Chapter 11 Ex Number Two
Ex Number Two
Luca
This is the worst place I could be, and the only place.
Foreheads boast a sweaty sheen as bodies jostle and jump together, bass-heavy music vibrating through my chest. In the crowd I can see some people I like and many I don’t.
The party is being thrown by some of the football boys, Red Bull sponsoring the sprawling debauchery, free cans flowing between hands and little baggies passed around behind closed doors.
I know Luca will be here somewhere, and I know I have to find him.
It’s been hours since I first saw the video. Hours of calls and texts to ask what the fuck is going on, only to get some half-hearted apologies back.
So sorry. No idea how the fuck this got out.
And
I know babe. Someone hacked my phone I swear.
And
I swear I told you about the camera you were just drunk remember? Maybe you’ve forgot. We’ll talk properly later yh? So sorry about all this.
I’ve seen Luca’s casual way of fobbing people off in action before.
It looks like you’re getting his care and attention when really, you’re getting none of it.
I can feel it in the three messages he’s sent today.
If he really cared, he’d have been by my side in an instant, not straight to the pub with his football boys after the game and straight to a house party after that.
And he knows he didn’t tell me he was filming.
For a split second, I almost believe that he did, but I don’t get blackout drunk like that, not since Marc, and I know in my bones that I would never consent to what he’s saying even if I did.
Still, a seed of doubt writhes in my brain, and I hate him for planting it there. It’s far too hard to kill a thought.
As I make my way through the crowd, hunting for Luca—and I am unmistakably hunting—I feel eyes sliding over me when in close enough range. Sometimes hands, too. The smirks would tell me all I need to know even without the crude words that follow. I’ve leaped into a lion’s den.
It takes me some time, this hollowed-out student house vast and cavernous, the building converted from an old pub.
But eventually, I find him. He’s slouched in a corner of a basement room, body making a solid imprint on the faded sofa as his friends pass a small plastic pouch filled with off-white crystals between them.
Although Luca declines the contents of the bag, his smile is so easy, the slump of his body so relaxed, that I want to scream.
He gets to his feet as I approach him, an unsteady rock as he straightens up.
I eye the beer in his hand and wonder how many he’s had.
“Babe, you made it!” he says, as if he’s expecting to see me here.
As if I’ve not obviously tracked him down from a passing comment made about these plans.
He kisses me on the mouth, and it’s too quick and I’m too shocked to prevent it.
Before I know it, his arm is slung around my shoulders. “Max, get us a beer.”
One of his friends slides off the sofa and lopes off upstairs, leering at me as he goes. I’m so knocked off course by Luca’s easygoing demeanor that I let myself be pulled down to the sofa, squeezed in next to another of his friends.
“Babe, I’m so sorry about all that mad business with the video, yeah? It’ll all blow over before you know it.”
I manage to find my voice. “But that’s not the point, Luca. Why the fuck does it exist in the first place?”
“Look, I—”
Before he can finish, the sound of pantomime shrieking and grunting erupts in front of us. Two of Luca’s football buddies are on the floor in front of the sofa, one on his knees making high-pitched, farcical whimpering sounds, and the other making exaggerated thrusting gestures behind him.
“Leave it out,” Luca says, laughing as he kicks them both over. It’s clearly a joke to him, to all of them.
For a moment, my weaponized calm is almost shaken loose by Luca’s cavalierness. It would be so easy to scream at him, to beat at his chest, but it’s clear that Luca doesn’t care, and all I would do is embarrass myself. There’s nothing more despicable to a man than a hysterical woman.
“Can we please go somewhere quiet?” I whisper in his ear.
Arrogant as he is, it’s possible he thinks I want to fuck him, even after everything, and so he obliges.
Together, we weave our way out of the packed basement, up through various rooms of dancing bodies, past the kitchen, and up more flights of stairs.
I clock each room I can as we make our way through the house, finally arriving at a mercifully empty bedroom.
“This is Max’s,” Luca explains, flicking on the light to illuminate a room dingy enough to belong in his own student home. “No one will be coming in here.”
I almost laugh when he leans in to kiss me, but instead, I let him, gut churning. He gently pushes me toward the bed, and as he climbs on top of me, I push against his shoulders. His breath reeks of beer.
“The video,” I say. “Why did you do it?”
He laughs again, like I’ve told a corny joke. “Really, Nat, are we going to keep talking about it?” He kisses my neck. “You said you thought it’d be kinda hot, and it was. Have you seen how fucking hot you look in it?”
Jesus Christ. He’s looking at me again now, clearly trying to temperature check my expression.
Trying to see if I’ll buy the lies he’s trying to sell me.
If he can confuse me just enough to get away with this.
For a split second, I have to pull myself back from the brink of believing him, and that terrifies me.
“Can I see it?” I ask.
“You don’t have it?”
“Not on my phone, no.”
He rolls onto his back and digs around in the pocket of his joggers.
In a swift movement, his phone is in his hand.
I watch as he unlocks it, my body tense.
He navigates to the hateful video and hands the phone to me, expectant.
With care to look relaxed, I reshuffle on the bed, ostensibly to get comfortable.
Halfway through my apparent settling, I’m off the bed and out the door.
Luca’s reaction is quick. He grabs at me, managing a painful pinch of my arm, which ultimately slips out of his grasp, tripping him as he loses balance.
I’m across the landing and into the bathroom I’d spotted on the way up within seconds, the door locked behind me.
If it wasn’t for Luca’s stumble, I might not have made it.
Inside, my fingers tap at the bright, glassy screen. Luca’s fists are immediately on the door.
“Nat, what the fuck? Open up!”
I find his WhatsApp and open his chats. Immediately, I spot what I’m looking for.
My intuition tells me it’s where I need to be.
The football group chat. The bathroom door starts to tremble under the weight of Luca’s blows.
In turn, a quiet fear sets my own limbs trembling, so quick, like a muscle memory of panic I didn’t know I had.
Unsteady thumbs tap my name into the search bar.
A flood of messages appear—some from Luca, some from his teammates:
Be there for 9. Earlier if not balls deep in Nat
Yeah, Nat’s so sexy for a black girl. I bet she fucks like a champion.
I bet Nat’s nudes are hot…Sharing is caring, bro
No way Nat lets you hit it raw. Proof.
And then the pictures and videos start coming through.
Nat’s hotter than your girls, sorry about it
Fuck me, man. You got any more pictures of Nat? That’s so hot.
Shit, the way Nat moves is crazyyyy
There’s only a handful of images and videos, but it’s enough to make it crystal clear exactly what’s been going on.
As the drumbeat on the door grows louder, I take my own phone out of my pocket and snap images of the conversation on the screen.
Evidence, if I need it. What a shit. What a horrible little shit.
For a moment, I wish I hadn’t left Claire and Emily behind, abandoning them for this godforsaken plan when they’ve come all this way to see me.
I want Emily’s warmth, Claire’s confidence.
But how could I let them know what I know, see what I’ve seen?
I think of Emily and her comforting mass of copper hair that always smells of the apple shampoo she still uses.
I have friends here—uni friends, real-world friends—but there’s something about my friendship with Emily that feels more honest. At uni, everyone decides to reinvent themselves.
I’m not the only one pretending. And if two people in a relationship are lying about who they are, is their relationship even real?
Emily would tell me to suck it up. Why be a sad bitch when you can be a bad bitch? She loves the idea of bad bitchery, even if she grew up in a quiet cul-de-sac with a dad who was a dentist and a mother who taught at a primary school.
“Nat, open the fucking door!”
With Emily’s imagined words still ringing in my ears, he gets his wish, terror in the brown eyes that lock on mine. Good. He should be scared. I slam the phone to his chest and he sees what I’ve seen. The terror seems to deepen.
“Listen, Nat, I can explain—”
I don’t wait to hear it. I’m pushing my way back into the throng of the party, looking for “numb,” whatever it might look like and wherever I can find it.
One of the party girls I always seem to bump into at these things is heading into another bathroom as I try to brush past. She sees my poorly masked distress, sees Luca grabbing at me, trying to get me to talk.
Without a second thought, she pulls me into the bathroom with her, this secret den of sisterhood.
We sit there, not saying much, until Luca gives up and disappears.
It’s a relief to have her here. She always looks pleased to see me, has kind words to say, open ears for my thoughts.
But I only seem to meet her when she’s high on MDMA, so it’s not entirely clear how much of this openness is her own.
She listens to what’s happened and holds my hand throughout.
Her hands are soft and a little clammy. I want to cry at her kindness, but I won’t let myself.
My fingers are too firmly curled around my sharp rage now, holding it so tightly that it might be slicing into me, doing internal damage I’ll never be able to repair. But it’s my lifeline. I won’t let go.
“It’ll be okay,” Party Girl says, glittery makeup twinkling in the unforgiving bathroom light.
She hands me a bottle of water, instructs me to drink.
The water is bitter and chemical tasting.
When I realize it’s spiked, I glug it more greedily, stopping at the point when taking more might be bad manners.
She gives me a hug, holds me close, and then we make our way into the party downstairs.
I find myself with her friends, dancing, trying not to think about how naked, exposed, and ashamed Luca has left me.
As the drugs kick in, this becomes easier, and easier.
Minutes later, I’m flying on this makeshift dance floor in this stripped-out living room.
Luca is somewhere, but nowhere near me. I think about all the beers he’s sunk that he shouldn’t be drinking and wish his heart would just give out.
Maybe one of these pills my new friends have given me would do the job if the beers aren’t enough.
But I’m not meant to be thinking about him, and so I push him out of my mind.
After that, all that’s left is the music and the dancing and the pills.
All that’s left is the love of these kind strangers who, for tonight, are my best friends, and whom I’ll probably never see again.
For a few sweet hours, I can pretend the humiliation doesn’t belong to me, reject it like incorrect baggage handed to me across a cloakroom desk.
Sorry, this isn’t mine. It’s incredibly freeing.
At some point, and I’m not sure how soon, Emily materializes.
She’s worried about me, she says. I haven’t been returning her messages.
But she doesn’t need to worry, and I tell her so.
I’m having too much of a good time to look at my phone, that’s all.
But I’m not sure how convinced by my words Emily is, because it could be two minutes or two hours later, but she’s insisting we go home.
Thanks to Emily, I make it back to my room.
The night is not a blank, but it’s a blur.
A blur with some large holes in it. I immediately shut my curtains against the hideous morning light already illuminating my bed and tumble underneath the covers, snaking an arm around Emily’s waist and holding on to it like a buoy in the waters of my rising despair, the dam of euphoria breaking, ecstasy draining away and leaving only dark thoughts in its wake.
I want my sister, who’s sleeping in the bed my housemate offered up given they’re away, but I don’t want to face Claire’s judgment for falling apart like this. She can see me when I’m sober.
In the afternoon, when I eventually stir, my phone is drowning in notifications, and Emily is gone. A nugget of disappointment and anxiety wedges itself behind my rib cage at the thought of her leaving without saying goodbye.
I don’t want to look at messages. Amid the birthday texts will be more comments and links to the video. And I’ve done so many drugs that I know the comedown is going to be killer without fixating on what made me get so high in the first place.
But then my eyes latch on to a few key words in the messages. I see they have nothing to do with my birthday or the video. Instead, I’m seeing:
In his bed.
MDMA.
Heart attack.
Dead.
It’s easy to piece together the news across the outpouring of messages. Luca’s housemate has found him dead in his bed, of a suspected heart attack. Many people at the party saw him high on MDMA toward the end of the night, a drug he’s historically avoided taking because of the hole in his heart.
The messages are all sympathetic.
Oh my god, Nat.
R u ok?
Let me know if you need someone to be with you tonight.
But the moment the news sinks in, any trace of a comedown lifts.
I open my curtains, look up at the sunshine, and let the falling rays warm my face.
And for a moment, I feel grateful that Luca was such a master manipulator.
Because everyone’s convinced that the leaked sex tape had nothing to do with him, and save for Party Girl, everyone thinks I consented to that tape being made.
So no one on campus knows the thoughts I had last night, how grateful I am that Luca is dead.
A foreign feeling settles over me.
Satisfaction.