Page 71 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“But did you get high afterwards?”

“Obviously not. It just made my entire head hurt from the inside of my face.”

Ellery shrugged. “That’s the difference.”

I was not convinced.

“Coke’s an anaesthetic. The worst you’ll feel is numb.” She uncurled and emptied the contents of the bag onto the table, cutting the powder expertly with the edge of her Coutts of London bank card. “Anyway, it’s up to you.”

Urgh. Decisions. I mean, I knew impulsively experimenting with Class A drugs was a bad idea. But in that exact moment, squashed between a past I couldn’t change and a future I wasn’t sure I was ready for, it was hard to care.

Ellery was shaping the lines now. And I was half hypnotised by the precision of her movements, the ephemeral elegance of the paths she drew in dust upon our coffee table, wondering if I’d fallen nonconsensually into a Hollinghurst novel. “You know, it’s okay,” she said, “to want a break from everything being shitty all the time.”

“It wouldn’t be real, though.”

“No feelings are real.” She caught my eye a moment, one of those scalpel glances. “Or all of them are.”

I didn’t want to think about that. “I’m in.”

Last month’s issue ofMilieuhad been languishing on the arm of the sofa. Ellery grabbed it, ripped out a page, rolled it into a thin tube, and handed it to me. “Be my guest.”

“Um”—my bravado had apparently evaporated like kettle steam—“what do I…do?”

“Stick it up your nose and inhale. It’s not complicated.”

I wasn’t, in all honesty, the most physically coordinated person when I was nervous, but I took heart from the fact my body had been breathing successfully for nearly twenty-two years. And that was all this was, right? Breathing with some extra powder thrown in. Also, I’d seenThe Wolf of Wall Street. I could do this.

Here’s something they don’t tell you about taking drugs: It’s really undignified. Like, you have to be in a bad way already not to balk at the ways you get the stuff inside you. It made me feel super sorry for heroin addicts, I mean above and beyond the fact they were addicted to heroin. Anyway, I put the magazine up my nose, bent over the table, and y’know, inhaled. And for the record, Ellery was wrong. It did hurt—this weird brain flash like a backward sneeze, followed by the buzz of spiking adrenaline, and then this numbness spreading from my nose.

While I sat there, processing the fact I was now officially On Drugs, and making unhappy cat-with-a-furball noises, because I swear to God I could feel that shit sliding down my throat, Ellery nudged me out of the way and did the second line with a lot more finesse.

“So,” she said, after a moment or two, “you want to go see the fireworks now?”

And I did. I really did.

***

I don’t completely remember how we got to the Millennium Bridge—only that, despite the crowds and having to tumble breathlessly into bathrooms to take more coke, I was feeling good. Not the jittery, frenetic joy of ecstasy or the lazy softness of weed, but this smooth conviction of well-being that—had its duration not been so fleeting—would have been indistinguishable from any other kind of happiness. A night of perfect sleep. A truly amazing shower. The best cup of coffee imaginable. The slog back from Boston had fallen away, sloughed off like old skin, taking with it everything that had made me sad or worried or scared. And I had this…thisclaritynow—as if I’d finally ripped off the dirty glasses of my own doubts and insecurities and could see the world as it truly was.

Full of hope. Adventure. Possibility.

Nothing I couldn’t handle.

And so beautiful, as we pushed our way forward, invincible amongst the press of strangers. Ellery’s hand was warm in mine as I turned my face to the horizon—to the pale moon of Big Ben’s illuminated face and the rainbow hoop of the London Eye.

Ten…

Nine…

Voices all around us. The sky sinuous with shadows, like a lover’s body, turning in your arms.

Five…

Four…

It didn’t matter I wasn’t with Caspian.

I was strong. I was whole. I washappy.