Page 44

Thirty-one

Ysolde

There’s a banging on the front door of my hotel suite, and there’s only two people on the planet who would bang on my door like that. Three, I suppose. But Joah has a key.

I open the door to find one of the other two on the other side of it, clutching a Marie Claire in his hand.

“What the fuck is this?” Fletch asks, pushing his way into my room.

Kekoa pokes his head around the corner of my sitting room and spots it’s Fletch. He lifts his eyebrows, asks are you okay without actually asking a thing. I flash him a little thumbs-up and he leaves us.

I look up at Freddie, and though I know exactly what he’s referring to, I still say, “What’s what?”

He shakes his head at me, looking annoyed. He shoves the magazine into my hands.

“Ysolde, what the fuck is this story doing published in fuckin’ Marie Claire ?”

I shrug. “I decided to give an interview on it.”

“No—” He shakes his head. “You said you’d never talk about this…that you didn’t want to —that it was no one else’s business—”

“Fletch.” I cut him off. “It was time…”

“Yeah—?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Funny that timing just happened to coincide with the fucking boy of the month mouthing off and getting himself into some heavy shit?”

I tilt my head at him. “That’s not fair.”

“No—” Fletch agrees. “It’s not, but that didn’t fucking stop him, did it?”

I give him a look. That’s not what I meant and he knows it.

It’s true though, what he’s saying. I’d never had the desire to share what happened—to relive what happened—I don’t know why?

As though saying it aloud makes it truer?

Which is crazy, because it is true—I know it’s true; it happened; it was bad.

No matter what, it was bad—but for some reason, the thought of sharing it made it feel worse?

So Fletch is right, I never had any intention to speak about it.

But things change. Priorities change, you know—?

Fletcher shakes his head.

“This is bullshit, Sol—that he’d—”

Then there’s more banging at my front door.

“That him—?” Fletcher straightens up as he walks towards it. “Fucking hope it is, I have a couple of—”

“—he has a key,” I call after him as Fletch swings open the door, and in blows Lala—wearing a lilac dress from Chanel 1994 RTW collection and Pix close behind her in a black, red, and hot pink Helmut Lang top from his Fall RTW line last year.

Lala pauses in front of Fletch, looking him up and down—then over to me, then back at Fletch.

“Interesting,” she says more about him rather than to him, then she turns her attention to me. “What the fuck?”

Pixie flits over and hugs me. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I nod quickly. “I’m—” I swallow. “Yeah.”

“She’s not,” Lala tells the room.

“She is!” I insist.

Pixie looks at me confused. “You’ve kept this so quiet all this time…”

“I can change my mind…” I tell them all, all of them staring at me—I feel like they’re cross at me, but that’s mean and I don’t know why they would be. “I’m allowed to change my mind!”

“Of course you can!” Pix kneels in front of me, holding my hands. “It’s your mind to change, it’s your story to tell—you…just…” She purses her lips. “You changed it quite drastically, quite suddenly.”

“Do you know what—?” Lala says loudly. “ I changed my mind.”

She doesn’t even need to say any more because I already know where this is going.

I give her a long look—doesn’t stop her.

“Fuck him,” she tells me, shaking her head. “He says he loves you, but that’s fucking bullshit—”

Aleki is standing in the doorway, nodding along. I don’t know when he joined in. I suppose it’s a little family affair now.

Lala keeps going. “You don’t put yourself first if you love someone else.”

“He didn’t make me do it,” I tell them all. “He asked—I said yes.”

“He should never have asked!” Fletch yells.

“His career was in the fucking toilet!” I yell at the ceiling.

“How do you know?” Freddie says, staring at me.

I look over at him—I don’t ask what aloud but look at him, waiting for more.

“How’d you know his career was in the toilet, Ys? Because I love you, you’re my oldest friend in the world, you’re not that fuckin’ astute.”

I frown. “Hey.”

Lala inhales sharply through her nose. “If you’re about to tell me that that motherfucker told you his career was in the toilet—”

“— Not verbatim! ” I cut in.

Pixie gives Lala a calm down look before she settles her gaze back on me. “Well, what did he say, then?”

“Umm—” I purse my lips, shrugging my shoulders. “Nothing really, just that it was fucking disaster.”

Lala rolls her eyes big. “Which is an insanely unfair thing to say to someone when you’re asking them for a favour—Like, of course you fucking said yes. How the fuck were you supposed to say no?”

“I wouldn’t have said no anyway!” I yell.

“And that ”—Lala points at me accusatorially—“is the problem, Solly. That right there.” She tilts her head.

“Remember when I said it scared me—?” She lifts her eyebrow.

“This is why. Because you love him—” I open my mouth to protest, but she cuts me off.

“—And he loves you too! I’m not saying he doesn’t okay—?

” she clarifies before delivering the fatal blow: “But not as much as he loves him.”

“That’s not true.” I shake my head. I don’t know why I say that though, because I think actually, really, truthfully, she might be right. I think it is true. I think I’ve known it for a while. I suppose you could argue he all but told me as much himself.

Lala sighs. “He got you to tell the world about the worst day of your whole fucking life to throw himself a line…”

I sit on the sofa next to Fletch, my shoulders slumped now. “You’re making it sound worse than it is.”

Freddie bumps me with his shoulder. “It’s pretty bad, Ys.”

Lala points at Freddie. “He would fucking never.”

I look up at Fletch, who says nothing, and still, all the same, I know it’s true. He really would never.

Lala shakes her head. “I can’t fucking believe Jilly let this happen—”

“She said it was my choice!” I shrug, feeling less and less confident in my decision with every passing second.

“Right.” Pixie nods. “But did she say it like, ‘darling, it’s your choice!’…or was it more like… ‘…it’s your choice?’”

I stare at her blankly. “I don’t know what that means!”

“The second one,” Aleki says, and I give him a very sharp look, and all he does, that man, my bodyguard, whom I employ and whose bills I pay, gives me a flick of his eyebrow, like— I said what I said.

“Listen—” I shake my head at them all collectively. “I can’t talk about this right now, I’ve got to—”

My best friend lets out an accusatory gasp and points a finger at me.

“Don’t you say ‘see Joah’! Do not you fucking dare say you’re seeing Joah…”

I frown at her. “We have plans.”

“Cancel them,” Fletch tells me.

“What!” I blink at him. “No! Especially no, coming from you! My ex-boyfriend telling me to cancel plans with my current boyfriend, it’s very self-serving.”

“Nope.” He shakes his head, unfazed. “Self-serving was you coming to my house two weeks ago, fucking me four times because you had a fight with your boyfriend, and not calling me since.”

Lala’s hand flies to her mouth in shock.

“Oh my god, you messy slut, I love it,” Lala says once she’s recovered. “Four times?” She queries, looking at Fletch with her head tilted. “That’s some stamina! Look at you, stud! Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Freddie looks mildly offended. “I’m a professional athlete.”

Lalee gives him a wink. “Yeah, you are.”

My head drops back to the ceiling. “Lala.”

“Sorry.” She snaps back into focus but whispers to me, “Want details on that later though, please—”

“Don’t see him,” Pix says, quietly. She looks genuinely sad for me. A bit like her hero just fell off his pedestal. He did, I suppose.

“Seriously, Sol,” Lala tells me. “Blow him off.”

“No!”

“Yes!” she counters. “Like, fuck him—!”

“Yeah—” I give her a look, lowering my voice. “That’s loosely the plan, La.”

Fletch groans and, admittedly, that doesn’t impress Lala either.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You are on strike!” She points to my crotch. “ She is on strike!”

I roll my eyes at her. “Lala.”

“No listen, Sol. That man—” She pauses, reconsidering.

“ Boy . Let’s call a spade a spade—” She gives me a look to make a point.

“He fucked you over so he could stay afloat.” I start to shake my head again, but she keeps going.

“He should be absolutely fretting that he’s lost you because of this, Solly. ”

“I agreed to it!” I yell, exasperated.

She looks me square in the eye. “And that is your tremendously gracious heart and mildly weak character’s burden to bear. His burden, however, is— or should be ”—another pointed look from her—“that he dared fucking asked you the first place.”

Hold on… Is she right? Fuck. Is she right?

I haven’t really thought all that much since it happened—him on the couch, he looked so sad and desperate—like he was drowning and I had a lifeboat.

I just wanted to help him, I didn’t think about how it wasn’t helping me—I hadn’t thought about how it made me feel unsafe and weirdly exposed all over again. Joah was drowning, he needed help, I could help, so I did. But at what cost?

Me, I suppose. I’m the cost.

“I’m calling him,” Lala tells me, and I say nothing because I don’t know what to say anymore. I’m still reeling a bit.

“What are you going to say?” Pixie asks.

“That we’re going out tonight,” Lala says to me, eyebrows up. “ Without him.”

I glance over at Fletch. I don’t know why. He feels like a good pulse-check in the room, I guess—usually, anyway. Right now all he gives me is a shrug.

“I’m telling you—” Lala says as she riffles through her purse and plucks out her little black, leather address book. “That boy needs to have the fear of god put in him that he’s fucking lucky to have you and maybe he actually even doesn’t anymore…”

“Lala—” I shake my head at her. “I’m not breaking up with him.”

She picks up the phone in my room and starts dialling his number.

“Well, that’s your choice—but either way, right now, he should be squirming in his skin, Sol—”

She pauses.

“Joah,” she says into the phone. “Hi. It’s Lala—I was just calling to let you know, Ysolde can’t come see you anymore.”