Lucky Break (5 page)

Alex's mouth dropped open. He shook his head. Then he stood up and started pacing the sidewalk. “I can't believe this. All because of one little—”

“Believe it,” I said.

“So it's over?” he asked. I could have sworn his eyes looked moist. “Just like that?”

This was my chance—to make him grovel and apologize and swear I was the only girl for him. But deep in my heart, I knew, I'd never be able to get that picture out of my head. And I'd never forgive Alex for acting like this wasn't such a big deal. I looked at his tortured face in front of me. I did get a little bit of solace that at least he looked half as broken up as I felt inside. I was about to do the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. I took a deep breath and met his eyes.

“It's over,” I said. “Just like that.”

The girls and I had agreed to meet at Candle Café for breakfast before school on Friday. Originally, the plan had been to go over the final details before the red-eye flight that night. But since my whole world had come crashing down on me twelve hours ago, things were looking slightly different. When my Betty Boop alarm clock went off at six-thirty, I groaned, rolled over, and buried my face in my pillow. The sound was so unwelcome, I wanted to throw Betty against the wall.

Noodles, the world's greatest Pomeranian, chose that moment to pounce on my neck and start attacking me with kisses. He could always sense when I need a little extra love. This morning, I was so utterly devastated—I needed a whole lot of extra love.

It wasn't going to be easy to break the news to my friends. For starters, breaking the news meant I was
going to have to relive every excruciating detail—starting with Kennedy's sneer at Saks and ending with the sight of Alex, walking away down Perry Street without even looking back. Then I was going to have to tell them that my eyes were already too red from crying to take the red-eye. I had to tell them I was going be a GPA no-show.

All of this was made even worse by the fact that everyone was depending on me to be the ringleader. Just thinking about all my friends right now—innocently blow-drying their hair at home (Harper), accidentally oversleeping (Camille), illegally downloading one more song for our trip's mix CDs (Morgan), and making a last-minute decision to throw both pairs of hot pink jeans in her suitcase (Amory)—made me panic. None of them had a clue that I was about to drop the biggest bomb, possibly in the history of spring break.

We'd decided to meet at Candle Café because a) it was super healthy and super delicious (one last cleansing day before we consumed half the butter in Paris) and b) because it was our last day to dine somewhere that was
so
Manhattan. As Camille pointed out, there was little chance we'd be eating macrobiotic quinoa in Paris.

But there was just one problem: the vegan chefs at
Candle swore by that very special (read: imposter!) food product called carob. The dessert list was all carob puddings and carob chip soy ice cream, etc. And everybody knows that there are times in life when a girl needs the real thing.

Today was a chocolate day if I'd ever seen one.

To help arm myself for the difficult conversation I knew I had ahead of me, I swung by the nearby Crumbs en route to Candle Café. I'd always wondered why a cupcake shop needed to open at seven in the morning—but today I understood. When I saw the shaven-headed, nose-ringed, white-aproned baker slide a tray of luscious-looking cupcakes into the glass case before me, I knew she was going to be my savior.

“Can I have that double chocolate cupcake—no, to the left … the big one?” I pointed to the case and waited for the biggest, swirliest, chocolatiest cupcake in all of Crumbs to be delivered to me in a little paper bag.

“There's nothing these cupcakes can't fix, is there?” she asked, ringing me up.

I was afraid that if I opened my mouth to disagree, I would start to cry. Either that or delve into way too much personal information. So I just nodded, tried to smile, and dashed out the door with my cupcake. I was already five minutes late for breakfast, and I
could feel the GPA binder burning in my Jamin Puech patched leather Sheriffa bag.

Candle Café was already packed with power-breakfasting Upper East Siders, but I quickly spotted my friends huddled together at the back of the restaurant. I sidled past the hissing espresso machine and sank into the one remaining empty chair, thumping my cupcake on the table.

Camille eyed the paper bag, saw the big Crumbs logo, and raised her eyebrows at me. “You do know that they serve food here, too?” she joked. Her eyes widened when she watched me pull the massive cupcake out of the bag and take a gigantic bite.

“Oh my God,” Morgan said. “That looks so freaking good. I wonder if I can cancel my oatmeal—wait, Flan, why are you eating half a pound of chocolate before eight a.m.?”

“Let's just say it's one of those days,” I said, keeping my mouth full so I wouldn't have to talk much more. I could already feel the tears welling up, and I knew the girls would be onto me instantly.

Amory put her hand on my arm. “Uh-oh. What's going on, babe?” she asked. “Talk to us.”

I wanted to start at the beginning, to try to make sense out of what was still so baffling to me, but when I opened my mouth, what came out was a small
mournful wail, a few crumbs of cupcake, and “Icaaaaan'tgotoPaaaaaris.”

“What?” all five of them said at once.

“What happened?”

“Don't even joke about that!”

“Are you crazy?”

I hiccuped and blew my nose on my napkin.

“It's Alex,” I sniffed, shaking my head. “It's too awful to tell.”

“Worse than when Xander accidentally shaved off his eyebrows?” Camille joked. But when she saw the dire expression on my face, her smile disappeared.

“Alex cheated on me,” I said, looking down at the remains of my cupcake.

A collective gasp that was heard around the restaurant escaped my friends' lips. Before I knew it, all four of their hands were holding mine and the whole story came pouring out, along with more than a few tears.

“The nerve,” Harper huffed, showing a rare burst of temper.

“And you had to hear about it from Kennedy,” Amory said, making all five of us shudder. “What's worse?”

“What's worse is Flan saying she's not coming to Paris,” Camille said. She started tugging on her hair, hard, like she did when she was really nervous.

“Well, we'll stay in the city with you,” Morgan said decidedly. “We'll have another boy boycott.”

“No,” I said. “No way. No more boy boycotts. You have to go to Paris. Someone should enjoy it.”

My friends nodded halfheartedly, but I could see them looking nervously back and forth at each other. It was kind of like we were mourning the death of the GPA—and I really didn't want that to happen. Still, I couldn't exactly hold the position of trip advisor remotely. If I didn't go to Paris, what would happen to all our plans?

“Does, uh, does anyone else speak French?” Amory said.

Her question was met by blank stares across the table.

“Maybe one of the boys does?” Morgan offered. “Sometimes Bennett does this really cute French accent when we go to cafés….” She trailed off.

“We don't even know where we're staying,” Harper realized.

“Or how to take the Métro,” Amory added.

“Or the address of Jade Moodswing's atelier,” Camille agreed.

The girls were getting totally freaked out. There was only one thing to do.

For the very last time, I pulled the GPA binder out
of my bag and laid it on the table. “I'm officially turning this over to you guys now. Everything you need to know is in here. Restaurant reservations, shopping routes, Jade's cell phone,” I said gravely. “Treat it well.”

The girls looked at the binder in the middle of the table like it was some sort of oracle. Finally, Camille reached for it and placed it on her lap.

“It's in good hands,” she said, stroking its glossy top cover. “But I still hate the thought of you not being with us.”

“You understand though, right?” I asked.

The girls nodded. “What are you going to do about Alex?” Camille asked.

“Honestly,” I said, “I have no idea. How am I supposed to get over this?”

I looked at my friends, who looked at each other. We'd all definitely had our share of boy drama, but no one had really had boy
trauma
of this caliber yet. Full-fledged cheating was uncharted territory among our clique.

“You're really brave, Flan,” Amory said, sipping the last of her double espresso.

“And if Alex doesn't see that …” Harper agreed, popping a strawberry in her mouth.

“He doesn't deserve you,” Morgan finished, signaling the waiter for the check.

“You'll call us every day?” Camille said. “Three times a day at least?”

“And vice versa,” I said, trying to sound brave. But when I tried to imagine answering the phone to hear about what the girls had gotten from Jade's atelier, or how they liked the Eiffel Tower, all I could see was my sad self lying at home on the couch with bad takeout food, a box of tissues, Noodles, and a slew of Netflix DVDs. Your basic recipe for disaster. I had to come up with a better plan.

What was I going to do over spring break?

Moping along the sidewalk on my way home from school, the direness of my situation finally started to sink in. I had just called it quits on the most important relationship in my life—in a really mortifying, every-girl's-worst-nightmare kind of way—and what was worse, practically everyone I knew was fleeing the city and leaving me all alone to wallow.

All alone. I could almost hear the tearjerker sound track picking up behind me as I shuffled down Perry Street.

“Flan?”

My head jerked up.

“What are you doing here—all alone?”

The voice came from a limousine, which pulled to a stop in front of me and rolled down its window. When I saw the big black D&G shades, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was my mom.

“Aren't you supposed to be on your way to the airport, with your friends? Flan—have you been crying?”

Before I could open my mouth, the door of the limo opened up and my mother practically swooped me into the seat next to her. I collapsed on the plush black leather armrest and buried my face in her red cashmere pashmina.

“It's never good to cry on the street,” my mom said. Then she grinned the way she did when she thought she was having an especially good idea. “Especially when you have a mother with a four o'clock Swedish massage appointment at Spa Bloomie's. Hold on, I'll squeeze you in.”

Some people are good at playing piano, others have a green thumb for gardening. My mother was born with the insurmountable gift of being able to get any reservation for anything, anywhere, in under thirty seconds. She made a call, and I was in at Spa Bloomie's for a four o'clock with Helga.

Well, at least when my friends were sharing all their fabulous Paris stories, I'd have one thing to tell them I did over spring break.

“Okay,” Mom said as we drove south on Broadway. “Spill it.”

By the time we got to Bloomingdale's, my mom
knew all the gory Alex details, and she'd given me a week's worth of full-body hugs (I stopped counting at about thirteen). Mom was always great to talk to, but tonight she was being especially supportive.

“I didn't know I could cry this much,” I said, wincing when I caught a glimpse of my mascara-streaked face in the mirror above the icebox.

“You're a woman. Women are tear factories,” my mom said. “The good news is you're also a Flood, which is how I know you're going to get through this. Men will come and go, you know that. But a Flood will—”

“I know, I know: a Flood will never crash.” It was what my parents had been telling us our whole lives—whenever Patch failed an exam at Princeton, or when one of Feb's movies didn't get funded—all of life's little upsets were met with the very same mantra. Sometimes it made me feel better to know that I came from a family with such strength, but today, it made my stomach hurt. It felt like too little, too late. Did I have to tell my mom that this Flood might have already crashed at the first mention of the word
Cookie
?

As my mom and I walked into Bloomingdale's toward the spa upstairs, I couldn't stop looking at all the new spring clothes and beach-themed displays set up to woo shoppers on their way to sunny locales. It
was yet another reminder that my spring break was going to completely suck.

“What's with the face?” my mom asked, steering me into the calming back room of the spa. “Did you want the hot stone instead of the Swedish?”

“No, I love the Swedish. It's just that … well,” I stammered. “All my friends are leaving for Paris tonight. I guess I'm just practicing my solo-wallowing face for the rest of spring break.”

My mom shot me a look like I was crazy. “Nonsense,” she said. “You'll come to the Amalfi Coast with your father and me. It'll be just the thing.” She nodded once before stepping into the dressing room to change into her white terry cloth robe. Her tone suggested that there was no question that a trip to Italy was exactly what I needed.

“Really?” I brightened. I reached for my own robe and slipped out of my TwillTwentyTwo cargo pants in the dressing room next to my mom. “I wouldn't be in the way?”

“Darling, don't make me beg,” my mom joked. “Your father wants to go cheese tasting, of all things. I'll need a companion for scoping out those dark-haired Italian stallions. Of course, we'll just look. And of course you're coming. I'll make a call. Can you be ready to leave tonight?”