“You sound just fine,” he says.

  I touch my throat then sniffle again. “Gosh, I hope I don’t have a cold. I’d hate to give anyone a cold.”

  TJ’s shoes slap against the hardwood floorboards as he strides toward my bedroom, filling up the doorway with his redwood-tree-size frame, holding a mug of coffee. He stares down at me, one eyebrow arched. “Then don’t kiss anyone,” he says, ominously. He doesn’t have to say Axel’s name for me to know who he means.

  I wrinkle my nose at that preposterous suggestion, then pop up from my now-closed luggage, stroking my throat again. I force out another cough. “I’m dying. Doesn’t it sound like I’m dying?”

  “Dying of pathetic attempts to get out of a trip,” he says.

  I sneer at him, then shake a finger. “This is all your fault.”

  He cracks up, lifts his cup, takes a drink. “How is this my fault?”

  “It’s not! I’m just freaking out,” I blurt out, then I let my shoulders sag. My stomach twists with nerves. “I don’t know how to handle being with Axel for a week. Help.”

  My friend closes the distance between us, wraps his free arm around me, and squeezes. “Let’s get you a bagel, and we’ll come up with a game plan.”

  I nod, feeling a little better for the moral support. We head to my tiny kitchen, where I blow out a heavy breath. Try to shake off the past. “Sorry. It’s just that seeing him is tougher than I’d thought.”

  For so many reasons.

  “You miss him,” he says gently, and it’s not a question. It’s just the truth.

  I desperately miss the friendship, the camaraderie, the way we understood each other.

  “I do,” I say, sad and wistful. Then I shake out my shoulders, like I can shimmy away the emotions. “But I’m just going to…adult my way through this trip. I’ll focus on the readers and the agenda, and then I’ll snag some girl time with Rachel in Paris.”

  “Good idea. Make that your reward for adulting with Axel,” he says. “Tell yourself you only get to see her if you’ve been good.”

  “Oh, I do like rewards,” I say, excited now.

  “I know, Hazel. I know.”

  “All right, Rachel is my reward and adulting is the plan. I can do this.”

  TJ slugs my arm. “You’ve got this. And for the record, you’ve always adulted with him.”

  Have I, though? That day in Chelsea when Axel blindsided me was not my finest moment. Yes, I was surprised, but I didn’t handle the news well that he was leaving the book, the country, and me.

  I said some things.

  Things I wish I could un-say.

  Maybe this trip is a do-over. A chance to adult well. “I need a bagel for strength and sustenance,” I say.

  The toaster answers my prayer, popping up with a nicely browned sesame bagel. I grab some butter from the fridge, then smear it on. “I hate cream cheese,” I explain, though TJ knows this, because we wrote cream cheese on my whiteboard shitlist the day he learned of my dislike for it. It was listed under Axel, and also me.

  “How do you hate cream cheese again?” he asks.

  “Have you tried cream cheese?” I counter, then shudder.

  “Yes. It’s too good. Which is why my bagel is naked.” He pats his flat stomach.

  I pat his belly too. “Because you like giving Jude your abs.”

  His knowing smile says I understand him perfectly. Then he adds, “I like abs.”

  I laugh, then an image flashes before me from the other day at the coffee shop. When Axel leaned back in his chair and his shirt rode up the slightest bit, giving me a peek of his stomach, lean and toned.

  A tiny shiver has the audacity to slide down my spine.

  But that’s the last thing I need as I head to the airport to meet him at the gate when boarding begins.

  Because of course we’re sitting together.

  Since our publishers think we’re former writing partners who simply split amicably over creative differences but managed to stay friends.

  That’s the true fiction.

  I’m nearly at the airline counter to check my suitcase when my phone buzzes with a text.

  Axel: File this under ‘only in New York.’ A delivery truck just jackknifed by the access road. Boxes spilled out. There are satin Yankees jackets strewn all over the street. I got out of the Lyft. I’m walking the last mile.

  He’s sent a photo of the spillage. Holy mountain of shiny pin-striped blue. That’s very New York.

  Hazel: Or just order another Lyft on the other side of the exit?

  Axel: I considered that. But it’s a bit of a free-for-all. I’m taking my chances walking.

  Hazel: TO JFK? YOU’RE WALKING ALONG THE ROAD TO JFK? It’s practically a highway.

  Photographic evidence lands once more. A five-second video of his motorcycle boots as he’s walking along the access road to the terminal.

  Hazel: That’s a death trap.

  Axel: You won’t get rid of me that easily, sweetheart.

  Hazel: That’s not what I’m saying.

  Axel: Sure it is. You sent that truck to foil me.

  Hazel: Give me more credit. If I’d sent that truck to foil you, it wouldn’t have contained Yankees jackets.

  Axel: Fair point. I guess you’re not the culprit. But Brooks Dean wouldn’t give up, and I won’t either. I’ll be there to vex you. Anyway, I’m closing in on the terminal. But if you’re still in line, can I piggyback and join you?

  I glance up. There are five people in front of me. I might as well help out. That’s adulting, after all.

  Hazel: Yes, but you’d better move fast.

  Axel: Be there in three minutes.

  How the hell will he be here so soon? But as promised, three minutes later, the man in glasses, motorcycle boots, and a tight gray T-shirt wedges past the sea of travelers in the snaking line, saying excuse me and thank you as he goes.

  He might not be nice to me, but at least he’s nice to strangers. I’ll give him a decency point.

  He arrives at my side when I’m one person away from the counter. Axel hardly looks worse for the wear. I half wonder if he made it all up, but he offers me a dark blue shiny piece of fabric from the messenger bag slung across his chest. “As a thank you,” he says.

  “You stole a Yankees jacket from a delivery truck accident?”

  “Spoils of war,” he says, like it’s no big deal.

  “Seriously?” Thievery is not his style.

  He huffs, relenting. “I hitched the final mile with a cabby. He had some. Gave me one.”

  I scoff. “So this is a regifted Yankees jacket that had spilled out of the truck onto the road that your cabby absconded with and you’re giving me?”

  “And you thought I wasn’t a nice guy,” he says with a too-big grin.

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t suffering from that delusion,” I say as the counter agent calls out, “Next.”

  Without taking the jacket, I stride up to the counter. “Hello. I’m flying to Rome,” I say to the woman with the cinched-back, blonde ponytail.

  “Wonderful. And you’re here with…” She looks to Axel in question.

  “My nemesis,” I say plainly.

  The woman blinks in confusion.

  Axel snorts, then holds up a thumb and forefinger. “She under-exaggerated. Tell the truth, Hazel,” he says to me.

  “Fine. Archnemesis,” I correct.

  The agent pulls a face. “Should be a lovely flight then.”

  The flight is only the beginning.

  Twenty minutes later, we make it through the first lava pit of travel—security. I grab my red backpack from the other side of the conveyor belt while Axel snags his messenger bag and slings it across his chest.

  We head down the concourse toward our gate.

  I’ve survived a half hour with him. I only have six days and…

  I don’t want to go there. I simply want to get through this trip without any bloodshed. While we weave through the throngs of travelers, I swallow past the discomfort in my throat, then say, “I had this wild idea for how to make it through the trip,” I offer.

  “Headphones the whole time?”

  Why does he make it so hard to be nice? “No, Axel,” I say.

  “Pretend we don’t know each other,” he offers.

  “You make it so easy to want to throttle you,” I say dryly.

  He smiles, the cocky kind. “It’s my special skill.”

  I take a deep breath and try again. “My idea is—why don’t we just behave like adults?”

  His brow creases. Perhaps I’ve made the strangest suggestion in the world. “Like, just move on?” he asks carefully, but hopefully too.

  But I’m not sure if we can just move on. I think for now we just need to deal. I try to work out the best way to phrase that when I spot a far-too-familiar profile. A square jaw. Slicked-back hair. A tailored shirt.

  The most confident grin I’ve ever seen.

  Why, universe, why?

  I wish it were anyone but him.

  “Ex alert,” I mutter, like I’d say to TJ, or Veronica, or any of my friends.

  “Sarah? Is it Sarah?” Axel asks, tightly.

  I shake my head at the mention of his ex-girlfriend. That witch broke his heart nearly two years ago.

  I swallow uncomfortably, and say, “My ex.”

  Axel looks to the right, then straightens his shoulders, saying nothing when he spots the guy I was once in love with.

  My ex is walking toward us, smiling like he’s so goddamn happy to see me. “Hazel,” he says when he’s ten feet away, as if nothing’s better than running into the woman he screwed over.

  By screwing others.

  Axel tenses. His shoulders bunch up. His jaw clenches. His eyes narrow.

  That’s a strange reaction—this level of loathing.

  My ex then deals a smile to the guy next to me, followed by a chin nod. “Hey, Axel.”

  Axel doesn’t soften. He just nods, his lips tight as a drum.

  Maybe this is a good time to practice adulting. “Hello, Max,” I say, coolly, biting back all the things I want to say to my ex.

  9

  SEPARATE-ISH

  Hazel

  I met the sharp-dressed Max more than a year ago at a book party. I’d heard about him from Axel over the years, since agents were up there on the wheel of regular conversation topics after coffee is life, how I procrastinated today, and why didn’t I come up with that brilliant idea that’s at the top of bestseller lists.

  At our writing sessions, there were a lot of Max says this, and Max says that, especially since their working relationship was newer. Axel’s first agent had retired right around the time when we started writing together, so my agent, Michelle, had handled the deal for both of us for the Ten Park Avenue series. Shortly after that was inked, Axel signed on with Max for his solo projects.

  But I’d never met him. There was never a need or an opportunity.

  Until we went to a launch party one evening at An Open Book. Axel snagged me from the post-reading crowd and said, “All right. Let’s do this. For four years of writing together, you’ve avoided meeting Max, but that ends tonight since he’s here.”

  I nudged him playfully. “Yes. I’ve been darting and dodging him all this time,” I’d said.

  You didn’t often meet your friends’ agents unless you all happened to be at the same industry fete together. Stars simply hadn’t aligned till that night.

  Axel draped an arm around me and steered me to the man in the suit. His back was to us while he chatted with a guy wearing a vest and a cowboy hat. Another writer, Axel whispered. The writer’s name was Vince Caine, two short syllables that immediately set off pen name bells in my head. As we waited for an opening, Axel and I made small talk about Vince’s ultra-manly moniker.

  When vest-and-hat Marlboro Man and GQ agent were done, Max turned around.

  And Max was all kinds of wow.

  Those warm hazel eyes.

  That scruffy jaw.

  That delightfully arrogant grin.

  Most of all, that tailored suit that hugged his thighs, his arms, his chest.

  I like all sorts of styles on men, from the rough-and-tumble, leather-jacket-and-jeans look to the workout-casual, polo-wearing style, to this moneyed three-piece wardrobe. I like men; it’s easy for me to write delectable heroes because I’m a woman who enjoys the male form a lot. I just wish I could have what my heroines are having—toe-curling, sheet-grabbing sex. Maybe someday I’ll have great sex. So far, I’ve only ever had just the slightly-above-average kind. Perhaps that’ll change for me soon.

  “Hazel, this is the infamous Max,” Axel had said as he’d introduced us.

  Max extended a hand. “Then you must be the notorious Hazel.”

  Notorious? I’d take it. Nicknames were fun in my book. “The one and only,” I said, taking my turn with the flirting baton.

  Axel dusted one hand against the other. “My work here is done,” he said, then with a flicker of relief in his eyes, he walked away.

  For the next several months I dated Max, fell for Max, and nearly moved in with Max. During our coffee-shop writing sessions, I told Axel little details about his agent. How sweet he was for sending me tiger lilies, how fantastic the meal was at the new vegetarian restaurant he found, how clever he was for his double word score in Words With Friends (even though I’d nabbed a triple-worder).

  Axel would want to know those details, I’d figured, since he’d introduced Max and me. Besides, when Axel had started dating a woman he’d met at a bar the year before, he’d told me the honeymoon details about how taken he was with Sarah. She was sexy and sweet, everything he’d wanted.

  Well, until she left him, saying she’d grown bored.

  The worst fear of a creative person was being dull.

  Anyway, because I’d heard all about Sarah when Axel was falling for her, I did the same about Max. I couldn’t shut up about how the man loved to give gifts. From flowers to chocolates to restaurants, Max was the ultimate winer and diner. For months, the cynical writer in me hibernated while the romantic allowed herself to be hook-line-and-sinkered.

  The first night we had dinner, he ended the meal early to tend to a client call overseas then sent me truffles in the morning.

  The truffles worked.

  The part of me that doubts everyone, including myself, the part that knows that we are all drawn to those who can hurt us because it’s familiar, ignored all the circumstantial evidence over the months I spent with Max.

  It took a photo of Max kissing another woman at a nightclub in Barcelona for me to see the truth. Max was there entertaining Axel and Vince at an international book festival. Axel was in the foreground toasting and Max was in the background kissing another woman.

  I’d been fooled from the start, since the dinner and the truffles.

  I kicked Max out of my life ten months ago, putting him at the tippy top of the whiteboard.

  And there’s absolutely no need for me to chat with Max at the airport today. Except, for the little matter of adulting.

  Max is Axel’s agent. I made a vow to behave better. No matter how sleazy Max is with love, he’s magic with books. Axel needs this guy in his life, so I grin and bear it, smiling painfully as I say, “Hello, Max. How are you?”

  “Better now that I’ve run into the two of you. How the hell is everything, Notorious Hazel?” He asks it without a care. Like I want to chat casually with the guy who snookered me.

  “Can’t complain,” I say brightly, so damn brightly. “After all, we’re heading to Rome to start the book tour.”

  He knows that, of course. Just like Michelle knows where I’m off to.

  Max tilts his head, his brow knitting for a second before he says, “Right, right. A book tour is bank, and with the way A Perfect Lie is selling…” He trails off then mouths, Whoa.

  Gross.

  This man is such a show-off. How did I miss this? Was he hiding his personality along with the cheating? I hope so. I hope my taste in men isn’t as terrible as my track record says it is.

  “And those reviews. I could kiss those reviews,” Max adds, and I want to roll my eyes. But I won’t. I am an expert at throwing the perfectly blank smile at unpleasant people.

  “I’m sure the reviews would love a smackeroo,” Axel says in a surprisingly dry tone. He doesn’t spare even his agent from his sarcasm.

  Max turns to me again and beams. “And Notorious Hazel, you are the queen. That final chapter in The I Do Redo was just…” He pauses like he’s hunting for just the right words. “Refreshingly surprising. The kind of heart-stopping plot twists we turn to a Valentine story for.”

  That compliment feels familiar, like he’s parroting a review, trying to co-opt it for himself. But TJ made me stop reading reviews. He promised me he’d show me all the potential hot guy cover photos he found online if I’d stop reading reviews. His carrot-and-stick worked—my current cover photo is one he shared as a prize for keeping my head in the sand.

  So, I can’t call Max out on it. Instead I say, “There’s nothing like a plot twist. Especially when you’re so sure a character is a good guy and he turns out to be otherwise.”

  Axel’s lips twitch, but then he’s stony-faced.

  Max turns to Axel. “And you, have an amazing tour. It’s going to ignite your backlist.” Then he shrugs happily. “But your backlist is already blazing. Just the way I like it.”

  And I like that Max never makes a dime on Ten Park Avenue.

  Axel smiles once more, but it looks as if he’s getting an appendectomy at the same time. “Me too,” he says, almost choking out the words.

  Max checks his watch. “Well, just got back from Los Angeles, and I already have calls to Los Angeles to make. The day is young and I’m busy, busy. Safe travels.”