“How do you know all this?”
Instead of answering, Maisie flipped open the laptop she’d left next to the bed. Nine Olympians Indicted in Drug Probe. Records, Medals in Jeopardy. No Response Yet from Team USA. And pictures. His pictures. The ones they’d run in Sports Illustrated, of him in Athens, edging out the runner from Morocco, his arms raised in triumph. Maisie scrolled down just far enough for Andy to read the quote and recognize his own words: “I’d never take shortcuts, or do anything illegal. Everything I got, I earned.”
“Oh,” he said, and shut his eyes, feeling numb and hollow, the way he had when he’d been ten and the policeman caught him—like he’d lost everything, like he’d never feel good or proud or happy ever again.
Maisie didn’t say anything . . . but then, what could she say that would help? He watched as she went to the closet, came back with an armful of clothing, and folded it into the suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
“Tenerife. Remember?”
“That’s next week.”
Without turning to face him, she said, “I’m going to go stay with Bethany for the night. We’ll leave together in the morning. I know you’ve got a lot to deal with, and I didn’t want to be in your way.”
“I need you here,” he told her.
“Oh, Andy,” she said with a sigh. He watched with a sense of déjà vu as she raised her perfect chin a fraction of an inch, like she was responding to a photographer’s command. Give me just a teeny bit of profile, babydoll . . . that’s it. Right there. Perfection. “You knew the risks. You knew this could happen.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” he yelled.
She just looked at him.
“What?” he asked. “What choice did I have? What else can I do? I’m not good at anything else except this. If I wanted to compete, I had to take that stuff. I didn’t have a choice.”
She didn’t answer. She zipped up the suitcase. Answer enough, Andy thought.
“If someone told you that you needed breast implants to be a model, are you saying you wouldn’t get them?”
“Implants aren’t illegal,” she said, and slung her purse over her shoulder. Andy stood, his arms dangling at his sides, legs weak and wobbling, watching the red soles of her shoes flashing as she wheeled her suitcase out the door.
For a minute he stood there, feeling sick and shaky and terrified, hoping she’d come back, willing her to return, if only to tell him that she loved him. Knowing that she wouldn’t. Maisie looked out for Maisie. At night, sometimes, lying awake, he’d tried to imagine her staying with him if they lost everything; tried to picture the two of them scratching out a living in some anonymous town in Middle America. He couldn’t do it. Maisie was made for cities, for late nights, for glamorous clubs, for Champagne and sushi, not small towns, fish sticks, and generic ginger ale. Nor would she sacrifice a second of the time she had left to work as a model. He was convinced that was the reason she hadn’t agreed to get married or have a baby. She’d said all the right things about how happy they were and why rock the boat and that they had plenty of time. When he pushed her, she talked about not being able to take a year off from work and what would happen if she couldn’t get her body back. She’d told him the story of a stunning girl from Iceland who’d given birth to twins and found it impossible to shed the last ten pounds of baby weight. Poor Karine had gotten liposuction, and there were filters that could erase her stretch marks. Still, Maisie had told him, eyes wide and horrified, poor Karine had never . . . worked . . . again.
“At least, not in Manhattan,” Maisie had said with a final shudder. “I heard she was doing, like, catalog work for Dillard’s.”
“A fate worse than death,” Andy had deadpanned, and Maisie, not getting it, had nodded so vigorously that she’d almost lost a hair extension and had said, “I know! I know!” Then she’d kissed him, purring, “We can wait. For now, let’s just enjoy our freedom.” He’d agreed, all the while thinking that it wasn’t about work or freedom or stretch marks or how good things were between them, but about the way a baby would link them, inextricably and forever, uniting them in a bond that would be harder to break than even marriage.
He knew she’d rather die than lose her spot on the ladder. If her boyfriend became a liability, she’d do exactly what she’d done—take ten minutes to cram some stuff in a suitcase, call her agent, and change her ticket and move on to the next thing.
•••