When Dani Martinez woke up on Friday the tenth of December, she thought, It’s going to be a good day.
And then she thought, Liar.
But whatever, just because it was the last Friday of the semester and she was about to be inundated with forty-seven essays on The (Not So) Great Gatsby, it didn’t necessarily follow that today was going to be bad.
So she hadn’t done a lick of Christmas shopping, forget the fruitcake she was supposed to have started months ago. That didn’t mean this particular day was automatically going to suck.
And just because the cherry on top of the day was going to be the English department’s holiday party, at which she would “get” to see her still-not-quite ex-husband with his trade-in trollop didn’t mean— Ah, forget it. This day was going to be crap.
Her phone dinged. It would be Leo, which would be a fortifying way to start this all-downhill-from-here day. Because of the time difference between New York and Eldovia, they often talked early in the mornings New York time. Dani missed Leo and his sister, Gabby, something fierce, missed being able to go across the hall and have coffee in the mornings. Sometimes, before she was caffeinated, she forgot he wasn’t there anymore. And then it would hit her anew: her best friend lived in Eldovia, where he was engaged to a princess. Dani was going to be his best woman in the fall at a freaking royal wedding.
Eyeing the slumbering ball of fur next to her, Dani executed a slo-mo roll to grab her phone from the nightstand—she wanted the ball of fur to stay slumbering until she’d had coffee.
The text was not from Leo. Good morning. It’s Max von Hansburg. Marie gave me your number. I’m in New York for a few days. Can I take you to dinner tonight?
Speaking of royal weddings. Dani blinked, surprised to hear from Max, who was Princess Marie’s best friend—and her ex-fiancé. Despite having been thrown over in favor of Leo, Max was currently scheduled to serve as Marie’s man of honor in the wedding.
Marie and Max’s past was like a telenovela, complete with glittering balls, arranged marriages, and conniving parents. Leo had crash-landed in the middle of it, getting swept up in a gender-swapped Cinderella story that had made even Dani’s stone-cold heart defrost a degree or two. Except in this version, Cinderella had left a bestie behind in the ashes. Or maybe Leo had passed the Cinderella mantle on to Dani?
Max—Dog Max, the main Max in Dani’s life—did one of his signature snore-snorts. Look, she even had an animal companion like Cinderella, except hers didn’t flit around helping with the tidying.
MAX: The concierge at my hotel can get us into Momofuku Ko. I could send a car for you.
The thaw in Dani’s heart did not extend to Human Max, who, in addition to being a member of the Eldovian aristocracy, was insufferable. “I could send a car for you.” What, like this was Pretty Woman? She considered the various ways she could decline his invitation. In the end, she went with brusque efficiency.
DANI: No.
MAX: Lunch?
DANI: No.
MAX: A drink?
DANI: No.
MAX: Coffee?
DANI: Coffee is a drink.
MAX: So that’s still no?
DANI: Yes.
MAX: Yes that’s still no, or yes you’ll have coffee with me?
DANI: Listen, dude. Or should I say listen, duke?
Ha! She cracked herself up. She sat up against her headboard to allow for easier texting, eyeing Dog Max, whose breathing did not change.
MAX: Baron, actually.
She knew that. She’d googled Maximillian von Hansburg when she met him in Eldovia last summer. He was, despite his personality, unnaturally good-looking. And, really, who wouldn’t respond to meeting a baron by googling said baron? She had learned that he was low-level famous—or should she say infamous?—in European circles for being a globe-trotting, womanizing playboy. The European tabloids called him the Depraved Duke, which as far as she could tell was a nickname that originated when he was photographed frolicking with a mystery woman while wearing an adult onesie on the deck of a yacht during the Cannes Film Festival.
MAX: My father has to shuffle off this mortal coil before I attain dukedom, and I can report that he is in fine health.
DANI: Okay, but here’s my point: I am post-men. As I told you last summer.
MAX: Yes, meaning you don’t want to date, correct?
DANI: Correct.
MAX: But what about Leo? You talk to Leo all the time. You flew across the Atlantic last summer to visit him.
DANI: Leo’s my best friend.
MAX: I rest my case.
DANI: What does that mean?
MAX: Leo is a man.
DANI: Your powers of observation are astounding. You’ll forgive me if I’m suspicious, but I seem to have read an article with a headline that referred to you as a “man-whore.”
MAX: Were you googling me? I’m flattered.
She didn’t bother replying. She wasn’t about to defend said googling. That would sound like protesting too much.
MAX: My point is, I’m not asking you on a date. I merely want to spend time with you.
Not sure what to say to that and seduced by the smell emanating from her programmable coffeemaker, Dani army-crawled out of bed. Minute shifts in the mattress were enough to wake Dog Max, but once she was out of bed, she could turn on the radio and have a dance party and he’d be oblivious. She contemplated Human Max’s last text as she padded to the kitchen.
DANI: Why do you want to spend time with me?
MAX: I like you.
That was such a weirdly straightforward answer.
DANI: Why?
MAX: Because I get the sense that you are unimpressed by the fact that I’m an almost-duke.
DANI: That is correct.
MAX: I would even go so far as to say that my almost-dukeness works against me.
DANI: Still correct.
MAX: I like that about you. You’re normal.
DANI: Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?
MAX: You don’t like me. Therefore I like you. I’m like a kid who wants what he can’t have.
That tracked with her image of him. Also, she was texting with a baron over her morning coffee—how surreal was that?
DANI: So in this scenario, I’m a toy you want. Nice.
MAX: No, you’re just an interesting person I would like to spend time with since I happen to be in your city.
She almost cracked as she took her coffee back to her bedroom to try to figure out what to wear that telegraphed “It’s just a normal day, a day in which I continue to be unbothered by the fact that my husband is boning Undergrad Barbie, tra la la.” You’re just an interesting person I would like to spend time with. When was the last time someone had said anything like that to her? Well, never, because grown-ass adults did not speak like that, so openly and without guile. Her limited interactions with Maximillian von Hansburg suggested that he did, though. He told the truth. And even though that truth was often about his many and varied romantic and sexual conquests, there was something refreshing about his cheerfully relentless honesty. Max was a fuckboy, basically—a fuckbaron?—but he was a remarkably self-aware one.
There was also the “unnaturally good-looking” part.
MAX: So there’s no scenario in which you’ll deign to get together with me today.
She was strangely tempted, but . . .
She meant it about being post-men. Vince had done a number on her, and she was done. Not only done dating, but done arranging her life, even one day’s worth of it, to please a man. She felt so strongly about that position that she’d put it in writing. Just in case she was ever tempted.
She had never imagined that temptation coming in the form of a baron.
She set the phone on her dresser, opened the closet, and fingered the forest-green taffeta dress she’d impulse-purchased in a fit of optimistic shopping earlier this fall. She’d thought then it would be a perfect holiday dress. But in addition to being too formal for this evening’s party, not to mention for her afternoon class, taffeta was a try-hard fabric. Not an “I am completely over the fact that all of you in this room knew my husband was fucking around on me but apparently didn’t respect me enough to tell me” fabric. Anyway, who was she kidding? She was never going to wear that dress. A year ago, she could have worn it to the opera with Vince. But she didn’t go to the opera with Vince anymore. She didn’t go to the opera with anyone.
Which was fine, because she didn’t like the opera. She and Vince had been scheduled, in what turned out to be the week after he left, to go see some avant-garde production about a dude who loses his nose. Dani had looked at the entry on their shared calendar and, even though she’d still been in the sobbing-hysterically stage of the breakup, thought to herself, Well, at least I never have to go to the fucking Met again.
She moved the dress to the back of the closet and pulled out her standard day-to-evening black dress. It was a contoured number with a pencil skirt that had a pleasingly 1950s vibe to it. She could wear a blazer over it for teaching, then lose the blazer and jazz up the dress to make it more festive for the party.
How, though? Scarf? No. If she added a scarf to the retro dress, she would come off a little too Rizzo from Grease—although maybe some Rizzo energy was exactly what she needed right now.
Maybe she could make a jaunty hat out of the divorce papers Vince wouldn’t sign?
Because wasn’t that the cherry on top of everything? Husband leaves not only her but also the country—to spend a year’s sabbatical in Spain, where his girlfriend spends her time posting Instagram shots of herself hiking the Camino de Santiago in a bikini top—but that same husband will not sign the divorce papers.
Vince was back for the holidays. Maybe all that time relaxing in the sunshine with said girlfriend had inspired him to move things along? A girl could hope. Even though seven
sessions of mediation before he left had not provided her with reason to do so.
Dani ran her fingers over a tangle of necklaces that hung from a stand on her dresser. She needed a statement necklace. And she needed that statement to be Eff you very much, Vince. No, that wasn’t right. The message she wanted to send was more Sorry, what was your name again? I have moved so far on while you were away that I can’t quite remember but please sign the fucking papers. If only she had an accessory that would communicate that.
Hang on. She grabbed the phone. Max, apparently having finally gotten the point, had stopped texting.
DANI: On second thought, there might actually be a scenario in which I want to get together with you today.
MAX: I wait on bated breath.
DANI: Any chance you want to be my plus-one to my work holiday party, at which my soon-to-be-ex-husband, Vince, will be in attendance, as will his new girlfriend, who is a former student of both of ours and who is twenty years younger than he is?
MAX: Is your soon-to-be-ex-husband the main character in a Philip Roth novel?
She laughed out loud.
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