Read With Friends Like These: A Novel for Free Online

apartment, and this place sounded too good to let float away when Arthur was a resident in that very building, as well as maybe my future. If that apartment had anyone’s name on it, it was Arthur’s.
    “I’ve got to see this place,” he said. “If I could sell my apartment for a bundle and stay in my building but get a place with a million-dollar view, well, all around, that’d be a pretty fair trade. My apartment has no view, but it’s huge. I’d definitely come out ahead.”
    And with my subtle guidance, I thought, he’d invest that profit in me—travel, jewelry, a rental in the Hamptons, or a house in, say, Dutchess County? I briefly pictured myself riding to hounds, and then shook away the fantasy. De Marcos bet on horses; we don’t ride them.
    “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself here?” I asked him, as I thought the same thing of myself. But perhaps not. I’m past forty. Arthur is fifty. Sometimes in life you have to stop overthinking and just haul ass.
    He laughed. “Hang tight, kid. I’ll see you at dinner.”
    Four hours later I walked into the bistro I’d suggested on Columbus Avenue. Arthur was waiting, along with two chilled glasses of champagne, a most un-Weiner-like flourish. “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “Do we require a special occasion to toast ourselves?” He stopped slightly short of a smirk.
Oh, my God, what if this man is asking me to marry him?
My mind instantly inventoried his less attractive qualities, beginning with his braying laugh. But there wasn’t a diamond twinkling in the bottom of my flute, nor did the waiter deliver even an opal hidden in an escargot. “Julia de Marco, I like the way you think,” Arthur said, raising his glass. “Thank you for being in my life.”
    We drained the champagne, and the waiter asked us if we’d like a refill. Arthur answered immediately. “No, we’re ready to order. We’ll start by sharing the mussels.” Cheapest thing on the menu.

CHAPTER 3
  
Talia

    “Henry needs new sneakers. Don’t forget to take him to the shoe store,” I said to Tom.
    “Since when do I ever forget?” he answered, kissing me goodbye.
    Since never. “Don’t let that son of ours talk you into the kind that light up.”
    “Do I look like the kind of dad who can be easily coerced?”
    You do
. I am definitely Bad Cop, though, as my
bubbe
would point out, Tom’s the parent who resembles a Cossack. “Should I stop at the supermarket on the way home?” Our cupboards were sadly bare.
    “Don’t bother. We’ll figure dinner out later.” Tom beamed. My husband, like a trick candle that burns bright no matter what. “You’ll be late. Just go.”
    I let two trains go by my stop in Brooklyn before I wedged myself into a third, where I stood for forty-five minutes between a tourist’s backpack and a hugely pregnant woman whom people fortunate enough to have seats were actively ignoring, then got off at Manhattan’s Union Square and walked seven blocks to my office, arriving barely in time for a staffmeeting. While our team crafted what we were sure our clients would agree was a stellar pitch for roach motels, I used every trick I knew to stay awake. Three hours passed before I got to return to my desk and sort through the pile of paper our intern handed me.
    That’s when I saw it. The message was from the much-touted June Rittenhouse, whom I knew by reputation as my field’s top-gun headhunter, a woman who handles positions in companies known to pay exceedingly well, a list that does not include the ad agency where I work. “
Urgent
,” the acid-green note shouted. It was addressed to Chloe Keaton.
    I reached for the phone to dial her number. Chloe and I aren’t just close friends. We go back to Dartmouth, where we briefly met when we were both visiting our boyfriends for homecoming. After graduation, we recognized each other at a prissy women’s hotel. Now we share a copywriting job and are in almost constant communication.