TWO YEARS LATER

“YOU KNOW, IT’S PRETTY EASY NOWADAYS TO SELL A COMPANY FOR BILLIONS of dollars. It’s really not that impressive.”

I’m pressing my phone so tightly against my ear that I can hear Penelope sigh, even past the intercom voice telling me that baggage and other personal items should not be left unattended, the kid riding their robot suitcase into the bookshelf a few feet away, and the flight attendant at the closest gate berating passengers for flooding the boarding area before their group has been called.

“Keep telling yourself that, Elle,” Penelope finally says.

It’s been years, and the sight of those green eyes, looking at me from that same business magazine that had hosted that party—on the cover this time—still fills me with rage. He didn’t even attempt to look pleasant in the picture, staring down the photographer, and now me, with an apathy that hints at having been forced into doing the photo shoot.

Below sits a headline that makes me want to break my phone into tiny shards and completely discredits my ability to curse others into oblivion:

“Atomic Sells to Virion for $10 Billion.”

“They’re calling him the Billionaire Bachelor,” Penelope continues, while I shove another magazine in front of the whole row of them, erasing him, and walk out of the Hudson News toward my gate. Because apparently, she didn’t get the memo that she’s supposed to hate him as much as I do.

When I tell her so, she scoffs. “We both agree, he’s a jerk. But you’ll never see him again, who cares?”

I care, I want to say, but I already sound pathetic enough for keeping this grudge for so long. So he lied about his identity and made out with me in a stairwell for a few minutes, basically accusing me of being some sort of money-grubber. Big deal.

Yes.

Big. Deal.

“Can we talk about something else?” I snap. “Like, maybe, how much you’ll miss me? How you won’t know what to do with yourself in LA while your best friend is forced back into the perpetual flash mob that is New York City?”

Penelope laughs. “First of all, you brought him up. Again,” she mutters, before smartly moving on. “And yes, Elle, I don’t know how I’ll survive these next three months without you. I’m definitely not going to do things you refuse to do, like go to the beach or the boardwalk, or on a hike, or literally anything that involves changing out of sweats.”

I wish we were on FaceTime so she could see the depths of my glare.

“Or . . . hang out with that hot surgeon who wears the scrubs with the drawstrings . . .”

I stop right in the middle of the terminal, earning myself a splash of burning hot coffee on my sleeve, from the person who just ran into me. “He called?”

I can almost see Penelope’s grin, can picture her sitting with her knees to her chest, making a shelf for her chin to rest on. “He didn’t just call . . . he showed up at my house. Said it took him hours to find my address.”

My head rearing back, I blink. “And . . .”

“Yes, Elle, I liked it. You know better than anyone that disturbing behavior is only really disturbing—”

“If you don’t think the guy is attractive. I know, I know. Like Edward watching Bella sleep in Twilight .”

Someone at the gate I’ve finally arrived at shoots me a strange look, and I stare them down until they look away.

“Okay, then what happened?”

Penelope sighs. “He brought prosciutto and prosecco from the same region of Italy my family is from—he found that information online somewhere too—and used his own set of expensive knives to slice the meat himself!”

I wince. “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure he’s not a serial killer?”

“He’s not a serial killer. He’s just committed.”

“Um . . .”

She clicks her tongue. “Don’t worry. I already did a full internet sweep of him. Followed all his past girlfriends with my shadow account. Put a Google Alert for his name. Verified his identity back to middle school—he went to a really good one, by the way. You know. All the normal stuff.”

I tilt my head and shift the phone to my other ear. “Okay, are you sure you’re not a serial killer?”

The guy is almost certainly not a serial killer, and not just because statistically, there are only about twelve active serial killers at one time (thank you, true crime podcasts that help me fall asleep).

No, I can pretty much guarantee he’s a truly good guy, which in LA is to be treated with the care and reverence of encountering an endangered species. Penelope has a habit of attracting the best men. It’s almost uncanny. She says it’s her freckles, they make her seem friendlier. I don’t know what the science on that is.

Whereas most people would have happily run off into the sunset with any of the men Penelope has been with, she allows each only a handful of months before calling it off. She leaves heartbroken men in her wake and never brings them up again.

She’s awful. She once broke up with a guy by Postmating him a giant cookie cake with a sad face on it and RSVP’ing no to his sister’s wedding.

She’s my best friend and I would protect her to the ends of the earth.

“Funny,” Penelope says. “They’re calling your boarding group, Elle. Wishing you a hot seatmate and minimal turbulence!”

Then she’s gone.

And I’m on a plane back to the city I swore I would never return to.