Of course, in time those were the girls who got steady boyfriends, while Rowan had just acquired a string of make-out buddies. She tried to change her ways, copying what she saw in the paired-up girls she knew, but becoming a softer, needier, whinier version of herself just didn’t work. And so she settled into the role of the quintessential guy’s girl. The one who’d go to a strip club on a lark. The one who’d match you shot for shot. The girl who didn’t give a shit about getting mani-pedis with her girlfriends, who didn’t care if porn was on, who almost seemed like she didn’t need a guy.
It didn’t mean Rowan didn’t want what those other girls had. But now, she felt too old to change who she was—nor should she have to. Her parents didn’t give Rowan a hard time about being single. Her mother, Leona, had been an essayist in her pre-Saybrook life, exploring open marriages and same-sex rights—much to Edith’s embarrassment. Her father, Robert, treated Rowan the same as his sons, pushing her to be ambitious and successful over everything else. And her brothers always told her not to settle. It was Poppy who eagerly shoved eligible guy after eligible guy Rowan’s way. Though they were nice and cool and Rowan had remained friends with quite a few of them, none of them exactly . . . clicked. Rowan had felt true love once before, and she wouldn’t settle until she felt it again.
There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Rowan looked up.
“Rowan?” someone whispered. “You in there?”
Rowan opened the door a crack and saw James’s curly brown hair, light eyes, and slightly crooked smile. “No fair that you get to hide out in here,” he said mock-sternly.
James’s skin smelled like peppermint soap. A fleck of glitter from one of the princess’s wands was stuck to his cheek. Rowan refrained from brushing it away.
“I just needed a minute,” she told him.
He glanced down the hall. “Princesses getting you down? The grown-up ones, I mean?”
Rowan stared at the monogrammed towels hanging on the silver bar across the room. One bore Poppy’s initials, the other, James’s. “You could say that.”
“Do you want me to smuggle you out of here, Saybrook?” James asked, his gaze shifting conspiratorially. “We can escape out the balcony. Use the gargoyles as a ladder.”
She pictured the two of them scaling the Dakota, dropping to Central Park West, and falling in with the biathletes. They’d laugh together, like in the old days.
James slipped into the bathroom. “Is there room for another?” he asked, shutting the door. “I’m princessed out too.”
Rowan sniffed. “Please. All the men are just watching tennis.”
James leaned against the sink and made a face. “Have you ever hung out with Mason for any length of time? He’s the biggest princess of them all.” Then he picked up a remote sitting on the edge of the soaking tub and pointed it at a small TV in the corner. “And anyway, we get the match in here too.”
The French Open appeared on the screen. Rowan remained planted in the middle of the bathroom, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. Though she saw James regularly, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d been alone together.
They’d become friends at Columbia, when they lived on the same floor freshman year. Rowan’s father had offered to buy her an apartment, but she liked the idea of being like everyone else, even opting for a double instead of a single. She’d spent most of the time in James’s dorm room, playing video games and chatting about the people in their building, especially the girls. They’d stayed on for graduate programs at Columbia, James for business school—he had always wanted to be an entrepreneur—and Rowan for law. They had a standing Monday-night dinner date at a Mexican dive on Broadway with spicy guacamole. On weekends, they played pool at SoHa, the dingy bar on Amsterdam whose bartenders made potent Long Island iced teas. As usual, Rowan had fallen into her role as the perennial guy’s girl, James’s wingwoman. Plenty of times Rowan had consoled James’s date at the end of the evening when she caught James making out with someone new in the unisex bathroom.
“You’re such a dog,” Rowan had always teased him over brunch on Sunday mornings. To which James just shrugged and bared his teeth. “Woof.”
Now James stared at the mini TV over the tub. It was the third set, the match tied. “Okay, Saybrook,” he began, pointing at the screen. “Djokovic or Federer?”
Rowan swallowed hard. It was an old game they used to play—one of them would name two people, and the other would have to pick which they’d have sex with. Sometimes it had been a geek showdown, like Sylvia Plath versus Emily Dickinson, or Shakespeare’s Iago versus Oberon from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other times they named people in their lives—Veronica, the busty registrar, or Colette, the waifish French exchange student. More often than not, James would actually go home with the hot exchange student.
Sometimes Rowan thought James had forgotten their old friendship entirely, now that he was married to Poppy. Although maybe he didn’t want to remember part of it—especially the part about all the girls. James had reformed for Poppy. Poppy was much too beautiful and perfect for anything less. Any guy would fall in line for her.