Claim Me: A Novel

my clothes.”
    “Jamie, you’re a size four. I haven’t been that small since I escaped from Mother and learned about the existence of that mysterious substance I like to call food.”
    She sighs and eyes my new dress lustfully. “I need my own billionaire boyfriend.”
    “I don’t disagree,” I say. “I find him a highly desirable accessory.”
    “Wanna go shopping?” Jamie asks. “I’m serious about my wardrobe crisis.”
    I glance at my phone. Still no word from Damien. “Sure,” I say. “But give me a sec to change and feed the cat. And can we get some real dinner while we’re out? Vodka isn’t one of the major food groups.”
    “It’s not?” Jamie retorts, displaying her stellar acting skills byputting real bafflement into her tone. She heads to her room as I go to the kitchen. Lady Meow-Meow appears the minute I pop the pull-top on her kitty food, and she head-butts the back of my leg until I finally put the food dish down in front of her.
    I’m in my room stripping off my work clothes when Jamie calls to me. “How’d he get in the apartment?”
    “Beats me,” I say, though I can guess. He probably bribed the manager, who’s just wacky enough to have been amused by the thought of a surprise bed delivery.
    I change into one of the math T-shirts Jamie maligned earlier—
friends don’t let friends derive drunk
—and a pair of jeans. It’s the first time I’ve worn jeans since Blaine started the portrait, actually, and I hesitate before zipping them up, feeling a bit naughty. Like I’m breaking a rule.
    I’m not, of course. The game’s over. If I want to wear jeans, I can.
    And if I want to go pantyless under a skirt? Well, I can do that, too.
    I’m grinning as I leave my bedroom, but my mood shifts when I get back to the living room and the giant bed that overwhelms the space. I’d been so happy when I walked in and saw it there, as if I were being bathed in a flood of special memories.
    Now that happiness is mixed with a tinge of some unpleasant emotion, though I’m not entirely sure what is troubling me.
    I move to the bed and press my palm against the smooth round ball of the footboard. I’m thrilled that the bed wasn’t shipped off to a warehouse somewhere or sold to an antiques store, but at the same time, I’m undeniably melancholy.
    “It doesn’t belong here,” I say, when Jamie returns and asks me what’s wrong.
    “The bed?”
    “It’s supposed to be at the Malibu house. Not here,” I repeat. “It feels like an ending somehow.”
    I remember the story Damien told me. About how he sacrificed a deal he was passionate about in order to save the tiny gourmet food producer. I didn’t like the story then, and I like it even less now.
    Jamie is silent for a moment as she stares intently at me. “Oh, shit, Nik,” she finally says. “Don’t even.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t go all Psych 101 on me. You’re looking for all sorts of meanings that aren’t there. You do this all the time.”
    “I do not.”
    “Well, maybe not all the time, but you did it with Milo.”
    “That was freshman year of high school.”
    “So maybe ‘all the time’ was a tiny exaggeration,” she concedes. “My point is that you had a crush on him and he was a senior, remember?” I nod, because I remember it well. “And it was cold one day, and he lent you his letter jacket.”
    “And we spent a week trying to analyze what his underlying motivation was.” Oh, yes. I remember.
    “Turns out he was motivated by the fact that you were cold and he was nice.”
    “And your point?”
    “Do you like the bed?” she asks.
    “I love it,” I admit.
    “Does Damien know you love it?”
    “Sure.”
    “So there you go. You like the bed. Damien likes you—understatement of the year, but there you have it. I’m sure that when you move in, you can take the bed back there with you.”
    “When I move in?” The idea is both terrifying and exciting.
    “That’s what you want, right? Not that I’m trying to kick you out, but a girl’s gotta face reality.”
    Yes
, I almost say, but then I close my mouth and start over. “It’s too soon to even think about that.”
    “Shit, Nik. You want it. Own it.”
    “Fine,” I say. “I want it. But leaping into things that we want isn’t always the best course of action. Sometimes, a little thought and discretion make a lot of sense.”
    “This isn’t about me,” she says, totally catching on to the way I’ve shifted the subject.
    I