Page 14 of Time of Your Life

“—Yeah!” Pixie chimes in now. “They sort of just let it slide. She’s not actually as innocent as they all make her out to be.”

Jilly growls under her breath. “Well, I know that and you know that, and she ”—points to me—“knows that, but the general public do not.”

I cross my arms over my chest, huffing a little. “So?”

“ So —” Jilly says, before she decidedly softens her tone. “Joah is infamously a bad boy…”

“He’s not bad!” I say immediately and defensively.

Jilly shakes her head and I do believe—though I still don’t much care for the conversation—I can see she’s trying to be delicate…

“That is his image though, isn’t it? The band, darling—how they behave—they’re essentially hooligans.”

I frown.

“Am I wrong?” she asks, and she sounds genuine. “I’m not trying to be unkind, my sweet, I’m just identifying a potential… branding clash.”

I shrug. “Well, why does that matter?”

Now it’s Jilly’s turn to look a bit exasperated.

“You are the face of several of the biggest, most prestigious brands on the planet. Your brand very much matters, sweetheart. Meanwhile—” She gives me a stern look. “Your new boyfriend is the acceptable face of hoodlums in Britain.”

I shake my head again. “No, he’s not.”

It’s all making me feel a bit sad now, actually. How Jilly’s talking about him, how worried her face looks—she loves me, she’s not self-serving. If she’s implying Joah isn’t good for me, it’s because she really believes it. And I hate that.

“You know that last month he was deported from Amsterdam for drunk and disorderly behaviour?”

“Oh, yeah!” Pix nods. “I read about that—”

I look from my PA to my agent.

Jilly keeps going. “He trashed a historically significant hotel room in the city.”

“No, he didn’t,” I say automatically, but I don’t know—did he? Maybe he did?

Pixie shrugs. “According to the article anyway…”

I roll my eyes at both of them. “Why would he do that?”

Jilly nods appreciatively. “That’s a really good question, Ys. Probably one worth asking him if you’re going to be in a relationship together…”

I give her a little glare. “We’re already in a relationship together.”

Jilly raises her eyebrows. “Then perhaps you should have already asked.”

I don’t know why that makes me feel funny, but it does? This almost tacit insinuation that I don’t know him how I think I know him.

There are so many ways you can know a person, and knowing someone isn’t linear anyway.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit aware that the breakneck speed of our romance feeds a bit into that heedless nature everyone keeps talking about Joah having—and fine, I’ll give it to them—sometimes he is impulsive and impatient and impetuous—he can be those things and I can know he is those and still love him.

And I know no one’s said it, but I can feel it pressing in around me that people don’t necessarily believe that we are—you know, actually in love.

That they think it’s just infatuation or a momentary fixation, and objectively, I understand how and why they might arrive at that conclusion—but then, they haven’t seen how he is with me, how his eyes go right before we kiss, how he watches me till I fall asleep, how he holds me, how his cheek presses against mine, locked in place like a puzzle piece.

I mightn’t have known him for years or know what street he grew up on—but I know how his heart sounds, I know the beat of it, I know the rhythm of his breathing, I know the patterns he blinks, I know how he likes his eggs in the morning, I know the temperature he likes his showers, and I know what colour lingerie he likes me best in.

There are different ways you can know a person, that’s my point and that’s what I’m telling myself when Pixie suddenly asks me the rudest question in the world: “Hey, what’s his house like?

” She asks it with a nice, casual blitheness that interrupts my reverie.

“What?”

“His place—” Pix says again. “Where he lives…what’s it like?”

“Oh—” I say, because it dawns on me right then in this very terrible moment that I still haven’t been there.

“You’ve been there, right?” Pix asks with a big smile.

Lala scowls at Pixie. “Of course she’s been there—” she says, blindly defending me (which is her way), then she glances at me out of the corner of her eye to double check and her face freezes.

“Oh my god! Ysolde!” Lala yells, immediately outraged. “What!”

My hands fly to my cheeks. “Oh my god! Is that weird?”

Lala’s face is all scrunched up. “It’s so weird, Sol!”

Jilly starts shaking her head, trying to deescalate the fire I semi-blame her for inadvertently starting. “It’s not so weird…”

“Really?” I ask, hopeful, hands unconsciously covering my chest, and that’s all you need to know about how I feel about him.

“Well—” She reconsiders. “No, I suppose it is quite weird.”

My hands fly back to my cheeks. “Oh, shit!”

Pixie tries to throw me a bone. “Maybe his house is messy and he’s embarrassed—”

“Or—” And I’m spiralling now. “Maybe he has a girlfriend and I’m the terrible mistress.”

“If it’s any consolation”—Lala gives me what’s supposed to be an encouraging look—“I think I’d kill myself if you were my boyfriend’s mistress…”

“Oh.” I flash her a grateful smile. “Thank you, that’s kind. But—fuck! No! Oh my god, I’m so stupid, this is a complete and total, unmitigated disaster—”

The magazines already know about us now.

The were waiting for me when I left the hotel today.

Where’s Joah? How long have you been sneaking around?

Has he written a song about you yet? What happened with Mitchell Montrose-Bowes?

Do you like bad boys now? —imagine how mortifying it’ll be if he has a fucking girlfriend he’s hiding in his fucking house and I’m the last one to find out about it!

“Alright.” Jilly claps her haps together, trying to corral our attention again. “Ys, calm down. You haven’t been to a boy’s house in Camden, it’s hardly Chernobyl.”

Though I’m not sure I actually entirely agree.