33. Posey
Posey
During the Christmas holidays, the Summerset Royals host one event after another, and tonight we’re in the foyer outside the main dining room for cocktails before the staff usher us to our assigned seats at the gigantic dining room table.
The only thing distracting me from my heartbreak is watching Nick and Jules dance around each other with both of them back in the palace. Since Julia worked in California for a few years before returning home, the two of them have barely shared a room, let alone a dinner table.
If my stomach would stop dipping every time Brent crossed my mind, I would be enjoying Nick and Julia’s mutual discomfort much more. How is everyone else ignoring the tension? Someone get me a knife. I want to cut it.
A few years ago, when their friendship imploded, I couldn’t understand the strangeness between them.
Now that I’m older, I can see it for what it is.
Sexual tension. The two of them are far, far too aware of each other when they’re in the same room.
I hope the staff have seated them next to each other at the table.
I can’t be the only one who’s realized what’s up.
“Stop staring at him,” Julia mutters beside me.
“You won’t, so I will,” I say, and I snag a glass of champagne off a waiter on his way past. “I think he’s gotten hotter, don’t you?
” At over six feet, Nick is the tallest of the three brothers, and he’s done some modeling.
His medium-brown hair and hazel eyes coupled with his toned physique made him a regular in the gossip columns, on fashion runways, and on magazine covers.
He’s quit most of that since he returned from college, but scandals never really leave.
Another reason I’m apprehensive about what’s happening at Northern University.
“Posey, I’m not debating the hotness level of any of the princes with you.”
Her comment reminds me of when I met Monica, which leads me to how she encouraged me to go to Bermuda, which lands me at the doorstep of thoughts of Brent. I down the champagne in one gulp.
“You’re not drinking beer, you know. Dom shouldn’t be chugged.” Julia sips hers, and she turns her back on Nick and the rest of his family to peer at me with her blue-grey eyes through her glasses.
Ah shit. She’s giving me that narrow-eyed look that I loathe. Personal questions are headed my way. I’d much rather tease her about her avoidance of Prince Nicholas. She doesn’t even call him Nick anymore. Classic case of thou doth protest too much. The other two are still Alex and Brice to her.
Julia swipes another glass of champagne when a waiter passes, and she shoves it into my hand. Her lips twitch. “You leave again in two days, and I haven’t gotten my gossip.”
“Nothing to tell. Met a hot guy. Had a lot of sex. Decided he wasn’t for me. Rinse and repeat. Such is my life.”
“You’ve redecorated every room in Mom and Dad’s house. Every room. That’s a whole new level of avoidance.”
“They were very generous with the budget. How could I resist?” I take another gulp of champagne.
“I think you met a boy you actually liked for the first time since Creepy Chris got the boot.”
Creepy Chris should have gotten more than my boot to his ass. She’s not luring me into discussing Brent. I’ve avoided lying in bed crying every day by keeping busy. Tonight, I intend to get very, very drunk, and maybe I’ll even find someone else to distract me.
Sucks that the thought of being with anyone else turns my stomach. This is why I don’t do relationships. Instead of scheming to get under someone, I’m wondering how to get over someone.
I sigh. “I might have liked him a little. The tiniest bit. So small it’s hard to even see.” I present my thumb and forefinger with barely any space between them.
“You’ve been obsessed with him for years. Not surprised you came to care a little when your starting position was rampant lust.”
I gaze at Nick over her shoulder, and I give her a pointed look. “Uh-huh.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, he’s attractive. He knows he’s attractive, but he’s not the guy I used to know. He’s become the worst kind of manwhore.”
After having been sex shamed for the last few days, the whore comment makes me flinch. “I’m with Nick. Sex doesn’t have to mean anything.” Though I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed the meaningful sex I’ve been having with Brent much more.
Why, why, why do I have to think of him every minute of every day?
“Have you read his text yet?” Julia asks.
“No,” I say. The first line is visible in the preview—that we should talk when I get back—but if he doesn’t understand what I need from him, then there’s no need to talk. Destiny is right. If he’s not willing to defend me, I don’t want him.
Even if I really, really want him.
“He’s not the right guy for me,” I say, and somehow, I make myself sound far firmer than I really am.
Because the truth is that we felt perilously close to having something genuine and real and lasting.
But I can’t be with someone who believes everything bad will pass easily and with no consequences.
For the rest of the year, whether or not I’m with Brent, everyone will believe I was part of a cheating scandal. Any time my name comes up, that’ll be attached to the conversation.
Isn’t she the one who slept with Brent Faulkner in Bermuda while he was there with Valentina?
Turns out Brent Faulkner isn’t my knight in shining armor. He’s just like every other man. A disappointment. More than anything, I wish that thought didn’t make my heart constrict in my chest.
That night after dinner and way too many drinks for me, Julia knocks on my bedroom door. While she has her own apartment in the center of Tucker’s Town, she’s spent quite a few nights at Mom and Dad’s house. I think she’s worried about me, but there’s nothing to worry about.
I’ve been lying here for the last hour resisting the urge to read Brent’s text or to reach out to him.
The last time I called him drunk, I ended up in Chicago, and if I called him now, there’s a chance I’d book a red-eye flight back to Michigan.
The last few weeks, we’ve filled all our spare time with each other.
It’s normal to miss a person who wiggled so deeply into your life, and this crushing pressure in my chest is withdrawal, but it doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be together.
If I ever give this boyfriend thing another try, I want someone who is going to listen to me, who’ll support me when I need it, and who’ll recognize when I’m fading instead of flourishing.
Brent seemed like he could be that guy, but I was definitely wrong on all counts.
After hesitating at the doorway, Julia perches on the end of my bed, and she examines the walls, which haven’t changed since I left for college four years ago.
High school photos litter the room, and my black-and-white color scheme is still classic enough to have endured.
It’s the only room I didn’t touch in my flurry of redecorating since I returned.
“Why didn’t you tell me things had gotten so bad online?” she asks.
“Have they gotten bad?” I curl into a ball on the bed and stare at the wall across from me. “I haven’t looked.”
“You really haven’t checked?”
“Not lately. Why would I look? Val spewed a whole bunch of lies about how I lured Brent away from her in Bermuda, and how we’ve been engaged in a secret affair behind her back for weeks.
People ate the details like candy, and now I’m a social pariah on campus.
Assholes I’ve never met think I should die for having sex.
Not Brent, though. Nope. He’s the man. Two hot women? All that pussy? Score!”
Julia sucks in a deep breath. “I think it might actually be worse than that?”
“Worse than random strangers wishing I’d die? Doubtful.”
“Brent was at her apartment today.”
“What?” I sit up, and the room swirls. But I manage to grab her phone.
“Show me.” The screen is blurry, and I blink to focus.
Whatever she’s going to show me must be old.
He wouldn’t get back together with her. He wouldn’t do that.
Not after what she’s trying to do to me. My stomach dips into my toes.
She reaches across me and clicks on an app, and then Brent and Val are on the small screen, standing in the snowy parking lot of her apartment.
There isn’t just one photo; there are three.
Someone from campus must have snapped the pics.
No one else would care. In the photos they’re talking in the parking lot, walking toward her apartment, disappearing inside.
Like everything else Brent touches lately, these photos have also gone viral with the hashtag reunion attached. The assholes have even tagged me as though I’ve gotten what I deserved.
I toss her phone toward the end of my bed and flop back into the blankets, staring at the ceiling. My brain won’t latch onto anything coherent. Instead, my chest feels like it might cave in. Tears prick at the back of my eyes.
Fucking Faulkner.
“She drags me all over campus, and he goes to her apartment? Do you think he’s back together with her?” My voice is so thick I don’t recognize it. The idea of him with her makes my stomach roll.
“I don’t know him,” Julia says. “It doesn’t look good. Maybe he went there to tell her to back off?”
When I asked him to do something, he flat out refused to get involved.
Newsflash, he’s the reason I’m involved.
Orgasms and lattes do not make up for a trashed reputation in my last year at Northern.
Thankfully, my plan has always been to return to Bellerive, where this mess is a tiny blip in the grand scheme of my life, but if I ever get TV famous, this whole incident will resurface. The internet never forgets.
“Is it possible to hate someone and also feel something so much bigger for them?” I ask.
It takes Julia a moment to answer. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s possible.” She collapses onto the end of my bed. “If you really like him, it might be worth talking to him when you get back in a couple days?”
What would I even say to him? I curl onto my side, and Julia meets my gaze across the expanse of bedding. “He said he felt protective of me.” A tear slips down my cheek.
“Then maybe he went to Val to tell her to back off.” Julia crawls up the bed and wraps her arms around me. “Don’t be like the assholes on the internet and assume things before you talk to him. If you really like him, you should talk to him.”
I untangle myself from her, and I grab my phone from the nightstand. The message is still there, and I hover my finger over it. I can read it or delete it without bothering. Even if this doesn’t look good, we spent too much time together for me to make assumptions.
After I read it, a tiny spout of hope pops up inside me. Maybe he did go to her apartment to talk to her, to tell her to back off. He hasn’t sent me any other messages or tried to reach out to me beyond this one. But what he’s sent me isn’t nothing either.
I’m at the airport waiting to board my flight back to Michigan when Destiny sends me a text with a screenshot attached. Before I open it, I can already tell it’s Brent. I’d recognize him anywhere, even before I knew him so intimately.
I scan the photo, and I realize how starved for him I’ve been.
He’s sleeping in his bed, and the dying light must be streaming through the windows in his room.
A sheet is artfully draped across his middle.
It’s a scene I’ve taken in more than once myself.
He looks strong and peaceful...and naked.
It’s the kind of photo that—the thought draws me up short, and I open the picture to see the entire screenshot.
My blood runs cold.
It’s the kind of photo Val would have taken, and it appears she has. This isn’t a photo I’ve ever seen before. Waves of hot and cold are moving through my body as I open the app she’s used and click to her profile.
The caption is simple and heartbreaking.
Forgiveness takes many forms. But this one is my favorite.
Forgiveness? What a joke. My heart is spasming in my chest, but instead of letting that feeling take over, I allow the rage to rise in me. If he got back together with her, I will murder him.
I scan through her feed, searching for this same photo elsewhere, but there’s nothing. If she’d had this one when they broke up, she’d have posted it to stave off Brent’s thirsty fans.
This must be new.
The announcement to board comes over the PA system, and I rise from my seat. My hand shakes as I close my phone and tuck it into my purse. My original plan was to go to Brent and tell him none of this was fake for me either, but it’s clear he’s slid back into old habits without a second thought.
I’ve never been good at letting an injustice go, and I’m not about to start today.