Page 26

Seventeen

Ysolde

I had to go away for work this week and it was a funny feeling…

I don’t like to be away from Joah. I get this weird, sort of sick feeling like there’s a knife twisting in my stomach when I’m away from him.

I’ve never had that with a person before, but the whole flight over from London to New York, I have that strange nauseousness you get that’s specific to loving a person and being some distance from them.

But now that I’m here and he’s not—I suppose if someone were to ask me with a gun to my head how I feel, I’d perhaps very quietly admit that I’m a tiny bit relieved.

Which sounds terrible, I know it sounds terrible, and it could be misconstrued but it shouldn’t be—

Joah’s just a very intense person. Loving him is incredibly intense. My honour, absolutely. It can be a lot sometimes I think, that’s all.

The shoot goes incredibly well—it was Lala and I and a few of the other girls for Versace.

A brilliant day—I kind of needed it, actually.

I didn’t realise I did. I didn’t realise that my brain was a bit tired just from everything going on back home, I suppose.

I have a weird life, I know that. It’s nice to be amongst people who understand it and Cindy, Claudia, Christy—those girls do.

They had a million questions about Joah, of course—everyone does.

And my cheeks flushed as I talked about him, and my heart fluttered as I told them secrets about him and how he is with me, but a strange thing—and I think it doesn’t mean anything—but I did feel a tiny bit tired of talking about us.

That’s never happened before.

Usually it’s just a thrill? Usually, it feels like I’m bragging, getting to talk about being loved by him. I don’t know why, but today it didn’t feel like a brag. And I don’t want to read into anything but I feel like Lala saw it on me or in me, whatever the difference was.

Later, back at The Carlyle, Lala crawls into my bed in her robe—we always have sleepovers when we’re in foreign places together. We have since we met. She has her own room, obviously. I just don’t love sleeping by myself, I suppose. I also just like being with my best friend, you know?

She falls back on the pillows and sighs. “Fuck that was mental today, wasn’t it?”

I look at her, grimacing. “With that guy?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Kekoa was freaking out—”

There was a bit of a non-incident, ultimately, where someone from US Weekly snuck on set to try and snag a few photos of Jo and I—the problem being, of course unbeknownst to him, Joah wasn’t there.

The second and primary problem though was that he looked a good bit like Mark Draper, so unfortunately for him, he was tackled and apprehended by my security guard.

I flash Lala a smile, and I try for it to be real, but it’s sort of forced because I don’t know how anything to do with that could ever be all the way funny to me, even when I might want it to be. “That vein in his head— gigantic .”

Lala watches me closely. “You were alright, though?”

“I mean—” I shrug. “It wasn’t him, so—”

Mark Draper’s in prison.

“Still—” Lala gives me a gentle smile. “Might have rattled you.”

I shake my head and shrug as though what happened last September is nothing but dead leaves from the trees of my past falling on my shoulders, brushed off easily and nothing to me.

It’s a lie, though.

It’s a wool coat I’m wearing in a stormy sea, and it’s pulling me under and I can’t peel it off my body no matter how hard I try.

I can’t say that though, can I? So I smile instead. “Only for a second.”

“Good.” Lala smiles, and I’m grateful she bought that. Her face lights up with a thought. “Hey! How was Paris?”

“Yeah—” I smile big, but I feel it falter. “It was—” My voice trails and it would have been unmissable to a layman, let alone my best friend.

She frowns. “What?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It was fine.”

Lala’s eyes pinch and I roll mine, huffing before I explain. “Joah read this awful article about himself—and he sort of spiralled one night, and got really drunk and…high, and went missing for a while, but—”

Her face pulls. “Oh my god.”

“No, it’s fine—” I say quickly. “Rich and I found him.”

“No, Sol.” She gives me a look. “That’s fucked-up.”

I purse my lips. “Is it?”

Lala gives me this— are you serious? look and raises an eyebrow. “Does he know?”

“About my mother?” I clarify.

She nods, eyebrow still very poised. “Yes.”

“What the fuck?!” She sits up straighter.

“No—” I shake my head quickly. “I think he was just going through something—he felt bad for it. I know he did—”

She crosses her arms over her chest, looking ever so mildly appeased. “Did he say sorry?”

I mirror her—arms crossed, nose in the air. “Yes,” I say.

Well, technically yes. Right after it happened, yes, when he was high. But not soberly, not the morning after.

Actually, we barely talked about it after it happened, which I thought was perhaps a bit strange, but then—I don’t know—?

I’m hardly an expert in relationships. The longest standing relationship I’ve had with a man is Fletch, and we were together when we were so young, so it’s different.

It’s easy to talk to Fletcher, and he’s so direct anyway—Joah’s not like that.

Joah’s completely in his head all the time, barely saying what he means ever, because he’s so preoccupied by appearing like the rock star he actually organically already is.

I did feel as though we should have talked about it properly, but he didn’t want to.

And he already felt so weird and bad about it.

He kept calling himself a fuckup, isn’t that terrible?

He said it as though it were off-the-cuff, but I have a feeling—just from the way his eyes looked—I think that he really believes it?

Lala’s looking at me, eyes dancing over my face, searching for something, but I don’t know what.

I shift, self-consciously. “What?”

“You fall hard and fast, Solly. Always have,” she tells me.

“So?”

She tilts her head, then keeps going. “You were fucking obsessed with Kelly Slater the second you saw him—but this… You and Jo, it’s something else.”

I peer at her out of the corner of my eye. “What do you mean?”

She shakes her head, like she’s trying to make sense of it herself. “I don’t know what I mean. I’ve never seen you like this before—” She squints at me like she’s trying to peer through a mirage or something. “I’ve never really seen anyone how you are with each other, not this quickly at least.”

My eyes drop from hers. I’m not really sure that she’s saying it like a compliment. I suppose I’m not really sure what she’s saying at all.

Lala ducks a little to catch my eye again.

“You’re intensely connected—don’t you think?”

I open my mouth to disagree—I don’t know why, I just feel like maybe I should? She cuts me off.

“Sol, your entire countenance changes when Joah leaves the room—same with him. Like, he looks immediately agitated when you aren’t beside him—and it’s like—” She shakes her head and breathes out this breath I didn’t know she was holding.

“God, I mean—that’s kind of incredible… But then, also, it’s like—”

She stops speaking, presses her lips together.

I wait, eyebrows going ever and ever up. “Is it bad?”

“No.” She shakes her head quickly. “I don’t think it’s bad .” She pauses. “Maybe dangerous though.”

I pull my knees up against my chest. “Why dangerous?”

“Well, I’m not sure—” She shrugs. “I think you’re”—she’s looking for the word—“tethered to him now, or something—? You’re locked in, you know? Final answer.” She gives me a silly smile, like she’s trying to make the heavy things she’s saying a little bit lighter. “All roads lead to Jo…”

And at that, I give her a look—because… All roads lead to Jo? No. Tethered? Please.

“Lala, I’m twenty.”

She shrugs innocently. “Well, maybe I’m wrong!”

But the quietest voice within me whispers: She’s not wrong .

I watch my best friend—whom I know so very well and who cannot, for the fucking life of her, conceal her true feelings—very closely as I ask this terribly significant question.

“Do you not like him?”

“No, Ys!” She reaches for my hand immediately, shaking her head—it’s earnest, I can tell that much.

“I like him…more than I wish I did”—she shrugs—“I can tell how much he loves you. I love that. And I love that he’d fucking kill a bitch for saying something vulgar to you…

I adore how much he adores you, it’s very transparent on him”—she purses her lips, thinking—“maybe in a way that he doesn’t even realise… ”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know—” She pushes her hair over her shoulders. “Like, he’s obsessed, babes. How often could Joah fucking Harrigan be this smitten with a girl? Like, it’s not happening, Solly—It’s gotta be weird for him.”

I cross my arms again. “Why would it be weird for him?”

“Because it is weird,” she says, unflinchingly.

“Hey—” I frown.

“Sorry.” She gives me a gentle smile and squeezes my hand as she tries to pick her words more carefully this time.

“I mean, it’s just a very intense and passionate kind of affinity you have for one another.

I’ve never seen you love someone how you love him, and I think that’s incredible.

But as the person who’s spent the last five years being your protector…

Ys, you have to understand—that’s also terrifying, you know—? ”

I think my face must look discouraged because Lala pushes some hair behind my ears as she gives me small smile.

“Something can be great and scary at the same time, you know…” She elbows me gently. “Most worthwhile things are.”