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Thirty-four

Ysolde

Now listen, I wouldn’t consider myself an overly religious person—I don’t know how much of the Bible is real, but something doesn’t have to be all the way real for key parts of it to still remain perfectly true.

It’s good to be selfless, it’s good to be kind, it’s good to put other people first, it’s good to forgive, to be humble…

Those are things that are celebrated traits and championed within our species, not just in that book, but in almost every ancient religion.

In the Qur’an those who are selfless are praised, and in Tao Te Ching those who are selfless are rewarded.

Confucius considered kindness (technically ren, but we’ll call it benevolence) as the highest virtue, and then the Stoics believed that we’re all part of a larger human family, and we should be good and just to each other, all of us, all the time.

In Hinduism, the Gita teaches that forgiveness and tolerance are divine qualities, and Zoroastrian ethics encourage reconciliation and harmony.

Which is all to say—even if you don’t believe in all that much of the Bible, I think we can agree that the wise, old ancients all sort of agreed that there’s this baseline of things it’s good to be and a baseline of things it’s bad to be.

Pride is a crazy thing, isn’t it? In my line of work—in his—it’s par for the course, really. Kind of assumed, but there are varying degrees. There are limits.

What I’m trying to say is, in the old story that the ancient Jews and Christians were told about the fall of mankind, I think there’s a reason that the original sin—the actual original sin, not that thing with that poor woman and the apple—the real sin that fucked everything up—I think there’s a reason the ancients made it pride.

Joah’s proud. I know that. I’ve known that since the night we first met; you can smell it on him a good mile off. And it’s strange and it’s hard to put definitive parameters around it, but there’s a difference between being proud of yourself and being prideful.

Joah Harrigan has every reason—every fucking reason in the world—to be proud of himself. And with the career he’s had, there is of course an anticipated amount of ego.

The miserable truth is, ego, sometimes, to a certain extent, can be very sexy.

Right up until the moment it isn’t, and in my short twenty years on the planet, I’m yet to figure out when that threshold actually is and from whence is that fateful point it’s crossed.

All I know so far is that when you reach it, you reach it.

When you’ve crossed it, you’ve crossed it—and it’s near impossible to come back from.

I haven’t called him, okay? I’m proud too.

And the more time I was with Lala and the girls, the crosser I began to feel about the article—and I don’t even know if I think they’re right.

I don’t know if I believe Lala when she’s saying that Jo was drowning and I swam out to help him, and he just clambered on top of me and used me as his float—never mind that then I’m drowning and it’s my face under the water…

I don’t know if I think that’s true—I don’t know that it could be?

And even if it isn’t, I feel more and more sure that he was rather in the wrong for asking me in the first place.

So I went out with Lala and the girls, and I had a really fun night where I wasn’t sad or weird or in my head all wondering whether my boyfriend threw me under the bus on purpose, or if it just happened on accident, just.

Whilst we were out, we bumped into our friend Jamie—he’s an American; we didn’t even know he was in town.

Lala and I party with him often in New York, and he is literally the funniest, sweetest man on the planet.

Girls lose their mind over him; he’s absurdly sexy—brown eyes, perfectly styled brown hair, ridiculously fit from head to toe, and—unbeknownst to nearly everyone outside the industry (and possibly even some in the industry)—he is also incredibly gay.

So when I saw the red tops running their stupid gossip how they always do, I thought nothing of it—magazines like those say shit about shit all the time.

Like, if I actually paid daily attention to all the rumours The Daily Star and Mirror Weekly run about me, I’d be the pregnant, long-lost grandchild of Anastasia, empress of Russia, in a secret relationship with Lala and Joah’s just my beard.

So I see the articles about Jamie and I circulating, and it doesn’t flag me as concerning, okay?

And maybe with retrospect, I might see that that’s on me.

That’s my fault. A stronger woman would have called him, but I’m not a strong woman.

I think I’m actually quite a weak one when I’m backed against a wall.

It’s the night after my girls’ night, and there’s a party we’re all going to at Groucho.

I presume Jo will be there because we talked about it earlier in the week—he was complaining that he didn’t even want to go because he thinks the person whose birthday it is, is a bit of a twat, but anyone who’s anyone in music in London has to go because they’re all sort of at the mercy of Oli Raines.

I like him though, so I was always planning on going anyway, and truthfully, whatever weirdness might be between Joah and me, I presume when I get to the party and I see him, it’ll disappear because most bad things do when he and I are face-to-face. I don’t know why?

He’s this sort of magnanimous, black hole of a man, and all the bad things and all the scary things and any of the small, tiny things that might have been things that maybe could have possibly been very slight concerns of mine that may have crept into the darkest corners of my mind very late at night—all those things, when you’re in front of him—none of it matters.

Who he is swallows it all. I think I said something about that the night I met him, didn’t I? Gravity.

That’s what I anticipate when Lala and I arrive at this party.

I’m in this Versace spring 1995 RTW black bustier dress that’s genuinely, possibly actually the perfect dress, and I wear it a bit knowing Jo will love it, and I love it when he loves what I’m wearing, I love it when his eyes fall down me, I love it when he gets in his head about smiling too much at me, and I know he’ll be annoyed by how much he’ll like this dress, so that’s what I decide to wear.

Have you ever walked into a party and known within a few seconds of being there that absolutely every single person there is talking about you?

I have. It just happened.

“What the fuck?” Lala whispers to me, uncomfortable as she glances around. “What’s going on?”

I shake my head. “I have no idea.”

And then Fry catches, a weird look in his eye.

“Alright there, Ys?” He gives me a strange smile.

I don’t know why it’s strange exactly, but it is. I suppose we’re not that close, he and I.

“Yes, Fry. Fine.” I smile at him. “Is my boyfriend here?”

“Your boyfriend?” he says, nodding. “Is he your—well—” He shakes his head. “Right. None of my business—”

I look at him confused. “What’s none of your business?”

He shrugs quickly. “Nothin’, I dunno.”

Lala looks at him, irritated now. “Is Joah here or not?”

“He’s here, alright,” that Harley man says, sort of smirking. I’m not mad on him, honestly. I think he’s a bit of a dick. Chenko says he’s very good in bed though, so I guess good for her—? Except not that good for her because he’s here with someone who isn’t her?

I look him up and down, as well as the girl he’s with who’s nowhere near as pretty as Arina Melnichenko.

Harley points towards a back corner, tilt my head as I look for Jo—I’ll be pleased to see him, actually. I do miss him.

He’s revoltingly beautiful—how beautiful he is sort of softens so many of his sharper edges, though, please don’t tell him I said that—we both know he’d just mouth off about how rock stars aren’t fucking beautiful.

And it’s now, now as I am thinking how happy I’ll be to see him, how much I’ve missed his mouth and those improbably blue eyes and the rest of his (secretly) beautiful face, when I see that very face snogging Meghan Miller.

Had you told me that is what I was going to witness tonight, I’d have presumed immense pain would befall me.

My imagination would have predicted a sensation not dissimilar to my knees being capped as I’m standing right there.

Just searing pain, completely, entirely, radiating-all-through-me everywhere—and rest assured, that will come—but right now, there’s nothing.

Lala’s whole entire body tenses up next to mine, she’s blind with rage immediately, but me—I’m… probably in shock, really—? But I’ll just say in this present moment, I feel rather calm. Even as I walk over to him, calm.

I’m standing in front of him and Meghan Miller and their revolting little public hookup for a good ten seconds before Lala aggressively clears her throat, and Joah pulls back, looking over at me with blurry, high eyes.

I look to my right and spot Richie nearby, watching on with a sad look on his face. Worried, I think. He should be.

“Interesting,” I say to Jo with a tight-lipped smile.

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be weird—” He shakes his head. “Don’t make this weird.”

Lala scoffs, cannot believe it.

“You think I’m the one making this weird?” I gesture to myself. “Me?”

“Yep,” he says, blinking in a way where his eyelids drag too slowly over his eyeballs.

He’s really fucking high, and that does make my heart pang. I wouldn’t want him to know that though, so I shrug.

“No, you’re right—What’s weird about you hooking up with Meghan Miller in a club in front of like, four hundred people we both know—?” I laugh airily.

Joah’s eyes pinch. “’Bout as weird as you being papped on a date with Jamie fucking Cross when you were supposed to be havin’ a fuckin’ ‘girls’ night’…”

Oh shit. I blink a few times, seeing where our wires have gotten crossed.

“Jo—” I start, but he cuts me off.