Chapter 14
Thursday
The walls of this toilet cubicle feel like they’re crushing the air out of my lungs. My breath is short and shallow, my palms and forehead are clammy. My skin is burning up underneath my sweatshirt, despite the arctic cold flowing from the air conditioning unit in the restroom.
How could he do this to me?
After all I’ve been through, how could he?
I glance back at the phone again, rereading the message to make sure I haven’t made a mistake, but it’s there. Clear as day.
Stephen
So, erm. I don’t know how to tell you this, but Ryan and I are in a relationship. I wanted you to hear it from me before anyone else. Xx
What the actual?
Stephen’s meant to be my best friend. How could he get together with my ex?
Like, where is his moral compass? It’s meant to be gays before baes, not be a hoe with my ex-bro.
That was the one hard and fast rule: steer clear of each other’s exes.
Which shouldn’t be that hard for Stephen compared to me.
His list is longer than the silence when he says something funny.
My list consists of one person: Ryan. Well, two if I’m counting those two days that Alexander and I were boyfriends.
And it’s not like he’s living in a city where there’s slim pickings. There must be tens of thousands of gay guys in London he could have chosen from. And out of all of them, he chose the one who was off-limits. Avoid one guy. That’s all he had to do.
I open up Instagram and go to Stephen’s feed, flicking through his stories and scrolling through his posts, looking for traces of Ryan anywhere. Ryan had liked several of Stephen’s posts, all the way back to…
I stop on Stephen’s post about the two of us in London back in June.
The same night I bumped into Ryan at Circa.
The night he kissed me.
There are no likes from Ryan on any of Stephen’s previous posts.
My chest tightens and my head throbs. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. There’s no way Stephen would have hooked up with him the very same night, and that this has been going on since June.
But I’ve already gone down this rabbit hole, so I might as well follow it. I click through to Ryan’s profile, but I’m met with a dead end. His account is private. Ugh! Why did I have to unfollow him when we broke up?
Because you’re stubborn. Kelly’s words reverberate in my ears.
Wait, was this the advice Stephen was asking me for? The deliberation about whether or not he should get into a relationship with Ryan? I furiously type out a message while I grab a sheet of loo roll and dab at the angry sweat seeping through my pores on my forehead.
I delete and rewrite my message several times, squeezing the phone like my stress ball, trying to reduce the anger inside and temper my response.
Christopher
Answer me this. When did you first hook up?
I get up and pull the flush handle. It doesn’t work and I try again. On the third failed attempt I give up. What a shitty fucking start to the day.
I make my way back out to the office and see the new assistant staring back at me as I approach my desk. Training up a new employee is the furthest thing from my mind right now. Where would I start? What would I show him? What do I need help with?
“Do y’all need me to help with something?” Olly asks, dropping his spoon into his bowl. Milk splashes out on his blue T-shirt. He’s twenty-two, fresh-faced, and built like an NFL player. His skin is a lighter shade of pale than mine, and his hair is buzz cut like he’s just enrolled in the marines.
I look behind myself and then realize he’s just talking to me.
His Southern drawl confuses me when he says the word y’all.
I fight the urge to answer back in the same accent, a terrible habit I picked up when I first moved to LA and started mimicking the Valley girls with their whiny twangs.
Instead, I reach for the Tide pen in my drawer, chucking it to him and pointing at the stain on his shirt.
He blushes as dimples form in both cheeks.
“I think I’m good for the moment. But I could use you in the meeting I’m about to have.” I nod at the boardroom as I grab my laptop and notebook and make my way toward it. Olly quickly dabs at his T-shirt with the Tide pen, then follows behind.
“Christopher, how are you darling?” Caryn flicks her blond locks behind her shoulder and readjusts her cream blouse. Chloe has yet to join us on the Zoom call.
It’s surprising how similar most publicists are. Like they all attend the same PR etiquette classes. Caryn’s approach is almost identical to Connie’s. Darling here, flicks of the hair there.
“Good, thanks, and you?” My tone is less charismatic than hers.
“Wonderful, darling. I can’t wait to get this show on the road.” She rubs her hands with glee.
The door opens behind her, and Chloe enters. Her hands cup a Brewed mug, the company slogan clearly visible on-screen as she sits down: One cup away from tolerating humanity.
More like seven in my case, I comment silently to myself. Her dark-brown hair and reverse cat-eye makeup is offset by her nude lipstick and caramel T-shirt.
“’Sorry to keep you guys, I got caught up in a forecasting meeting.” Chloe rolls her eyes. “Where are we at?”
“We’ve just started, darling.” Caryn checks herself out in her camera, rather than looking at Chloe. It’s a crime I’ve been guilty of multiple times.
“Great. How’s Alexander doing?” Chloe quickly moves things along.
Her question locks around my throat like a vice.
What do I tell her—them? That Paul is concerned about Alexander’s recovery? That he not-so-subtly informed me that I need to tread carefully when I speak with him this morning? That anything I do could cause him to relapse?
Best not. Best to do what I’ve become accustomed to when it comes to Alexander and be truth-adjacent.
“He’s good. Got out of the treatment facility yesterday. He seems to be in good spirits, according to management.”
“Are they not joining us?” Caryn asks, reaching for a nail file and rasping it against her index nail.
“No,” I answer and let out a chuckle, not at the question, but at how at ease Caryn is with filing her nails on a call with me and Olly, who I’ve yet to introduce. “I felt we could have a franker conversation on here without them.
“By the way, this is our new assistant, Olly. I’ll connect you via email after the call,” I say, smiling at them. I turn my laptop so they can get a better look. Both of them smile and say hi as Olly waves back.
“How’s the campaign doing so far?” I ask, steering the conversation back to their key performance indicators, not wanting to get weighed down in gossip about Alexander.
“They’re doing okay? They’re lower than we were hoping for two weeks in. But, given the adjustments made to the campaign owing to Alexander’s availability, we don’t expect things to ramp up until just before Thanksgiving.”
There’s a slight bitterness to Chloe’s tone, and I don’t necessarily blame her.
The rehab stint threw a complete spanner in her marketing plans.
If anything, it made me appreciate her more.
Somewhat of a kinship has formed between us since we’ve both been fucked over by Alexander’s actions, albeit in very different ways.
“Any updates from his label?” Caryn drops her nail file and returns her attention to the screen.
I flick open my notebook and squint at the notes I took down from the call with Paul earlier.
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year is up to sixty-two on the daily Spotify USA charts and it’s at a similar spot on Apple, which is encouraging this early on.
Only Mariah and Brenda Lee with their Christmas songs are higher.
They’re creating a bunch of digital assets for socials to tie into the song, and Paul has gotten the label to agree to putting a nod to the Brewed campaign in them. ”
“Great! Do they need me to send over our branding materials?” Chloe asks.
“I’m sure that would be handy. Let me loop you in with them after the call.” I nod at Olly to make a note.
The women remain silent, and I feel the tension rising in my body.
I reach for one of the stress balls I’ve left in the boardroom and read it: Better to squeeze me than send that text. Too late for that, I think.
The women share a glance and then Chloe speaks up.
“And we’re sure Alexander’s ready for this? That there’ll be no more scandals breaking out?”
I can’t blame her for asking. It’s the same question I asked Paul two hours ago.
Brewed is spending a shit ton of money on this campaign, and understandably, they want to make sure they see a good return on their investment.
Paul’s response placed all the responsibility on my shoulders.
You focus on not doing anything to upset him and we won’t have an issue.
Great.
It’s not like I don’t already have enough to deal with.
“Connie and Paul have assured me that Alexander is in a good head space. That they’ll be keeping an eye on everything he does in the foreseeable future to ensure no more scandals break out.”
The words are enough to get reassuring nods from them both and for my pulsing hand on the stress ball to slow.
I have no doubt that when it comes to Connie and Paul, they’ll be keeping a tight rein on him.
But if I’ve learned anything over the past five months, knowing Alexander, a scandal is never that far away.
By the end of the day, I’ve managed to cross the final thing off my to-do list at work.
Well, I delegated several things on there to Olly.
After two months of having to pick up all the slack from Tony being fired and Sara quitting, it’s nice to have someone to help.
And that help couldn’t have come quickly enough, given the week ahead.
Olly’s head is buried in his yellow notepad. He takes down the final point, adding to a long list of tasks I’ve given to him, before looking back up at me as I grab my bag.
“How long are you away for?” His inquisitive dark-blue eyes are locked on me.
“Sunday through next weekend.”