You just need a videogame headset and you’ll be—”
“Doritos,” I corrected flatly.
“Excuse me?”
“There is a huge difference between Doritos and cheese curls, Madison. Do not test me on yank junk food.” My eyes flickered to hers with a withering glare. “Did Lucifer send you into my life with any specific mission, or did he just tell you to go crazy?”
She laughed loudly, tossing back her white-blonde hair to reveal the stunning designer dress beneath. “I’m no longer given marching orders, seniority and all.”
This time, I said nothing and just continued scrolling through the endless James fan fodder.
Frustrated by my unresponsiveness, she stomped firmly on the floor with one of her expensive heels. “Come, Della! Surely you can’t remain angry at me forever. I didn’t know! It isn’t as if I fibbed to you. I had no idea he had an identical twin brother.”
“I can’t?” I said, knowing full well that Girl Code permitted me to be pissed at her as long as I wanted. “Let’s see. Shall we discuss—” I began with my eyebrows arched in surprise that she had such audacity to feign naiveté.
“I knew he had a brother. Not a twin. But a brother. And I never connected him as your long-lost lover. After all, the entire world thought he was in South America,” she cut in. “Every journalist in the northern hemisphere was sure of it,” she insisted. “What was more likely? That Robert had his hair cut shorter or that every media parasite in the upper half of the globe was correct?”
For an answer, I tossed a handful of Doritos in her direction.
“Nice, Della. How very mature. Now I have cheese all over me.”
“Cool Ranch,” I corrected with a smirk, then tossed another handful as she struggled to dust off the first.
Chapter 4
BY THE TIME WE REACHED the office, I had to shamefully admit that we’d somehow managed to make up. Ideally, I would have loved to hold out a while longer, if only on principle, but I knew I was in way over my head, and since she was my new best friend in that foreign country of hers, Madison’s immediate guidance was required.