The tie, however, is still ludicrous.
He does a double take when he clocks me.
“That looks remarkably good on you,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “If you were trying to sabotage me, it didn’t work.”
“Very little could sabotage your looks. But I was not expecting a sparkly muumuu to enhance them to quite this degree.”
I can’t help smiling.
“Shall we go?” I ask.
“Just need some shades.”
He grabs the black Wayfarers he bought from the nightstand, but I snatch them out of his hands. “No. I want these. You take the pink ones.”
I did this just to be churlish, but he doesn’t argue. And when he puts them on, he looks like Ryan Gosling inBarbie, and I regret my decision.
It’s difficult to be deeply carnally attracted to a person you are committed to loathing.
Which makes me wonder if it is perhapsnottoo soon to make hate sex jokes.
And perhaps not even be joking about it.
Felix
I’m in a too-tight suit in a too-hot taxi with a too-smug woman I am too attracted to.
I’m trying to make the best of things—but only because seeming unfussed is the one move I currently have in the stranded ex-lovers playbook. There is a subtle balance of power when people who despise each other must mutually cooperate to survive, and it is currently tipped in Hope’s direction.
And she knows it.
She’s been gloating since she found me washed up on her doorstep. And now that she improbably looks like aVoguecover, she has the lofty air of someone who ate helium.
“Nice night,” I comment disingenuously. It is perhaps one degree cooler than it was at noon. I never want to feel humidity or see sunshine again.
“Is it?” Hope asks, because Hope is not playing the same game as me. She is playing the let-me-enjoy-antagonizing-the-person-I-hate-because-there-is-nothing-he-can-do-but-grin-and-bear-it game.
“You’re sweating like you have a wasting illness,” she says.
“You’re a bit dewy yourself.”
“A dewy complexion is considered a mark of youth and beauty.”
“I wonder what those buildings are,” I say, to change the subject. I point out the window at a structure of five peach towers topped with spires, one side connected to the other with a swooping sky bridge that makes my stomach drop just from looking at it. “You can see them everywhere.”
She snorts. “Seriously?”
“You know what it is?”
“Yes, duh. It’s Atlantis.”
“Not ringing a bell.”
“Clearly you never saw the cinematic classicHoliday in the Sunstarring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.”
“Clearly. What is it?”
