Page 315 of The Long Way Home

Seventy-Two

Magnolia

Someone released a sex tape of Christian and Vanna Ripley and it is all over the internet. And when I say it’s everywhere, I mean, it’s on every news outlet, it’s on the front cover of every newspaper, on TikTok, on Instagram, it’s trending on Twitter — all of it.

And Daisy’s not taking it well, that’s what Christian says. I mean, no surprises there. How else is she supposed to take it? But Christian begged me to talk to her.

She’s not answering his calls or his texts or his anything. He said, and I quote, “She took a leaf out of your playbook and ran to Romeo Bambrilla.” To which I said. “I’ve never run to him, I don’t know to what you’re referring” and then all the boys (even Henry (traitor)) groaned, which felt rude but whatever. It’s not about me.

The sex tape is very sexy, by the way. Very, very sexy. Like, I don’t watch porn, it’s not for me. It’s not an industry I condone. I think it’s unhealthy and I’ve always run a very tight ship with those boys about pornography, but I’m sorry to say that at word of a sex tape featuring Christian, Bridget, Taura and myself wordlessly assembled in front of my computer screen and watched it in a sort of befuddled wonder, and I realise I may have really missed out on a great time with him in that capacity, but I don’t need another log on the fire.

“Did you see it?” he asked me on the phone.

“What?” I blinked. “Nothing. No. There — Pffft. I don’t know even what you’re talking. What sex tape?”

He breathed out, annoyed. “So you watched it.”

I blew some air out of my mouth. “Bridget was watching it and I saw it for a sliver of a s—” and then my sister dove on me, smacking me mercilessly. (“LIAR!” she yelled and I kicked her off me. “You loved it!” I yelled back. “I’m not the one who said ‘look at his back!’ and paused it—” “HE HAS A GOOD BACK.”)

“Magnolia—” Christian sighed, impatiently. “Hello?”

I wrestled the phone back from my squealing sister and kicked her away. “Hello — what? Sorry, Bridget was just — god, you know her. So impossible sometimes. Anyway, what’s up?”

And then he said my favourite words: “I need your help.”

Christian fundamentally doesn’t understand why or how Daisy is angry at him. And then I got angry at him when he told me he didn’t understand why she was upset about it, and I got angrier still when he said he told her it was — and I quote him directly again here — “Just sex.” But then he went over to her house on his own volition and she was in bed with Romeo Bambrilla.

“Not doing anything,” he says. They were just sitting in bed watching a film. And I said maybe they’re just friends now and what’s the big deal with that? And then he likened it to BJ walking in on Christian and I in a bed together and I said, “I don’t think he’d care.” And Christian said, “You’re an idiot.” And I said, “You’re an idiot!” And he said, “You’re so bereft from reality it’s fucking insane.” And I said, “DO YOU WANT MY HELP OR NOT?” And then he stopped saying mean things to me.

So I’m off on a peace-keeping mission, standing on the Haiteses’ front steps, knocking.

The door swings open and Julian stares down at me. His face falls into a playful frown. We haven’t seen each other since.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing opening your own doors now?” I counter.

He sniffs a laugh and wraps his arms around me a bit how he used to, chin on my head and everything. I find myself breathing out a little, like maybe I miss him some. Or maybe he just accidentally became a safe place for me.

He pulls back to look at me. “You okay?”

I nod.

“You here to see me?”

I give him an apologetic smile and shake my head.

“Ah.” He nods, knowingly. “You’re here on behalf of the most streamed man in Britain.”

I suppress a smile.

Jules nods his chin at me. “He doing okay?”

“Well, he was.” I nod. “And then he came here to see her and found her in bed with Romeo?”

“What the fuck?” His head pulls back.

“How did you not know that?” I ask.