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Lilah’s List is for my dear friends Judy Fitzwater and Pat Gagne, and my husband, John Pope. Without them, I never would have gotten through this book.
Contents
Lilah’s List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Lilah’s List
1. Date Reggie Martin
8. Shake hands with someone famous
12. Get a professional makeover
13. Learn to knit
16. Sing at a karaoke bar
19. Eat escargot
21. Visit a fortune-teller
25. Ride a mechanical bull
26. Throw a wild party
27. Get a tattoo
28. Kiss a stranger
29. Ride a motorcycle
30. Crash a party
31. Do something scandalous
32. Protest for a worthy cause
33. Leave a $100 tip
35. Practice a random act of kindness
38. Have multiple orgasms
41. Have 15 minutes of fame
42. Go out in public with no underwear
43. Fly first-class
44. Buy something without reading the price tag
45. Spend an entire day in bed
46. Own an expensive designer dress
47. Drink Cristal champagne straight from the bottle
49. Climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty
50. Ice skate at Rockefeller Center
Chapter 1
Multiple orgasms were among the many things she wasn’t going to get to experience before turning thirty, Lilah Banks decided as she stared at her well-worn pink stationery. She hadn’t seen her list since college graduation in 1999.
That day she’d crossed off fall in love and neatly tucked The List inside her grandmother’s antique jewelry box. The jewelry box had been packed up along with her other college memories and had landed in the attic of the house she’d shared with her husband Chuck.
Until today, that box had remained sealed like Pandora’s box. When Lilah had opened it, all of her unfulfilled hopes and dreams had tumbled out with her American University sweatshirt and a ton of old photos.
Lilah had been a good girl and followed the rules. She’d married her college sweetheart, lost her virginity on her wedding night and perfectly balanced her career in real estate with her duties as a domestic goddess. Yet here she was divorced after only six years of marriage.
She smoothed her hand over The List, studying the handwriting of a sixteen-year-old girl as it transformed into that of a young woman in her twenties.
At sixteen she’d wanted to date Reggie Martin—never happened. At eighteen, rebelling against her goody-two-shoes image, she added visit a nude beach to The List—that did happen: spring break 1997. At twenty, the awakening of her social consciousness, she’d wanted to protest a worthy cause—but never did. And at twenty-one, the awakening of her sexual consciousness, came the thing about multiple orgasms.
Lilah shook her head. A lot of really fun things were still unchecked, and her thirtieth birthday was only three weeks away.
“So much for that.” She dropped The List to the floor and dug back into the box. She pulled out a framed photo of her kissing Chuck at the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity cookout senior year.
Saving the frame, she tossed the photo into the waste bin at her right. Her world had been so different then.
At this point in her life she’d expected to be preparing for motherhood instead of readjusting to single life. She should have been remodeling their fabulous three-story suburban home instead of unpacking her Georgetown condo after three months of living out of boxes.
The only part of her life that had stayed on track was her career. As a real estate agent she was at the top of her game, making more money than she knew how to spend. But, with her personal life so deep in the trash bin, it was hard to celebrate that success.
She plunged both hands into the box and pulled out the last picture frame. Lilah and her best friend Angie. They were lying on their dorm room floor, staring up into the camera she’d held above their heads. When the two of them were together, they were trouble. Their parents had nicknamed them Lucy and Ethel because of their madcap adventures.
Angie was still Lilah’s best friend, but they’d grown apart since college, and Lilah’s marriage had had a lot to do with that.
After college Angie had moved to New York City to pursue her career as the next big name in fashion. Lilah had been certain she’d be spending a lot of time in the Big Apple visiting Angie, and had added a couple of New York-related items to her list. But, over the years, Chuck had always found reasons for Lilah not to make the trip.
Lilah bit back her rising anger over all the times she’d given in to Chuck’s emotional manipulations. He’d been needy and insecure, and she’d been spineless and desperate to please. What a pair they’d made.
Her gaze dropped back to the two girls in the picture. Feeling a surge of wistfulness, Lilah grabbed her phone and began to dial. It was ten-thirty on a Saturday night, so the odds were strongly against her friend answering, but it had already been too long since they’d last spoken.
“Hello?”
“Angie, I’m so glad you’re there.”
“Lilah?” croaked a weaker version of Angie’s vibrant timbre.
“Did I catch you at a bad time? You sound exhausted.”
“It’s never a bad time to talk to you, but I was running around the city all day looking for platinum buttons. Not gold. Not silver. Platinum—for some diva who doesn’t let any lesser metals touch her skin.”
While she was awaiting her big break, Angie was sewing costumes for an off-Broadway playhouse.
“Aw, honey, I’m sorry to hear you had such a rough day.”
“Don’t worry, as it turns out, Miss Thing doesn’t know the difference between silver and platinum after all.”
Lilah laughed. “You’re so bad.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“Anyway, I was finally unpacking the last of my boxes today, and you’ll never believe what I found.”
“Um, two million dollars’ worth of gold bullion that you’re looking to split with your best friend?”
“I found The List.”
“The List? Fifty things you wanted to do before thirty? Hey, your thirtieth birthday is next month. How far did you get?”
Lilah scanned the sheet, mentally crossing off a couple of things she’d accomplished in the last eight years. “I guess I’m almost halfway through it.”
“November tenth is—” She paused for calculation. “Twenty-one days away. Are you going to try to finish it off?”
Lilah huffed. “Some of these things aren’t even possible anymore. Remember item number one—date Reggie Martin?”
Angie sighed. “Well, that one’s not impossible. Just a bit of a challenge.”
“Ha! Have you listened to your radio lately? Reggie Martin is even more unattainable now than when he was just your average high school stud.”
Reggie Martin was the sole reason Lilah had made The List in the first place. Her father had been giving her some sort of pep talk about how anything was possible if she identified her goals and worked toward them. Sure, he’d been referring to things like college and career, but at the time, Lilah had been obsessed with Reggie Martin.
It had taken a great deal of self-restraint not to write marry Reggie Martin at the top of The List, but she’d decided to stay within the realm of possibility. He was the lean-muscled, baby-faced, track-running, future superstar that she’d tutored in math.
“I don’t know,” Angie argued. “I think we got you pretty close in high school. I had to bake Bobby Carnivelli cookies for two months so he’d let you take over as Reggie’s math tutor. It’s not my fault you were too shy to make the first move.”
For her entire junior and senior year, she and Angie had devised many a plot to get Reggie’s attention, all of which stopped just short of her confessing her undying love. A girl had to have her pride.
“I’m old-fashioned. I prefer the gentleman to do the asking.”
“Old-fashioned, my gluteus maximus. You were just a big, fat chicken.”
“Oh ho. Was I chicken in the sixth grade when I talked LaTonya Richards out of beating you up?”
“Well—”
“And what about the time I convinced a Maryland State Trooper not to give you yet another ticket. The ticket that would have ultimately caused you to lose your license. And—”
“I meant with boys, okay? You’re a big, fat chicken when it comes to boys.”
“Fine. I’ll concede on that point. Which brings us back to the issue at hand. Number one on my list, date Reggie Martin, has gone from unlikely to impossible. He’s a superstar now.”
Reggie had always been a singer. He had a lovely melodic voice and could be found singing on almost any occasion. But no one could have predicted that he’d manage to parlay that into a career. Right now, his first single, “Love Triangle,” was getting heavy rotation on all the air waves.
“He’s not a superstar yet—more like a rising star. It’s not the same as trying to get a date with somebody like…Usher.” Angie was eternally optimistic, which was one of the qualities Lilah missed most about her.
“Yeah, whatever, girl. Keep hitting that crack pipe.”
“Okay, put number one aside for now. What else is left on your list?”
“Eat escargot, ride a mechanical bull, get a tattoo, crash a party—”
“Slow down there, girlfriend. Those are all things you can still do.”
“Angie, I don’t even want a tattoo.”
“That point is moot. Listen…. I have a plan—”
In the past those four words between them would have given her a charge, but Lilah’s mature, twenty-nine-year-old self had learned to avoid trouble at all costs. “No, I have a plan. How about we forget I ever mentioned the stupid list and talk about something else.”
“Not a chance. Here’s what I think—you should come to New York a week before your birthday, and we’ll knock The List out.”
“Remember number one—”
“I said I have a plan.”
“You have a plan to get me a date with the hottest new R&B singer?”
“No, I have a plan to get you a date with an old, high school friend who happens to be a hot new R&B singer.”
“Okay, let’s hear it. This ought to be good.”
“As I see it, we have two viable avenues by which to reach Reggie. One, I read that his older brother Tyler is his business manager, and he lives here in the city. We can try to contact him and enlist his help hooking up with Reggie.”
Lilah remembered Reggie’s older brother well. And she’d always been a tiny bit scared of him. If Reggie were sunshine, Tyler was a thunder cloud—a dark, brooding killjoy. During her tutoring sessions, Reggie had complained rather frequently about how hard his brother rode him. She’d always suspected Tyler was jealous of Reggie’s talent and popularity.
“And the second avenue?”
“Well, you can’t live in New York and work in the fashion industry without being hot-wired into the celebrity grapevine. With his brother managing his business affairs here in the city, odds are he either lives here or frequents the area. I know my contacts can dig up the dirt on his whereabouts. Then it’s just a matter of matching the two of you up in time and space.”
Sure, it sounded straightforward, even plausible, but Lilah knew from experience that their schemes never went according to plan. “Well, I have to hand it to you, Ang, that’s not bad. You certainly haven’t lost your touch.”
“So we’re on?”
“Not. A. Chance.”
“What? Why not?”
“I have to work.”
“I know for a fact you haven’t taken any time off since the divorce. That was a year and a half ago. You must have vacation accrued up to your eyeballs.”
“I just moved. There’s still so much to be done around here.”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
“It’s just not a good time….”
Angie was silent for a minute. “Wow, I guess your marriage really did crush all the life out of you. You’ve lost your sense of adventure.”
Lilah gasped. That was a low blow. And it hit its mark. She’d been a good girl. She’d played by the rules. It hadn’t made her happy.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been utterly content. Her wedding day? College? She’d gotten so used to the status quo that she didn’t even challenge herself anymore.
Her gaze fell back on The List. Maybe she needed to practice a random act of kindness. Maybe she needed to drink champagne straight from the bottle. She definitely needed to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty and ice skate in Rockefeller Center. She’d promised her best friend that they’d do those things together.
“Okay, I’m in.”
Over the next week Angie and Lilah talked nearly every day working out the arrangements for her visit. Lilah ended up taking off the entire two weeks before her birthday. After all, she was overdue for a vacation, and she’d need all the time she could get to work her way through The List. She’d booked a first-class flight—scratch that off The List—from D.C. to New York Friday morning.
Angie tapped into the grapevine and discovered that Reggie did, in fact, live in Manhattan. According to Reggie’s bass player’s wife’s hairdresser, he was attending a private party in the Flatiron District Friday night.
“The party’s at some trendy club called Duvet,” Angie informed her the night before. “I ran a Google search and apparently they serve you food and cocktails on these enormous cushion-lined beds.”
“Let’s see—private party, Friday night, trendy club. Sounds like it’ll be hard to get into. We could be waiting outside in the cold for hours—if they let us in at all.”
“Oh, we’ll get in. We have to.”
“And why is that?”
“Because crash a party is on your list.”
Chapter 2
Lilah’s List Blog Entry
October 27, 2007
I made out with a stranger last night. Yes, me, the girl who wears rubber gloves to carry trash cans to the curb, had my lips and tongue completely interlocked with a man I barely know. It’s true, I’ve been in New York one day, and I’ve already succumbed to the debauchery. I wasn’t fazed by the white-knuckle flight, the cab driver with a death wish or the cranky Jamaican bouncer. But put me in a crowded room with a bed that sleeps sixteen and a hot guy, and I completely lose my cool. But before you book me a ticket on the next train to Skankytown, let me explain.
When she’d boarded the plane for New York that morning, Lilah had felt daring. Her blood had pumped with excitement. Whether or not she returned with a tattoo, a designer dress or a date with a celebrity didn’t matter. For two weeks she was going to have fun, spend some much-needed time with her best friend, and live on the edge.
She’d headed for her first-class window seat only to find a gentleman already occupying it. Eventually the stewardess was able to sort out the mixup, but that didn’t keep Lilah from feeling conspicuously like a fraud.
To make matters worse, the plane sat on the tarmac for forty-five minutes while some unexplained mechanical trouble was investigated. Thank goodness the flight was only an hour long, because Lilah white-knuckled it the entire way. So much for first-class—it was lost in a blur of fear and mimosas.
After struggling with her bags and arguing with the taxi driver for trying to make a daring pass into oncoming traffic that had nearly killed them, Lilah finally arrived at the Casablanca Hotel. It was a self-proclaimed oasis in the heart of Times Square. She chose the place because Casablanca was one of her favorite movies. And watching it was one of the first things she was able to cross off The List.
She’d had romantic fantasies of sitting in front of the fireplace in Rick’s Café and listening to “As Time Goes By” on her iPod. Unfortunately she didn’t even take the time to soak in the vibrantly colored Moroccan decor. Instead she flopped down on the king-size bed and slept like the dead all afternoon.
Lilah was just returning to a groggy consciousness when Angie began pounding on her door early that evening. “Take it easy,” Lilah said, opening the door, heedless of her nap-mussed hair and wrinkled T-shirt and jeans.
Angie stood in the doorway, hand on hip, as she looked Lilah up and down. She clicked her tongue. “It’s just as I suspected. So much to do and so little time.”
Lilah blinked at her friend. “I love you, too.”
Then she was swept off her feet as the taller woman lifted her into a bear hug. “I’m so happy you’re finally here. We’re going to have so much fun.”
Angie reached into the hallway for the suitcase she’d brought along, and bounded into the room, filling it with her energy. But Lilah was feeling the opposite of energetic. Her days of staying up late and going out were long in her past. If the truth were told, she could get much more excited about room service and a movie rental than the agenda Angie was laying out for them.
“We have to get to Duvet early, otherwise we’ll never get past the door. But don’t worry, I have a fool-proof plan to get us in.”
“Great,” Lilah said, falling back on the tousled bed sheets.
“Have you been sleeping all day?” It was an accusation.
“Yup,” she answered without remorse. “I could barely sleep last night thinking about this trip. You know, the more I think about The List, the more impossible it seems.”
Angie stopped rummaging through the closet to stare at her. “Since when do we let the impossible stand in our way? Two days before senior prom, when we were doomed to being each other’s dates, it was your idea to storm the University of Maryland campus and ask every cute guy we saw to the prom. You had every girl at Richard Montgomery High School wondering how two nobodies scored dates with hot college boys.”
“Yeah,” Lilah said absently.
“You used to be fearless, remember? You could talk anyone into anything. What happened to you?”
When Lilah looked back on some of the stunts she and Angie had pulled in their youth, it blew her mind. She couldn’t imagine approaching situations with the same reckless abandon she’d once had.
Lilah looked at Angie and shrugged. “What happened to me? I grew up.”
After a few moments of awkward silence, Angie turned her attention back to Lilah’s closet and began throwing her clothes around the room.
“None of these clothes are acceptable for tonight’s activities, and there’s no time for shopping.” Angie walked over to her suitcase and opened it up. “Fortunately for you, I came prepared. It’s an original creation and it will look stunning on you.”
It was a burnt-orange swirly-print cocktail dress with a complicated weaving of spaghetti straps across the back. It stopped just above Lilah’s knees with dainty flair. Lilah studied herself in the mirror. The dress was beautiful, if a bit bold for her taste.
“Good Lord, are those the only shoes you have?” Angie turned up her nose at Lilah’s functional, decidedly nondesigner black pumps.
“I’m afraid so, unless you think my pink Timberlands would work with this look.”
“I guess the pumps are going to have to do. I don’t know how you balance on those tiny pin-pricks you call feet, anyway,” she said with a comical glare that had the two of them bursting into giggles. Angie’s feet were two sizes bigger than Lilah’s—and Angie all but hated her for it.
Lilah piled her light brown hair atop her head in one of those sloppy knots she’d seen in magazines. She was going for an air of elegant maturity. She silently prayed she didn’t look the way she felt—like a little girl playing dress-up.
Physically, Lilah hadn’t changed much since high school. She still got carded on a regular basis. With her clear champagne complexion, no makeup and her honey-brown hair worn loose, she was a dead ringer for sixteen.
It would be a few more years before Lilah felt being mistaken for someone younger could actually be flattering instead of mildly annoying. Her tiny, soft voice did nothing to help matters. That was why Lilah relied on makeup and a severe topknot to force clients to take her seriously. She also tried as hard as possible not to be bubbly.
Angie, on the other hand, epitomized bubbly. Add that to her two-toned Macy Gray fro and funky homemade clothes, and people frequently underestimated her wickedly keen mind.
Angie in her typical statement-making fashion, was wearing a skintight vinyl tube that passed as a dress. With this she wore black leggings and multicolored paint-splattered boots, under a long dark coat straight from The Matrix. With her orange curling Afro frosted at the tips, her hair radiated from her head like rays of sunshine.
“Okay, are you ready to hear my strategy?” Angie asked later as they rode to the Flatiron District in a taxi. The late October night air had just enough bite for them to need overcoats, but it wasn’t cold enough for gloves and scarves yet.
“I can’t wait,” Lilah answered, deflated. She wasn’t looking forward to this adventure. In fact, considering the way her trip had begun, she was convinced this entire outing would be a disaster.
“Listen up, I have a three-tiered plan to get us past the doorman. Phase one, and the least likely to work, we flash our brilliant smiles and sweetly ask to be let in.”