“Is your friend married to Tommy? From one of the earlier seasons?”

Heather nodded.

Brooke whistled. “Wow, I don’t think I ever even knew he was married.”

“Yeah, well, you sure wouldn’t. It’s literally a new girl every week, has been since the day he won. Poor Amber was so young—only twenty-two—and so naive that she wouldn’t leave him, no matter how many girls he was linked to. She thought if she could just give it time, he would settle down and everything could go back to the way it was.”

“So what happened?”

“Uch, it was horrible. He kept screwing around and was getting more and more blatant about it. Do you remember those pictures of him skinny-dipping with that model, the ones where they blurred out their genitals but you could see everything else?”

Brooke nodded. Even among the constant influx of paparazzi photos, she remembered those as particularly scandalous.

“Well, it went on that way for over a year with no signs of letting up. It got so bad that her father flew to meet Tommy on tour, showed up in his hotel room. He told him he had twenty-four hours to file divorce papers or else. He knew Amber would never do it herself—she was a good girl and still couldn’t really wrap her mind around everything that was happening—and Tommy did it. I’m not sure he was a super stand-up guy before he was famous, but he is undoubtedly a colossal asshole now.”

Brooke tried to keep a neutral expression, but she wanted to reach over and slap Heather. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Julian is nothing like that.”

Heather clamped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to imply that Julian is anything like Tommy. Of course he’s absolutely not at all. The only reason I started this whole story was that a little while after their divorce, Amber sent out an e-mail to all her friends and family, requesting that they stop e-mailing her pictures or links, snail-mailing clippings, or calling her with updates on what was happening with Tommy. I remember thinking it was a little weird at the time—like, are that many people really sending her interviews they’d read on her ex-husband?—but after she showed me her e-mail inbox one day, I totally got it. No one was trying to hurt her; they were just highly insensitive. They somehow thought she’d want to know. Anyway, since then, she’s totally reclaimed her life and probably understands better than anyone out there how, uh, overwhelming all this fame stuff can be.”

“Yeah, that part isn’t great.” Brooke drained the last of her latte and wiped the foam from her lips. “I probably wouldn’t have believed it if you told me that a few weeks ago, but my god . . . I just spent the morning getting blackout shades installed. A few nights ago I walked from the bathroom to the fridge wearing a towel, and all of a sudden there were crazy flashbulbs going off. There was a photographer sitting on top of a car right below our window, obviously hoping to catch a picture of Julian. It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, how awful! What did you do?”

“I called the nonemergency number of the local police station and said there was a man outside trying to take pictures of me undressed. They said something along the lines of ‘Welcome to New York’ and told me to lower the shades.” She deliberately left out the part about first calling Julian, only to have him tell her that she was overreacting and she needed to deal with these kinds of things without “always” calling him in a panic about “everything.”

Heather visibly shuddered. “That is so creepy. I hope you have an alarm or something?”

“Yeah, that’s coming next.” Brooke was secretly hoping they’d move before that was necessary—just last night on the phone, Julian had obliquely mentioned something about “upgrading” to a new apartment—but she wasn’t sure that was really going to happen.

“Excuse me for a second. I’m just going to run to the restroom,” Heather said, taking her purse from the back of her chair.

She watched as Heather disappeared behind the ladies’ room door. The moment she heard the lock click into place, she grabbed the magazine. It had been an hour, maybe less, since she’d last seen the photo, but she couldn’t stop herself from turning directly to page fourteen. Her eyes moved automatically to the lower left of the page, where the picture was wedged innocently between a photo of Ashton grabbing Demi’s highly toned backside and another of Suri perched atop Tom’s shoulders while Katie and Posh looked on.

Brooke flattened the magazine open on the table and leaned over it to get a better look. It was every bit as disturbing as it had been sixty minutes earlier. If she had just glanced at it quickly, and it didn’t happen to feature her husband and a world-famous starlet, she would have found nothing noteworthy about it. You could see the raised arms of the first couple rows in the lower part of the frame. Julian’s right arm was thrust victoriously into the air, and his hand clutched the microphone like it was a saber with special powers. Brooke got chills every time she looked at Julian in that pose, could barely believe how much he looked like a real rock star.

Layla wore a shockingly short floral sundress that may have been a romper and a pair of studded white leather cowboy boots. She was tanned, made-up, accessorized, and extensioned to within an inch of her life, and her expression as she gazed up at Julian was one of sheer joy. It was nauseating, but far more upsetting was Julian’s expression. The adoration, the worship, the ohmigod you’re the most amazing creature I’ve ever laid eyes on look was undeniable, plastered across his face in blazing color thanks to the professional Nikon. It was the kind of look a wife would hope to see a couple times in her life, on her wedding day, maybe the day her first child is born. It was exactly the kind of look you never wanted your husband to give another woman on the pages of a national magazine.

Brooke heard the sink run behind the wooden door. She quickly closed the copy of Last Night and placed it facedown in front of Heather’s chair. When Heather returned she looked at Brooke and glanced at the magazine; her eyes seemed to say, I probably shouldn’t have left that there. Brooke wanted to tell her that it was fine, that she was slowly getting used to all of it, but of course she said nothing. Instead, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind to smooth over the awkwardness.

“It was so great seeing you. It’s such a shame that we spend so many hours each week at that school and we never see each other outside. We’ll have to work on that! Maybe make a plan for brunch on the weekend, or even a dinner. . . .”