Chapter 20
Little Lies
How to kill a friendship
“G!” I cry enthusiastically when I answer her call. “I didn’t know if you were ever going to call me back.”
“Just tell me everything is okay. I’ve had this bad feeling.”
True to her nature, even when she’s mad at me, Gwen’s uncanny ability to sense my emotions remains strong.
“Today has been absolute shit…but hearing your voice makes everything suddenly seem oka—” I slam on my brakes, and my car screeches to a halt with horns blaring behind me.
“What the hell just happened, Soph?” she cries out.
I growl. “Some asshole almost sideswiped me!”
“I won’t be responsible for you getting in an accident. Call me as soon as you get home,” she says and promptly hangs up.
I can’t stop smiling as I weave through traffic. I always knew I could depend on Gwen, but I never understood how much until now.
My luck seems to be turning around when I snag a parking spot on the street just under my apartment window. Jumping out of my car, I make sure to lock her up before making a beeline inside. As I’m heading up the elevator, Gwen sends me a text.
I laugh out loud when I open it. It’s a picture of a woman crying, with the words, “When you want hard, rough, degrading sex, and he wants to ‘make love’”.
Oh, how I’ve missed her…
When I get to my apartment, I jump onto the couch, hitting dial before my butt even hits the cushion. “That was a great one!”
“I thought you might like it,” she says with a laugh, and then her voice softens. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let it go.”
“Don’t apologize. If you had been the one to miss our standing coffee date, I’d feel exactly the same way.”
“Especially if I dared to hang up on you mid-call…”
I groan. “Yeah, I know. The timing of Headmaster Wallace’s call couldn’t have been worse, but luckily, it wasn’t bad news.”
“Wait. What happened?”
“I…” I hesitate, unsure what I am allowed to share with her.
“Don’t do this to me,” Gwen warns. “We’ve told each other everything since we were kids. If you start keeping secrets now, I won’t ever be able to trust you, Soph.”
I grimace because I made a promise to Anton that I would act as if everything were normal.
But it’s not!
Seeing him today almost broke me, and I really need my friend right now…
“G, what I’m about to tell you has to stay between us.”
“You know my lips are sealed.”
I start at the beginning when I first learned that Anton was missing. “I’d been waiting to hear news about him the whole weekend, so when I was talking to you, and I saw that the Headmaster was calling, I just had to take it. But, G, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I understand that now, but after you left me hanging at the coffee shop, it felt like a real slap in the face.”
“I know, I know…” I groan. “I can only imagine.”
She sighs, and then I hear a distinct change in her tone. “So, what happened today? You mentioned you had a piano lesson with Anton, but on your drive home earlier, you told me your day was total shit. Did he stand you up or something?”
“No, G,” I whimper. “It’s so much worse. When I saw him, he’d been beaten so badly that I could hardly recognize him. He should never have agreed to see me!”
Sounding worried, she asks, “What the hell happened to the guy?”
I swallow hard, uncertain if I should share, but I’m not willing to risk losing Gwen’s trust for anyone. “I’m not sure. I think…I think he’s involved with some incredibly dangerous people.”
Gwen mutters in surprise, “Like the mob?”
“I don’t know, G. Anton told me he went on a rescue mission and…” I gulp against the knot in my throat, struggling not to cry. “…he’s the only one who made it back.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Yeah…” I whimper, visions of his battered face still fresh in my mind.
“What kind of rescue mission was it?”
“I’ll never know the details, but he almost died, G.” I choke on my tears and struggle to rein them back in.
“Oh, Soph, I had no idea what you were dealing with. What else don’t I know?”
I know when Gwen keeps trying to steer the conversation toward me, it can only mean one thing. Whatever she’s going through must be bad—like really bad.
“It’s been hard, G…but what about you?” I ask, switching it back on her. “You were about to tell me something just before our last call got interrupted.”
“Oh, that…” she grumbles, then after several moments of silence, she lets out a painful groan. “It has to do with my father!”
“Shit.” My heart constricts, and I imagine the worst. “Is it his health?”
“No!” she snarls. “You’ll never believe what he’s done.”
“Did he cut you off?” I’ve always worried he would try to control her by cutting off her allowance.
“It’s much worse!”
I can’t imagine anything worse, and my voice shakes when I ask, “What did your father do?”
I hold the phone away from me when she lets out a frustrated howl. “It’s…the worst thing he could do to my career.”
Chills course down my spine.
“Oh, God…I hate to even say it out loud…!” she screams.
“Spit it out. You’re killing me, G!”
“Daddy Dearest bribed the director to choose me for the starring role when Helen was laid up.”
“What?” I gasp, unprepared for that answer.
“Yeah, you heard me right. When Helen was laid up in the hospital, and I was asked to play the role, I assumed the director picked me based on my talent and years of experience. But no…that wasn’t the case at all.”
“So, let me get this straight. Your dad, who has always tried to steer you away from acting, paid money to get you into the lead role? How does that even make sense?”
“In one fell swoop, that bastard decimated my entire career. There’s no coming back from this…”
“Surely, it’s not that bad, G. There are other theaters in town.”
“You don’t understand. Things were bad before, but now I’ve become the biggest joke in all of New York! Everybody knows about it. It’s over for me, Sophie!”
“I’m sure this will blow over.”
“No, Sophie,” she says in a strained voice. “This is the kind of thing that never goes away. All my years of sweat and tears are for nothing. My dad finally won…”
My heart hurts. I’ve been with her every step of the way. “What did he tell you when you confronted him?”
She laughs miserably. “He expected me to be grateful, and became furious when I refused to say thank you.”
“Oh, Gwen…” I have this sinking feeling that her dad was actually trying to help, and that he had no idea that he just destroyed her career. But I know better than to say anything now. Gwen has every reason to be angry at her father. Still, I find the whole thing sad.
After all these years, her dad finally decided to support his daughter’s talent, but then did it in the worst way possible.
“So, yeah, my life is a dumpster fire with zero hope of recovery.” She lets out a long sigh of defeat.” So, I’m begging you, Sophie, tell me something good that happened to you this week.”
Desperate to cheer her up, I push my humiliation with Marquis Gray out of my mind. “I got you, G! On Monday, I had a really challenging practicum that stretched me.”
“Go on…”
“Like, really stretched me.”
“What, like a torture rack?”
“Umm…it felt like torture at first, but it turns out I like taking two men.”
“No…you didn’t!”
“Yes. I did,” I say proudly.
“This is exactly what I needed, Soph. Tell me all about it and don’t you dare leave out any details.”
“I promise I won’t,” I laugh. “For context, this week’s focus was on pushing boundaries…which is why my practicum involved DP.”
“Double penetration? What did it feel like?” she demands, sounding excited.
“Wait…haven’t you done it before?” My voice goes up along with my eyebrows.
“Look, I’m open to doing a threesome…but I’ve just never had the opportunity.”
“Well, I think it’s good you waited. Because with the right partners, it can be an incredible experience. But it’s really important to be picky,” I advise her.
“Okay, Soph. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” she laughs. “So, what does it feel like?”
“I’m not going to lie. Taking two men kind of hurts at first, but once they both helped me to relax, it was extremely sexy.”
“Who did the trainers partner you up with? No wait, don’t answer that…I bet Leōn was one of them.”
I grin. “I can’t believe you guessed that.”
“Oh, I’ve seen firsthand how hot you are for that guy. But I’m not sure who the second one could be.”
I suddenly feel uneasy, realizing we’re moving into dangerous territory. I recall her attraction to Headmaster Wallace, and I don’t want to make her feel jealous, so I think fast on my feet. Using the title I called the Headmaster during our scene, I tell her, “The other guy was named Faelan.”
“I don’t know that one. Is he hot?”
“Extremely hot.”
“I can see why you liked that combination—a lion and a wolf sounds pretty damn hot.”
I love that Gwen instantly recognizes the meaning behind their titles, having studied linguistics as a drama major.
“So, how did it work, exactly? Like…what positions did you use? Inquiring minds want to know.”
I give her all of the intimate details, and I learn she’s really into it.
Carried away by her interest, I inadvertently slip up when I say, “I’ve learned so much about giving really good blow jobs, so I unleashed it all on the Headmaster.
” I pause only a second before going on much faster now.
“I’ve seriously improved my skills since practicing on Rafael at the beach.
So much so that Faelan admitted that I would have beaten him when we had the competition to see who could make who come first the week before. ”
Instead of being impressed, I hear silence on the other end of the line and worry that she caught my mistake. Hoping to distract her, I gush, “I’m sure you’re already highly skilled in that area, but it was quite a victory for me.”
“So, let me get this straight, because I’m a little confused,” she says in a strange tone.
My stomach clenches. I know she caught the slip-up, but before she can say anything, I interrupt as if I’m oblivious. “Are you confused about who was doing what?”
“No,” she states emphatically. “You had a threesome with Leōn and Faelan, right? That’s what you said.”
“Yes.”
“But just now you said you were giving ‘the Headmaster’ the best blow job of his life during your threesome. Not only that, but you also said you had some kind of oral competition with him last week? Last week, Soph? I don’t remember you mentioning anything about it. Why is that?”
“I…” My voice trails off, uncertain what to say.
“We tell each other everything. That’s the deal. And yet…you’ve been banging Headmaster Wallace and you never once told me?”
“G, no, I—” I start to stammer, but she cuts me off.
“Worse, you fucking tried to cover it up by calling him ‘Faelan’ just to hide it? What the fuck, Sophie?”
An icy chill runs through my body, and I struggle to breathe. I know deep in my soul that there is no coming back from this, but I make a frantic attempt. “I know that you really like Headmaster Wallace, and I didn’t want to make you jealous.”
“Huh,” she huffs. “So, instead you lied to me? That doesn’t sound suspicious at all.”
“It’s not like that, G! He’s the Headmaster. I don’t get to pick who I scene with.”
“You think I’m too stupid to understand that?”
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid at all!”
“You know what I don’t get? The fact you would lie about it…with me!”
I gulp for air, trying to breathe because it feels like my chest is caving in.
“Well, no wonder you were so quick to take the Headmaster’s call…” she snarls. “What else haven’t you told me? Oh, let me guess, you’re banging my father too?”
“That’s a low blow,” I growl.
She lets out a haughty laugh. “And you were the only person I trusted in this shithole of a world.”
“Gwen, I only kept it from you because I didn’t want it to get weird between us.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
When I hear the phone go dead, my whole world crashes down.