Page 108 of Pierced

“Rock climbing. I’ve gotten really good at rock climbing. And you have to be definite and resolute. I think it’s maybe spilled over into my everyday me.”

Fucking rock climbers. Bunch of assholes.

I take a breath. “Jesus. Look… I’m not just being stubborn—”

“You so are,” she says.

“You really kind of are, dude,” Andrew chimes in.

My fists clench. I try my hardest to stay calm. “I. So. Am. Not!” Whatever. I tried.

And at that, Eden shakes her head at me and storms out of the kitchen. We watch her go and then Andrew turns to me.

“You know that somehow this is now going to become about some shit I did wrong, right?”

“Sorry, man,” I say, taking a swig of my Perrier.

He blows out a breath. Shit, I still have to set up that pulmonologist appointment for him. “On the bright side—”

“There’s a bright side?”

“Well, Eden said that the buzz she and Zoey have generated about the event was huge. I guess photos on Le Man’s Instagram have been viewed more than the Met Gala?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

“No. Didn’t ask.”

“Oh… oh. Well. Yeah. Apparently, the whole event was a huge success.”

“Guess it depends on how you measure success.”

“Um… I suppose I thought you measure success the same way you’ve always measured success. Money and… attention. And… money.”

I gulp down the rest of my water and toss the bottle in recycling. “I suppose.”

“Man,” Andrew says, slowly. “Why haven’t you called Myrtle?”

I rub at my jaw for a moment and then say, “You know what my dad said to me in New York?”

“No.”

“He said that the reason he feels like he can trust me now is that he sees me having come into my power. He said that he thought what happened this past summer was me not reacting, but seizing control of a situation. He said that even though the whole thing was a shit-show—”

“He called it a shit-show?”

“A ‘spectacle de merde,’ yeah. That he thought the way I maneuvered around it and used it all to my advantage was capable and forward-thinking and all that shit.”

Andrew stares at me for a moment. I oblige his silence by going on.

“Remember when you first got to town and I told you that if I didn’t do something to turn the magazine around that he and I would be done?”

“Of course, I do.”

“I’ve waited my whole life for him to believe in me the way he is now.”

“What does that have to do with—?”