“Just wedding stuff,” I lie to her, although I know I should be nicer and tell her the truth, since she has, in a sense, just rescued me. The only problem is… I don’t know what the truth is, exactly.
And I actually have more pressing concerns at the moment. Like why I’m in a stretch limo with Ava Geck.
“Ava, what are you doing here?” I ask. “Why aren’t you in Greece?”
“I couldn’t go through with it,” Ava says simply, then gasps and seizes my arm. “Oh my God! What happened to you? Lizzie—has Luke been beating you?”
I look down at the hives, which have now broken out all over the insides of both my arms. In a way, they do resemble bruises.
“No,” I say with a laugh, because the idea of Luke ever hitting me is so absurd. I could probably knock him clear into New Jersey. “They’re just hives. I get them every time I think about… you know.”
“Butt sex?” Ava asks understandingly.
“No,” I cry, ripping my arm from her grasp. “My wedding. And what do you mean, you couldn’t go through with it? You mean you just… canceled your wedding to Prince Aleksandros?”
“That’s about it,” Ava says with a sigh, patting Snow White on the head as the poor dog trembles in the icy blast from the limo’s air conditioner. “I was just boarding Daddy’s private jet, and suddenly it hit me: I’m about to become someone’s wife. I was like… are you shitting me? I’m only twenty-three! I haven’t even been to college. What am I doing, becoming someone’s wife? So I jumped back into the car and I’ve been riding around ever since, trying to get my head together.”
I gaze at Ava, truly touched by her words. Especially since I’m twenty-three too. “So you’ve decided to go to college? Ava, that is so great!”
“Hell, no, I’m not going to college,” Ava says, looking shocked. “Are you kidding me? I’m just saying there’s so many things like going to college that I haven’t done. I’m not throwing my life away yet on some guy, even if he is a prince. I have shit to do. I don’t know what, but… like, I was thinking I should cut an album. Something classy, you know? Like Hilary Duff.”
I blink at her. “Well… yes. Yes, that is definitely something you could do.”
“And I don’t even have my own clothing line yet,” Ava goes on. “My parents own one of the biggest discount department store chains in the world, and I don’t have my own clothing line yet? What the hell am I thinking?”
“Exactly,” I say. “What the hell are you thinking? Although, Ava… you can do all these things and still be married, you know. It’s not like Prince Aleksandros would try to stop you. Not if he really loved you. He’d probably be proud of you.”
“But that’s just it,” Ava says, looking down sadly at Snow White. “I don’t think he would be. You know… this is partly your fault, Lizzie. My having to cancel my wedding, I mean.”
“Me?” I gape at her, horror-struck. “What did I have to do with it?”
“Because since I’ve been coming to you, and you’ve been, like, helping me with my public image and stuff, Alek’s kinda… I don’t know. Lost interest in me. Like he keeps asking me how come I don’t show my cootchie anymore. I think he liked it when I did stuff like that. Because it drove his parents completely insane. They were totally against his marrying me, you know. Which I think only made him more into me. But now that I’ve started to act a little classier, they’ve been a lot nicer to me. And that’s made Alek completely lose interest.”
My jaw sags. Although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This explains so much about Ava’s very conservative choices when it came to her wedding gown. And why she’d come to me in the first place. Sure, she could have gone to Vera Wang, but there’d been a small part of her that had still been rebelling… just a little.
It’s all beginning to make sense. She’d wanted to please her fiancé’s parents while still retaining some small part of herself.
But in doing so, it sounded like she’d turned off her fiancé.
Oops.
“So you’re calling it off,” I say, “before Aleksandros can?”
“That’s just it,” Ava says in disgust. “I don’t think he ever was going to call it off. That’s how gutless he is. Like, he’ll stand up to his parents by marrying a total slut. But he would never call off the wedding to that slut, because that would make him look bad in the press.”
I reach over and give her warm, bare shoulder a reassuring pat. “Ava,” I say. “You’re not a slut.”
“Oh, I totally am,” Ava says matter-of-factly. “But that’s okay. I’d rather be a slut than a dickless hypocrite, like Alek. I’m just sorry about your dress.”
I shake my head. “My dress?”
“The beautiful wedding dress you designed for me,” Ava says.
“Oh,” I say, laughing. “Don’t worry about that! I’m sure I’ll find someone else to buy it. Ava Geck’s wedding dress? Are you kidding? I’ll probably be able to sell it for a fortune on eBay.”
Ava pouts at me. “I’m not giving it back,” she says. “That thing is mine. I was thinking maybe you could make it shorter, dye it purple, slap some sequins on it, and I could wear it to the MTV Video Music Awards in September. That way tons of people will see it, and you’ll still get the exposure you deserve. I should get lots of airtime, because I’m giving out the Viewer’s Choice VMA. And Tippy asked me to go with him ’cause he’s still got that restraining order out on his wife. That was going to be a problem before—you know, being his escort if I was married to Alek—but now that I’m not, it should be all good.”
“Oh,” I say, taken aback. “Um… sure. I could do that. No problem.”
“Awesome.” Ava looks a lot happier. The limo has made its way uptown via Sixth Avenue, and now we’re snaking our way through Central Park, one of my favorite drives in Manhattan—which I certainly never thought I’d be making via limo. We’re gliding past couples taking romantic horse and carriage rides, and less romantic pedicab rides. I wonder if they’re looking at the smoked-glass windows of the limo and trying to guess who the celebrity is inside.
I’m betting none of them is guessing Ava Geck and her wedding gown designer.
“So what are you going to do now?” I ask, conscious that my stomach is growling a little. There’s nothing in it but white wine. I’m hoping Ava’s going to say that she’s dropping me off at home so I can get something to eat… or at the very least, that she’s going to suggest the two of us grab something somewhere. I don’t know how much longer I can go without sustenance of the nonalcoholic variety. Ava may be able to go for hours on just a PowerBar, but I’m not that kind of girl.
“Um,” Ava says. “Yeah. That’s why I was trying to reach you.”
I perk up. “You want to grab some dinner? You want to get some sushi or something?” Another thing Tiffany, Monique, and I have managed to do is expand Ava’s dining horizons, so that she now eats more than just cheeseburgers and protein bars. She has consequently developed an almost pathological love for sushi… which isn’t actually unusual for someone who’s never tried it before. Wasabi has known addictive qualities. “There’s Atlantic Grill right over on Third Avenue. Or Sushi of Gari… ”
“Not exactly,” Ava says. “I mean, we can totally get something to eat if you want. But I actually need a favor.”
“Oh sure,” I say. “Anything you want.”
“Oh goody,” Ava says, grinning widely. “Joey, she said yes!”
Little Joey, I realize belatedly, is sitting in the front seat beside the driver, half hidden by the privacy screen, which Ava lowers to deliver this news.
“Oh, hey, Lizzie,” he calls to me from the vast expanse of leather seats and twinkling halogen lights in the ceiling between us. “How you doing?”
“Hi, Joey,” I call back a bit hesitantly, since I’m suddenly realizing I have no idea what I’ve just agreed to. “I’m good. Um, Ava?”